Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 97 



whom had died. They had lived together for a long time. Then Hualy got tired 

 of him and deserted him. Three days later she married another man named 

 Hamthuly Kudhap (i.e., a kind of lizard, which lives on the mesa, split open). 

 When he heard that she had married again, he became afflicted with hi : wa itck ; 

 he lost his appetite and neither ate nor slept for 3 days. During these 3 days 

 he ran around constantly. 



Starting from his house, he ran to a lake known in English as Twelve Mile 

 Slough, and in Mohave as Nyakro : muhuer (iron railed, or fenced). Thence 

 he would proceed to the Colorado River, and eventually return to his own house. 

 He ran this circuit for 3 days, stopping once in a while at the houses of his rela- 

 tives, but even though they tried to press food on him, he would not eat." He 

 was never doctored for this mental disorder, but made a spontaneous recovery, 

 f Here I commented : "You women are the very devil !" Informant replied : "Your 

 own girl must be hukthar." (This word means properly coyote, and, by exten- 

 sion, "crazy," but not insane.)] 



CASE 23: 



Tii : ly Korau : lyva of the Tii : ly gens died at the age of 50, a long time ago. 

 She was married to a man younger than herself, and had two boys and a girl by 

 him. She nagged her husband so much that, in the end, he resented it and left 

 her. She was about 40 years old at that time. She showed no unusual reactions 

 until she learned that her former husband had married again. Then she picked 

 up a stick and went to her former husband's new residence, which sheltered not 

 only this man but also his new wife, and some of his relatives, and "just l)eat up 

 everybody in that damn place." Finally they caught her, held her down, took 

 away her stick, and brought her back to her own home. She then shut herself up 

 in her own house and cried all night. Finally she made a spontaneovis recovery 

 and married someone else 2 years later. The events just described occurred at 

 Kave : ly, a place south of Parker. None of the immediate relatives of this 

 woman are now alive. (This is the only accepted case of hi : wa itck in a female 

 that came to my attention. 0:otc's self -diagnosis was rejected by all (Dever- 

 eux, 1948 f).) 



Dubious cases. — I first heard the term "hi : wa itck" in 1938, al- 

 though in 1936 I recorded numerous cases of suicide, many of them due 

 to amorous disappointments but none of them following a final break. 

 These suicide cases also include suicide-and-murder cases. The term 

 "hi : wa itck" was not applied to them in 1936, nor, on specific 

 inquiry, in 1938. This indicates that hi : wa itck is, to the Mohave 

 mind, a clear-cut clinical entity, regardless of how it may appear to 

 the modern clinical psychiatrist, who cannot fail to recognize deep 

 affinities between hi : wa itck and cases of suicide caused by the loss of 

 a love object. 



INFORMAL THERAPY OF HI : WA ITCK 



Although hi : wa itck represents a striking deviation from the 

 norm, persons afflicted with this ailment were not treated by shamans, 



*i The Mohave usually fasted during ritual running and travel (McNichols, 1944). Cf. 

 the use of ritual as symptom also in the haircutting episode (Case 21). 



