100 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



After a few more days the beneficial effects of the initial conversa- 

 tion wore off and I felt rather unhappy once more. I asked Hama : 

 Utce : to mention this to Tcatc and to ask her whether she felt that a 

 woman could be in love with two men at the same time, since the 

 girl seemed to seesaw between another man and me. 



Tcatc : "No, that is not possible, and yet, tliis is a strange situation : 

 She could marry the other man and she might even think that she 

 belongs to him, but part of her will always be with you." 



G. D. : (Association with a shallow person will spoil her.) 



Tcatc: "It won't spoil her. I myself never forgot my first hus- 

 band." (On another occasion Tcatc stated that she refused to be- 

 lieve in a repetition of earthly life in the land of the dead (Devereux, 

 1937 a) , because she did not wish to experience once more the pain of 

 losing her first husband.) 



G. D. : "Should I stop seeing her ?" 



Tcatc: "This girl is a kwathidh: (shaman) and so are you. That 

 is why your souls are together. If you were to make up your mind 

 not to see her again, and married someone else, you two would be- 

 witch each other and the weaker one of the two would die, because 

 you two would be thinking of each other all the time. It is a form 

 of madness, called ahwe: nyevedhi: (pt. 4, pp. 128-150). I think she 

 bewitched you and is still trying to get you, even though she is in love 

 with the other man." (Ahwe : nyevedlii : was mentioned presumably 

 because, unlike the girl, I was foreign born. ) 



G. D. : "Should I write her what you just told me?" 



Tcatc: "Yes, why not?" 



When, at a later date, I again teased Tcatc, saying that she was 

 obviously a shaman, she replied : "You may think so, because of the 

 things I tell you. At any rate, I like to think that I cured your hi :wa 

 itck." 



Comment 



Hama: Utce: afterward assured me that Tcatc would have given 

 precisely the same advice to any one of her young relatives who found 

 himself in a similar predicament. "She often tells me that you are 

 just like a favorite grandson to her" (Devereux, 1951 b). When I 

 replied that I felt the same way about Tcatc, Hama: Utce: nodded 

 and said: "She knows it." We may therefore assume that the con- 

 versation given above accurately reflects the Mohave attitude to- 

 ward hi :wa itck. Hence, it is rather striking to note that, except for 

 references to witchcraft, a conversation of this type could have taken 

 place also in a purely Euro-American cultural setting, between a 

 young man and a worldly, wise, and kindly woman of 80, Only such 

 extraneous and culturally determined details as references to witch- 



