Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 313 



and aliens, they are naturally inclined to impute suicidal proclivities, 

 as well as especially disgraceful kinds of suicide, to foreigners. 



(a) The suicide of both Mohave and non-Mohave hut Indian homo- 

 sexuals was mentioned in a derisive manner. "Male homosexuals 

 sometimes jimiped into the fire if people teased them too much and 

 called them 'modha :re' (penis) ." 



CASE 80 (Informants : Hivsu : Tupo :ma and Hama : Utce :) : 



About 40 years ago (1S90?) a Yuma male transvestite killed himself. 



CASE 81 (Informants : Hivsu : Tupo :ma and Hama : Utce :) : 



A Yavapai lesbian transvestite killed herself by hitting herself on the head 

 with a ta:kyat hit'a:(w)a (ax small). 



(&) Whites are so lacking in dignity that they commit suicide 

 whenever they are disappointed in love. According to Tcatc and E. S., 

 "White people who are in love and cannot get married kill themselves. 

 The Mohave don't do such silly things." ^^ 



CASE 82 (Informants, Tcatc and E. S.) : 



"When a white man objected to his son's wish to marry a certain girl, the 

 two young people went to a deserted house, where the girl first shot the boy and 

 then herself. They left a note — that is how people found out what happened. 

 The Mohave who are in love don't do such things, though nowadays young 

 Mohave men sometimes kill themselves from jealousy. I know of two recent 

 cases of this kind. One of them was that of Amalyk Tumadha :p (Case US)." 

 If you don't stop fretting over that sweetheart of yours, you too might kill your- 

 self in the end." 



FvMeral and mourning rites. — Although the Mohave disapproved 

 of suicide, they did not discriminate against the suicide's corpse, and 

 they disposed of it exactly as though the death had been due to natural 

 causes. Stillborn children were buried, while other "suicides" were 

 cremated. If the "suicide" was old enough to have ceased sleeping in 

 the cradle, the house in which he had lived was burned down ; if he was 

 still young enough to sleep in the cradle, the mother either threw the 

 cradle into the Colorado Eiver — thus signifying that she was willing 

 to bear other children — or else burned it, hoping that this would 

 render lier permanently sterile (Devereux, 1948 c). In brief, 

 the suicide was cremated and mourned like any other dead Mohave. 

 The survivors cried, cut their hair short, performed the usual mourn- 

 ing rites and observed the customary mourning taboos. Moreover, 

 even though certain observances at the marriage of cousins apparently 

 represented a partial funeral rite (pt. 7, pp. 356-371), at the death of a 

 person who had contracted such a marriage the regular funeral rite 

 was probably performed in its entirety. 



" This is manifestly false. Compare case material for modern examples. 



^' This Is incorrect ; the suicide in question was due to a delayed mourning reaction. 



