192 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



Our respective girl friends sat at the end of the row (of mourners and specta- 

 tors) and watched us run. Both of us ran all night, and at seven o'clock in the 

 morning we had to jump into the river. That wasn't bad, because it was 

 summer. When we came out of the water, we met our girls and paired off. I did 

 nothing with my girl friend that I should not have done, but C. S. had inter- 

 course with his girl friend and told me about it afterwards. I warned him of 

 the consequences, but he just laughed it off. This C. S., who was also a funeral 

 orator, became paralyzed a few years ago, and could hardly talk. Finally a 

 shaman, who has died since then, doctored him and improved his condition 

 somewhat. However, he still mumbles before he begins to talk (stroke?) and 

 therefore can no longer function as a funeral orator. When his illness began, he 

 dreamed of having intercourse with that girl friend of his. The funeral took 

 place about 10 years ago (1922?), and C. S. became ill 2 or 3 years later. At 

 present (1932) he is about 45 or 50 years old. 



Comment 



C.S.'s condition, and his subsequent improvement, suggest a mild stroke. The 

 fact that, at the onset of his illness, he specifically dreamed of intercourse with 

 the girl with whom he violated a major funeral taboo, suggests that, despite his 

 professed skepticism, he felt guilty for having violated an important taboo. The 

 onset of his illness, which he seems to have interpreted as a penalty for his mis- 

 conduct, presumably reawakened in him the memory of his misbehavior so that, 

 in accordance with the Mohave cultural tenet that the cause of illness becomes 

 manifest in dream, he began to dream of the very act which allegedly caused 

 him to become paralyzed. 



NETJKOSIS OF TABOO-VIOLATING MOURNERS 



Hivsu: Tupo:ma^s statement. — Mourners who violate funeral taboos may be- 

 come afiiicted with psychiatric disorders. 



(a) Funeral ceremonies usually take place on the fifth day after death.*" 

 On the fifth day the house of the dead is burned down and his property is 

 cremated or spoiled, because anyone keeping the possessions of the dead will be 

 driven crazy by these objects. 



It seems plausible to suggest that this etiological theory is based upon 

 two assumptions : (1) That the preservation of the dead persons' prop- 

 erty deleteriously prolongs mourning and postpones the severance of 

 the dead from the living; and (2) that the dead themselves drive insane 

 the living who refuse to part with these objects. Here, as in many 

 other instances, the psychological explanation and the socio-cultural 

 explanation of a given phenomenon or belief are not mutually ex- 

 clusive, but rather complement each other.^^ 



(b) People are not supposed to sleep or doze off during the memorial rite. 

 Now and then, however, a girl who had intercourse during this period falls 



** This delay is presumably determined partly by the Mohave tendency to do things by 

 fours, and partly by the belief that, for 4 days, the ghost lingers on earth and revisits its 

 former haunts before departing for the land of the dead. These 4 days may, without undue 

 imaginativeness, be interpreted as a "mourning period" on the part of the ghost, forming 

 a counterpart to the mourning period of the living. Compare, above, the demonstration 

 that mourning reactions are also ascribed to the dead. 



=' It is probable that much anthropological hostility toward the psychological explana- 

 tion of cultural phenomena is due to a failure of psychologists to demonstrate that the 

 two types of Interpretations supplement and complement each other. 



