10 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



The lack of any general etiological theory is tellingly reflected in 

 Hikye :t's chaotic attempt to formulate one. 



Eikye: fs statement. — Most insanity begins very early in life. It has its basis 

 in the stomach. As boys or girls grow older, in some cases they must fast every 

 now and then, so that their blood may be kept pure. If these acts are not per- 

 formed, they ( ?) come back on the person, in the form of pains of the heart and 

 of the body. As time goes on, the person may feel the cold of the wind and the 

 heat in his body and in his mind. When he inhales and feels either of these in 

 his stomach, he will feel that they cause him very sharp pain. Naturally, he 

 would then want some heavy food. 



Our food, as it was given to us in the beginning, is, of course, different from 

 what we now have. The food that we now have is something like (i. e. in ac- 

 cordance with) a prophecy made in the old times, which told us that our food 

 would change from time to time. Such a prophecy I call ku : na : v nyevedhl :. 

 This is something that has never been told before, and the term I use here means 

 the same as what we — or rather what the lay people — call ahwe: (alien). [Is 

 that the same as ahwe: nyevedhi : (alien ghost)?] No, it is not. And so the 

 sickness from the stomach, which may be a gaseous condition, comes up to the 

 heart. Such pains may drive a person to what we call insanity. What people 

 say when the patient becomes insane, is that the hikwi : r (supernatural snake) 

 is in his stomach. His illness may also involve the symptoms of hu : the : rv 

 (cold ) . This, then, is the hikwi : r illness. 



Also, a girl may have sexual relations before she begins to menstruate,* and 

 therefore, later on, while menstruating, she may still have this semen in her, 

 which has entered her blood. This is known as hiku: pk (venereal disease). It 

 should be understood, of course, that such a girl has not done any fasting at all. 

 Therefore this blood of hers is rather impure, and Is circulating all over her 

 body, and up to her head. This seems to rob her of her sanity. 



This whole thing I just told you is not known to the laymen ; it is suma : tc 

 (dreamed knowledge). As I said before, what I am telling you now is sort of 

 a prophecy made for the purpose of telling what might happen physically, and 

 In the mind, and in the soul. That is why I told about ku : na : v nyevedhi :, 

 When a person has begun to know and to practice sexual intercourse, if he should 

 be of more than pure blood (i. e. if he is a halfbreed) — well, today we have so 

 many mixed bloods — the sickness I told you about in the beginning is (will be) 

 important. When a boy or a girl has sexual intercourse with a mixed blood 

 (halfbreod) and they happen to kiss (Kroeber, 1948), this causes the "germ"(?) 

 to go down into the stomach of either one of them. Then the original sickness, 

 which I mentioned before, looks upon the germ coming in as an enemy. This 

 causes the sickness known as ahwe:. This "original" disease is ku : na : v 

 nyevedhi :, and one does not even know that one has it. 



In the beginning of a person, or of a life, that person comes into the world as 

 a sick person. Thus, his sexual intercourse makes it so that (happens in such 

 a way that) It finally causes hiku : pk. The blood is impure. It is like a smoke 

 within the cavity where the kidneys, the liver, the stomach, and the bladder are 

 found. Diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis are in the impure blood. The 

 blood is circulated down to the feet and, from there, there seems to be a slow 

 upward movement of the blood. This causes what we call hiku : pk tcaki : tck. 

 This illness is more like rheumatism, or like the sharp pains one feels when 

 one makes an effort to walk, or to use one's feet. 



* Presnmably not tbe menarcbe, but the monthly period Is meant. 



