Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 197 



They think she is simply a killer. In that respect she is an exception, since few 

 shamans are exclusively killers. Yet, if she wished to do so, she could use her 

 power to cure witchcraft, since she knows how to bewitch people. Of course, 

 some shamans can only bewitch, but cannot cure witchcraft, because they do not 

 have enough power for that. I think, however, that she could cure witchcraft, 

 if she chose to do so" (perhaps because women shamans are, by definition, 

 "stronger" than male shamans) . 



(Be that as it may, Kumadhi : Atat was hated and despised by many Mohave.) 

 "Several people would like to kill her, because she is killing people all the time. 

 She is alive only because of the new law" (which prohibits the killing of 

 witches).-^ At any rate, after she killed her husband, her two children, and the 

 man she was in love with,^ people made it so unpleasant for her at Needles, Calif., 

 that she decided to move to Parker with her sister and brother-in-law. 



Kumadhi : Atat was first accused of witchcraft sometime between 1931 and 

 1938, when her husband, Tcakwar Ala:y(e), a 25-year-old fullblood Mohave of 

 the Kat gens, and their two children, Pi rit,^" a boy of 4, and Kat, a girl of about 

 3, died within a relatively short time. First she bewitched her husband, because 

 she knew that he was having an affair with another woman and was planning to 

 leave her. Then, the same year, she also bewitched her children who, before 

 they died, accused their mother of witchcraft, saying: "Our mother bewitched 

 us." [This seems strange to me.] Hama: Utce: retorted a little impatiently: 

 "It is not strange at all — she just wanted to have them with her in the 

 Hereafter." ^ 



Her next victim was Pi :it Hi :dho Kwa-ahwat, with whom she was in love. 

 He did not return her love, partly because he was satisfactorily married to a 

 young woman named Tcatc, of the Tcatc gens, and partly because he was so 

 closely related to Kumadhi : Atat that the latter had to call him isutck (younger 

 brother). This meant that she could not have married him without first per- 

 forming the already obsolete horse-killing rite, which dissolves the relationship 

 between bride and groom (Devereux, 1939 a; and pt. 7, pp. 356-371). 



She had two reasons for killing the man she loved : She had had a quarrel 

 with the young man's mother, and, in addition, she was angry with him because 

 he did not wish to leave his wife and marry her. Yet, even though she was 

 angry with him, she also loved him — she did not hate him.*^ 



When she started to bewitch him, the man began to dream of her all the 

 time. He saw her in his dreams and her dream image was so real to him that 

 the next day he would have a convulsive fit. Hence, even though he had a good 



" Many Mohave hold this law responsible for the prevalence of witches, which is believed 

 to threaten the tribe with extinction. 



2» This Is one of the very rare cases In which the Mohave described another Mohave as 

 "being In love," since Intense and exclusive sexual attachments are altogether exceptional 

 In this tribe. Her "being in love" may have been due to her relatively high degree of 

 acculturation, in accordance with La Rochefoucauld's maxim, that few people would be 

 In love, had they not read about being in love. 



'' A very common name among the younger Mohave, and said to have no meaning. The 

 Mohave rejected my suggestion that it may be a Mohave form of "Pete," which is a very 

 popular English name in that tribe. 



*" A witch segregates the souls of his or her dead victims In a certain place, and delays 

 their subsequent reincarnations until he or she, too, dies (Devereux, 1937 c) 



^ The Mohave believe that the witch usually both loves and hates his victim. Compare 

 also the firm belief of the Mohave that if one openly professes to hate a person of the 

 opposite sex, one actually loves that person very much (Devereux 1950 a). 



