Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 145 



2 days. The first day of her absence her relatives called for help upon the now- 

 deceased shaman Loho : ha (whose gens was probably Tii : ly and who had no 

 English name). He was the only shaman who, at that time, knew how to treat 

 this ailment. He was asked to call the lost woman back. In accordance with 

 his sumac : tc (power) he sang some songs, and called her, and, after 2 days, she 

 did come back. Then he treated her for a few days, and she made a full 

 recovery. 



Comment 



Mohave diagnosis. — Ahwe : nyevedhi :. 



Tentative diagnosis. — Fugue, caused by delirium or, less probably, by senility. 



In this instance the shaman does not appear to have used the trance technique 

 for locating a person lost in enemy territory, nor could he deal with this problem 

 as one does with soul loss, since in this case the patient herself was lost. One 

 infers that he treated her in absentia for ahwe : nyevedhi :, and that this 

 therapy at a distance (McNichols, 1944) was thought to have been sufficiently 

 effective to bring about a partial recovery, enabling the woman to return home 

 on her own and to undergo the rest of the treatment under normal circumstances. 

 Be that as it may, this is the only instance known to me in which a shaman 

 undertook such a task. 



CASE 34 (Informants: Tcatc and E. S.) : 



Amat Valaka (earth open) of the Mah gens, died around 1888, at the age of 

 80 or 90. His case history, though reported in reply to an inquiry about 

 flexibilitas cerea, suggests senile dementia, or perhaps paralysis caused by a 

 stroke. This is the only person Tcatc ever saw in that particular condition. 



In the beginning, his illness took the form of a lot of coughing. He did not 

 have his full appetite and sometimes ran a high fever. (The Mohave seldom 

 mention fever in any context.) He did not become insane at any time during 

 his illness. He was sane right up to his death and did no insane talking what- 

 soever. In fact, he did not talk at all, and, in the later stages of his illness, he 

 could not move at all. If they spread his hands palms upward, he could not 

 put them back into a normal position. If they turned his head sidewise, he 

 could not right it. People were very much puzzled by his condition, since he 

 himself had been a shaman who could cure precisely this tyi>e of disease. Some 

 people even thought that his power had turned back on him and had produced 

 these S3Tnptoms."' An alternate, or possibly supplementary, theory was that 

 he had been bewitched by the shaman Tcavakong, who was one of his relatives, 

 and who had already bewitched several of his own relatives, as witches usually 

 do. In fact, Tcavakong himself freely admitted that he had bewitched Amat 

 Valaka. Eventually Tcavakong was killed by his own first cousin, Aoo : r^." 

 (For a different version of this murder, cf. Case 6 and Case 103.) 



Comment 



Mohave diagnosis. — Ahwe: nyevedhi: hahnok (sic!) and suma : tc itcem 

 (dream bad). 



»* It should be recalled that a shaman is said to be able to cure because he can kill, 

 and vice versa. 



" The data given above indicate that various members of this shaman's family practiced 

 shamanism, witchcraft, and witch liilling. It is therefore interesting to note that, in accord- 

 ance with Mohave expectations, this family was also guilty of "incest," in that Aoo : ra's 

 daughter's son married the daughter of Aoo : r4's brother Altonlo. This marriage, which 

 Tcatc had forgotten, was described In detail by the shaman Hivsu : Tupo : ma (Devereux, 

 1939 a) (Case 89). 



