Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 51 



The myth then continues as follows : 



Mastamho was standing at Avi-kutaparve. Now he proceeded to leave 

 (change) his body. That is why the little mountain there is now white in one 

 place. Mastamho was looking to the north, standing close by the river. He 

 wanted to have wings and flap them. He moved his arms four times to make 

 them into wings. Then he said : "See, I shall be a bird. Not everyone will 

 know me when I am a bird. My name will be Saksak." ^° Then he turned 

 around twice from right to left, facing south, and then north, then south 

 and north again, and lay down on his back in the middle of the river. Four 

 times he moved his arms in the water. Thus he reached Hokusave. Then he 

 had wings and feathers, and rose from the water. ^^ He flew low above the water 

 so that his wings touched it. He flew southward, looking for a place to sit. 

 He settled on a sandbar. But he thought : "It is not good : I will not sit here" ; 

 and he went on again. He sat on a log, but thought again : "No, I do not like 

 this," and went on. He sat on a bank, but thought : "No, it is not good," and 

 went on. So he went far down to the sea where the river emptied into it. 

 There he stayed, and lived near the river eating fish. Now he was crazy 

 [yamomk] and full of lice and nits.'^ Islow when he had told everything [my 

 italics] and was a bird, he forgot all that he had known. He did not even know 

 any longer how to catch fish. Sometimes other birds kill fish and leave part of 

 them. Then Saksak eats them, not knowing any better. He is alone, not with 

 other birds, and sits looking down at the water : he is crazy." 



This strange and moving account of the final deterioration of a 

 great culture hero deserves to be commented on in some detail. 



The most striking feature of the narrative is its complete clinical 

 accuracy. Mastamho regresses from person to bird and realizes that 

 not everyone will recognize him in this new guise. Not only does he 

 withdraw from his earlier habitat, removing himself to the distant 

 sea (land of the dead?) , but, once he is there, he avoids the other birds ; 

 he sits alone, staring at the water. He deteriorates completely, for- 

 getting everything he ever knew and becoming filthy, smelly, and 

 verminous. Finally, he is parasitical in his passivity : He does not even 

 catch his own fish, but eats the leavings of other birds. Bourke ( 1889) 

 also mentions the transformation, but minimizes Mastamlio's psychic 



» Kroeber (1948) suggests that this may be either the bald or -white-headed easle, or 

 else the fish-dlvlng osprey. The latter is more probable, since "saksak" may be an 

 onomatopoea for the osprey's cry. 



so According to the full length, and hitherto unpublished, version of the Yellak HI : ha 

 song cycle (Kroeber, MS.), certain birds turned Into human beings after acquiring land 

 and a name. In the present myth we see persons, whose human task is completed, turn 

 Into birds. 



81 Kroeber (1948) translates hatgilye=louse excrement, as "nits" and explains that, 

 according to the Mohave, when a fish eagle is killed, he is always lousy and smells of fish. 

 It Is not easy to decide what, If anything, should be made of the fact that there exist two 

 Mohave names "Winged vagina" (Devereux, 1951 c) and "Vagina full of fleas (or ver- 

 minous)" and that a man was In the habit of insulting women by saying that they smelled 

 like fish (Devereux, 1950 a). Psychoanalysts will probably feel that these data shed light 

 upon the latent content of Mastamho's transformation Into a passive, verminous bird 

 smelling of fish, while some anthropologists may feel that these data are irrelevant for an 

 understanding of this episode. 



'* A footnote by Kroeber (1948) specifies that anyone dreaming of Mastamho as a crazy 

 saksak will become Insane. This belief will be discussed separately (pt. 4, pp. 116-117). 



