Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 207 



I said of lodestones is true of all of them. If you get sick from these charms, 

 you dream of young boys and girls coming around you. You mahnok (from) 

 them, as with alien tribes/^ It is like the influence through which you contract 

 ahwe: hahnok (disease from contact with foreigners). It is not matadhauk 



(witchcraft), although you do go out of your head because you get very sick. 

 There is no one alive now who knows how to cure witchcraft. It is not 

 enough to be a witch in order to be able to cure witchcraft. You have to have 

 special powers. The charm-sickness can be doctored, however, by Kwathany 

 Hi :wa (Case 50). But the ahwe: nyevedi : (foreign ghost) disease — which 

 you contracted because you are so much in love with that girl who does not 

 love you — no one knows how to cure that ailment. (Cf. pt. 4, pp. 91-106. Note 

 also the equating of hi :wa itck with ahwe : nyevedhi : — perhaps because I was 

 felt to be a "Mohave.") 



CASE 58 (Informant: Tcatc) : 



Nyaipatcem, of the Mu :th gens, was a shaman who lived 40 years ago. He 

 was as much feared in his time as Kwanthany Hi :wa or (Hispan Himith) 

 Tcilyetcilye is feared nowadays. Yet, even he died from one of those charms. 

 He got sick from that and was doctored by a Mohave-Apache (Yavapai?) shaman, 

 who is a relative of your interpreter's half sister, the one who is a twin. In 

 fact, he was that twin's grandfather. This (Yavapai) shaman, Tceyakam Uva: 

 tha, also doctored me when I got sick from a pain in my leg and was partially 

 paralyzed. This man treated Nyaipatcem and he got well. Two or three years 

 later, however, he kept on going out of his mind, and in the end he could no 

 longer speak. He was in a kind of daze. He never acted as though he knew or 

 understood what was going on. He just sat there. He stayed that way for 

 about 2 weeks, and then he died. This second attack came over him all of a 

 sudden. Pie lived on the east side of the river, directly east of Riverside 

 Mountains. 



"The shaman who had treated him had moved to the Mohave Reservation 

 because he had married a Mohave woman named Hualy, who had no English 

 name. They had three boys, two of whom died young. Only the third, Ahma 

 Sokam (quail-soul), lived. He, like his Yavapai father, was of the Tcatc gens. 

 The Yavapai also have the Syuly gens, but no other gens.^ He was the father 

 of your informant's half sister, who was one of a pair of twins. 



Tentative diagnosis: Stroke? 



Rattlesnake teeth and lizard tails are worn by some women in their 

 hair, because they are supposed to bring them luck. These "lucky 

 pieces" are not thought to harm their owners, which is of some interest, 

 since contact with any part of a rattlesnake is usually avoided, espe- 

 cially by men, who fear an impairment of their potency (Devereux, 

 1950 a). The use of rattlesnake teeth and lizard tails by women as 

 "lucky pieces" may be due to feminine penis envy and to the spiteful 

 desire to render men impotent (Deutsch, 1944^55). Some male gam- 

 blers also had rattlesnake charms, which eventually crippled them 

 (Kroeber, 1948) , but did not cause the hikwi :r illness. 



Transvestites., like magic substances, are said to bring luck to their 

 spouses (Devereux, 1937 b.) 



" Mahnok, from hahnok, moans, roughly speaking, a supernatiiral infection or influence. 

 " This is apparently incorrect (Glffoid, 1932, 1936). 



