302 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 175 



Prenatal factors are lield to play a role in the majority of types 

 of suicide known to the Mohave. The groundwork for all stillbirths 

 is laid already in the womb. The suicide of sucklings is motivated by 

 their continued awareness of what is happening in the mother's womb. 

 The suicide of twins, regardless of whether they are held to be 

 heavenly beings or returned ghosts, is largely determined by their 

 continued awareness of their previous existence. Shamans retain all 

 their lives a memory of their intrauterine existence. Great — and 

 suicidal — warriors are persons who already dreamed in utero of be- 

 coming braves. Moreover, the Mohave themselves see a connection 

 between the suicidal wishes of shamans and the braves's statements 

 that they will not live long (Kroeber, 1925 a) . 



By contrast, the prenatal element is far less explicit in the four 

 remaining types of suicide. In the case of incestuous marriages, 

 the nexus is quite tenuous. Formerly the Mohave did not kill a horse 

 at such marriages, but alienated part of the bridegroom's land, and 

 it is implicit in one of their myths (Kroeber, MS., n.d.) that it is 

 the possession of land which turns "persons" (ipa:) into human 

 beings. An additional fact to be considered is that even though 

 such cousin marriages are not necessarily contracted by shamans, in 

 principle only evil shamans — i.e., persons who remember their pre- 

 natal existence — are said to be prone to commit incest. It is also 

 quite conceivable that contracting a marriage wliich, by Mohave 

 standards, is incestuous, may represent the kind of "acting out" a 

 nonpracticing potential shaman would engage in.*^ As regards be- 

 witched persons who consent to become the victims of a witch, their 

 only connection with prenatal life, if we can call it that, is their 

 relationship to the witch. In funeral suicide the nexus with pre- 

 natal existence is, for all practical purposes nil, save only that the 

 suicide seeks to be metamorphosed into (reborn as) a ghost at the 

 same time as the mourned-for person. Eeal suicides appear to have 

 no memories of prenatal life, the only exception being the shaman 

 (Case 106) who kUled himself because he had been unjustly accused 

 of being a witch. 



It cannot be sufficiently stressed that nothing said in this section 

 should be interpreted as lending support to theories of mtrauterine 

 self -awareness or psychic life, though Menninger (1940), after citing 

 my Mohave data on shamanistic intrauterine "experiences," did sug- 

 gest that possibility."* Wliatever the merits of that thesis may be, 

 it suffices for the present purposes to note tlie cultural fact that the 

 Mohave fantasy a great deal about intrauterine life and that many 



*" Compare the psychoses of persons who could be shiimans but refuse to practice (Case 

 4). They too are subjectively evolved substitutes for being a shaman. 



'"There are many solid arguments against, and only very tenuous ones militating In 

 favor of, the reality of an intrauterine psychic life. 



