Deveroux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 43 



AGAINST THE OUTGROUP : AHWE : MA : N, BCALPER'S PSYCHOSIS 



According to K. M. Stewart (1947 a), and to Fathauer (1954), only 

 people who had power derived from enemy dreams (ahwe: sumatc) 

 could scalp foes and purify new scalps. However, like other members 

 of the war party, they too were subject to the nefarious influence of 

 scalps, prisoners, and aliens, and could contract the dread enemy 

 illness, if they were not properly purified. This illness consisted in 

 fainting and crazy behavior (Fathauer, 1954) or even in insanity 

 accompanied by hollering in the night (Stewart, 1947 c). Sig- 

 nificantly, the scalpers were also the shamans who cured the enemy 

 illness (pt. 4, pp. 128-150), while Pulyirk even asserted that the 

 scalper's psychosis was the lethal ahwe : hahnok pure and simple. 



Both the existence of purification rites and the fact that, on the 

 way back from a war party, the men deprived themselves in many 

 ways, hardly sleeping at all, fasting, and drinking very little water 

 (Stewart, 1947 c), indicate guilt over the killing and scalping of foes. 



It is therefore clear that the scalper's insanity is felt to be due to 

 his guilt feelings over the killing and scalping of foes. However, 

 between the last aboriginal Mohave battle and World War I ahwe : 

 ma : n could apparently be caused also by mere dreams, since, until 

 1917, the Mohave did no military service. Then, when the Mohave 

 began to serve in the United States Armed Forces, it was felt that even 

 if they had not been in actual combat, they were likely to contract 

 ahwe: ma:n. Thus, when "John Smith" (Case 64) returned to the 

 Reservation after serving in the United States Armed Forces, his 

 mother's cousin urged the family to take him for purification to the 

 Yuma shaman whose name, "as pronounced by the Mohave (sic!)," 

 is Mat-ha: Kuhamaly (mud white), since no Mohave shaman then 

 living had power over the ahwe : ma : n illness. Since this advice 

 was not followed, when John Smith later on had a psychotic episode, 

 his illness was diagnosed as ahwe : ma : n. The informant who so 

 diagnosed John Smith's illness also specified that not only scalpers, 

 but all members of a war party, and especially those who were hurt 

 or wounded, were likely to develop ahwe : ma : n, because they kept 

 on dreaming of their military experiences. This Mohave theory 

 dovetails with the well-known fact that combat dreams tend to be 

 recurrent dream experiences even among Occidentals (Kubie, 1943). 



It is probable that the Mohave tendency to postulate that any mem- 

 ber of the Mohave war party or of the United States Armed Forces, 

 even if he did not see actual combat, is likely to develop ahwe : ma : n 

 is but an extension of the more ancient view that the contaminating 

 force resided chiefly in the scalps. Thus, according to Tcatc : "There 



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