144 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



Comment 



Mohave diagnosis. — Ahwe: hahnok. This diagnosis is culturally most inter- 

 esting, since this woman is a halfbreed. The fact that such a diagnosis was 

 made may be due to her having been granted a Ifind of courtesy membership in 

 her mother's gens, making her a real Mohave. 



Tentative diagnosis. — Schizophrenia, hebephrenic type. Less probably: re- 

 current transitory confusional state, resembling a so-called "three-day battle- 

 field schizophrenia." This patient is the only Mohave who, during her psychotic 

 episode, is actually known to have assumed the typically schizophrenic fetal 

 position. 



ahwe: nyevedhi: cases 



CASE 32 (Informant : E. S., son of patient) : 



I am going to tell you what my mother, Vi : mak Kuko : tha ( =to hit a barrier), 

 of the Vi : mak gens, told me about the time when she, herself, was temporarily 

 insane. It happened before I was born. She was at that time already married 

 to my father, who was the son of a Cocopa Indian, of the Nyoltc gens,*^ and 

 of a Mohave woman. My mother never told me about the dreams she had had 

 at that time, but she said that while she was insane her father and her mother ** 

 came to her. First they called her, and then they ran away. At least that is 

 what she thought was happening. My mother then ran away, thinking that 

 she was running after her parents. My mother thought that this hallucination 

 made her get up (from her sick bed) and run away. Naturally, people im- 

 mediately ran after her. They must have been the ones she mistook for big 

 balls that seemed to be chasing her. My father, too, must have been chasing 

 her, because she used to see a red ball among the big balls that were chasing 

 her. The other balls were all black. The shaman who treated her — I forgot 

 his name — told her that this red ball was a halfbreed. That means that it rep- 

 resented my father, who was half Cocopa." That is all my mother told me 

 about the time she was insane. 



Comment 



Mohave diagnosis {inferred from symptoms). — Ahwe : nyevedhi : (Pulyi : k was 

 not sure this woman had an ahwe : disease. ) 



Tentative diagnosis. — Anxiety state with hallucinations, suggesting a transitory 

 confusional state. It is unlikely that Vi : mak was delirious at that time, since 

 her son did not mention any organic illness. 



CASE 33 (Informant: Ahma Huma: re) : 



Nyorte, of the Nyoltc gens, a Mohave woman of about 70, lived at Needles, 

 Calif. Since she was not married at that time, she lived with her daughter, 

 Mrs. C. F., and got along well with her daughter and her son-in-law. She died 

 in the middle 1930's. One day this old woman ran away from her daughter's 

 house, went down to the riverbank, fell into the mud, and remained there for 



*^The Mohave recognize the Cocopa gentes as being the equivalents of their own. 

 However, Olflford (1918) does not list a Nyoltc gens among the Cocopa, and neither does 

 Kelly (1942). 



"One must assume that VI : mak's parents wero already flearl at that time. 



**Thls Is puzzling. Most Mohave informants say that red Is associated with women, 

 and black with men. Only Pulyl : k said that black paint was used only by shamans and 

 by the kwanaml : hye braves). One explanation may be that only the husband's 

 mother was Mohave. This Is, however, not a satisfactory cultural explanation of the fact 

 that a red ball symbolized the husband. 



