142 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



shamans treated such ("straight") ailments, there was only one who would 

 doctor such a sickness, because the patient had only one sickness (at a time). 

 Nowadays, however, when a person has ahwe : hahnok, he also has other sick- 

 nesses at the same time, so that a number of shamans have to be called in. 

 No shaman now living knows how to cure the ahwe : nyevedhi : illness. Nowa- 

 days, if someone contracts this illness — and some people do contract it — he goes 

 to the hospital. And, if nothing can be done for him, he dies. 



GENEEAL COMMENT 



The principle that polar opposites are often interchangeable and 

 may symbolize each other is often of great importance both in primi- 

 tive cultures and in the individual unconscious.^ This principle ex- 

 plains why the Mohave Indians' deceased relatives and spouses, as 

 well as their enemies, can cause them to contract the foreign ghost 

 illness. This suggests that gentile exogamy, combined with tribal 

 endogamy, is a typical compromise solution between the oedipally 

 motivated urge to commit incest and the reaction formation against 

 this urge, which impels one to marry a complete outsider. It is tliis 

 reaction formation against incestuous wishes that provides the moti- 

 vation, e.g., in the legend of King Cophetua who married a beggar 

 girl. The same defense against incestuous wishes is often also a major 

 motivating factor in disparate unions, as exemplified by hypergamy 

 or by miscegenation. 



CASE MATERIAL 



It is proposed to present, first, cases of ahwe: hahnok, and then 

 cases diagnosed as ahwe : nyevedhi :. It is noteworthy that whereas 

 the accounts of the former "clinical entity" are more elaborate than 

 are the accounts of ahwe : nyevedhi :, our case material contains more 

 examples of the ahwe: nyevedhi: illness than of the simpler ahwe: 

 hahnok ailment. Since one of the ahwe: hahnok cases was also ob- 

 served and described by the reservation physician, it is this case which 

 will be presented first. 



AHWE : HAHNOK CASES 



CASE 31 (Informant: James L. Troupin, M. D., reservation physician (1938)) : 



M. D., 21 years old, is the daughter of an Italian father and a fullblood Mohave 

 mother of the Mah gens. (According to Pulyi : k this young woman is permitted 

 to claim membership in her mother's gens on a courtesy basis, but does not seem 

 to have a supplementary Indian name or nickname to differentiate her from all 

 the other women named Mah, so that she is commonly called — and referred to — by 

 her "English" name.) 



" Among the Sedang Mol of Indochina, that which is big in the land of the living is 

 small in the spirit world, and vice versa. Hence, the share of the sacrificial animal 

 which is given to the spirits is always very small. Likewise, whereas both human beings 

 and the supernaturals associated with the Sedang tribe walk and stand in the normal 

 position, the Thundergods of the enemy Halang tribe are believed to stand on their 

 heads (Devereux, MS., 1933-34). 



