336 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



why all obstetrical powers are acquired by dreaming of Matavilye's 

 intentionally difficult birth. In brief, only the obstetrical shaman's 

 hunch determines the alleged cause of a given obstetrical difficulty. 



The one troubling point is the theoretical possibility that the Mohave 

 failure to differentiate between the two most prevalent obstetrical 

 difficulties may ultimately be due to a — perhaps obsolete and for- 

 gotten — belief that certain unborn infants become shamans only 

 because they are "made into shamans" by the magical power of shamans 

 already bom and practicing their craft.^^ The one positive datum 

 suggesting that such a belief may once have existed is the tenet that 

 "shamanism runs in the family." This belief appears to be signifi- 

 cant, not only because it seems to be the only Mohave reference to the 

 inheritance of psychological traits, but also because witches mostly 

 bewitch their own relatives. 



The obstetrical crisis. — Sometimes a woman is unable to give birth 

 because her child assumes a transversal position in the w^omb. The 

 Mohave laymen are unable to deal with breech presentations, since they 

 do not know how to rotate the child in the womb. All informants were 

 emphatic in their insistence that both shamanistic and bewitched 

 fetuses assume this lethal position voluntarily. 



Statement of the obstetrical shaman Harav Ee:ya (1933). — The fetus is 

 lying crosswise in the womb, even though it knows the proper way out. It is as 

 though a person, who knows quite well the shortest highway to a certain place, 

 deliberately took a devious side road. Such children do not care that, in 

 killing their mothers, they also kill themselves. Both good and evil future 

 shamans at first resist being born. 



It is true, of course, that breech presentation may also occur if the 

 pregnant woman ignored, e.g., the rule against lying in the doorway 

 of the house (Devereux, 1948 b). Whether in such instances the 

 baby is automatically placed transversally in the womb, or whether 

 it assumes this position — perhaps because it resents its mother's care- 

 less action — could not be ascertained. Fortunately, this point is, prac- 

 tically speaking, relatively unimportant since, even though the Mohave 

 have this belief and taboo, most breech presentations are automatically 

 diagnosed as being due to the unborn child's typically shamanistic 

 suicidalness and murderousness. 



"When such difficulties occur, the lay people present first try to help 

 delivery along by various simple physical means, but, in the end, 

 usually call in the shaman (Devereux, 1948 e). In at least 

 one instance (Case 83) the shaman was called in so late that, by the 

 time he arrived, the woman and her baby were both dead. 



Obstetrical therapy. — A detailed discussion of Mohave obstetrics 

 having been published elsewhere (Devereux, 1948 e), it suffices 

 to outline, in the present context, the main features of shaman- 



** For a suggestive hint, cf. Dcvorcux, 1957 b. 



