122 BUREAU OF AJMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



It looks like the rattlesnake. There isn't much difference in color or ap- 

 pearance (pattern on the back of the snake) between the two, but the hikwi : r 

 Is larger. It is twice as big as a rattlesnake — it is about 4 or 5 feet long. 

 I don't know just what causes the terribleness of these snakes. People who 

 dream of this snake say that at night it is a person (ipa:). When one is 

 going to get sick from this snake, one dreams that the snake appears in the 

 form of a person, and tells the dreamer its name, which is a personal name, 

 like that of human beings. Then the dreamer believes that the snake is a 

 person. The patient suffering from this illness hardly ever knows how to 

 tell what he dreams about this snake, nor can he tell all that this snake 

 does (partial repression), because he has such a severe (tension?) headache. 

 Nowadays the lake is no longer bad.' Nonetheless, because of all this business, 

 hardly anyone ever goes down there nowadays. However, they are doing 

 quite a bit of farming near that lake. It seems that the drainage system goes 

 into the lake, and therefore the lake doesn't look any more the way it used 

 to look. [P. H. told me that there was also a two-headed hikwi :r.] That is 

 right, and there is only one of those. It has two heads; one at each end of 

 its body. The Indians call this snake hi:dho havi : k (face two). It is at 

 a place called Amat Ku:kiyet (earth cut-off). This snake is in a cave called 

 Kuyanyava: (cave-house), to the north of Fort Mohave. There is a group 

 of hikwi :r there, who have only one head. The one with two heads is the 

 only one of its kind; he is the chief (ipa: taha:na) of these snakes. These 

 hikwi :r are actually referred to as ipa: (persons). They use some kind of 

 feathers.* They wear these feathers in the dreams of the people who see 

 them, and they look like people. Atco : ra Hat6 : va knew more about these 

 matters than I do and so does Kwathany Hi;wa. It would be hard to get 

 Kwathany Hi :wa to talk to you about these things. He is a coward at heart 

 and is afraid that one might do something (bewitch?) to him. 



Comment 



Tcatc's account brings into the dream imagery, characteristic of this ailment, 

 the feathers that play so important a role in the psychosis of the funeral ritual- 

 ist, who is also a healer of the foreign sickness. Thus, her narrative completes 

 and clarifies Ahma Huma : re's concrete allusions to whites, who, are believed to 

 be highly phallic and, thus, symbolize the nocturnal sexual father (Devereux, 

 1950 a). In addition, she introduces the theme of the bewitched lake, which is 

 only tangentially mentioned in Ahma Huma : re's narrative, and which plays a 

 significant role in Case 30. She also mentions the two-headed chief of the snakes. 

 Psychoanalysis and mythological material alike suggest that two-headed beings 

 are a condensation of two separate — or, at least, separable — beings (see Case 29, 

 for a dream about two cooperating snakes). In this instance, the two heads are 

 connected by means of a snake body — an imagery whose psychoanalytic meaning 

 is fairly clear, especially in terms of "bridge-symbolism" (Ferenczi, 1926). Per- 

 haps the most important point raised by Tcatc refers, however, to the fact that 

 people who dream of the hikwi : r cannot recall the hikwi : r's personal name that 

 was communicated to them In dream, nor even give a full account of the snake's 



' Perhaps because Hamuly Huk'ye : ra died recently, allegedly bewitched by Kwathany 

 HI : wa. In reality bis half brother, Hlvsu : Tupo : ma, admitted to me that, motivated 

 by sibling rivalry, he, perBonally, had disposed of lilm, through witchcraft (Devereux, 

 19481). 



» Compare the psychosis allegedly caused by contact with the feathers of funeral 

 regalia, part 4, pp. 186-195. Cf, also the Mayan feathered serpent. 



