354 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BnU. 175 



exclude the possibility that a shaman treating twins for tavaknyirk, 

 or for some other ailment, may, in addition to other techniques, also 

 resort to exhortations, urging twins to stay on earth and pointing out 

 to them how well they are being treated by everyone. While I re- 

 corded no clearcut statements to this effect, the supposition seems valid 

 in terms of what is known of Mohave therapeutic techniques. 



If the treatment failed, and one or both twins died, they supposedly 

 returned to the place they had come from — i. e., to heaven, or else to 

 the land of the dead — and never again revisited the earth. Their death 

 was defined as suicide due to walae:(y)k (grieving). 



Brief mention should also be made of the fact that a twin's immor- 

 tality could come to an end if the twin became a witch, and was killed, 

 or else fell victim to witchcraft. 



Hivsu: Tupo:ma's statement (1936) : If a twin became a witch, and was 

 killed for his deeds, his soul went to the land of the dead, because he wished 

 to stay with the ghosts of his non-twin victims, whom be could not take to 

 heaven. He therefore gave up his immortality and, in the company of his 

 victims, went through the four metamorphoses which follow death and lead to 

 final extinction. As for bewitched twins, they also lost their immortality, since 

 they had to follow the witch's ghost to the land of the dead and then through 

 the metamorphoses which lead to final extinction. 



Tcatc's statement (1938) : Bewitched twins return to heaven, when they 

 came. [Hivsu : Tupo :ma told me they went with the witch to the land of the 

 uead.] I disagree. My old friend Kunyii : th, who was a twin, told me that 

 "whatever sickness may have been put on us twins (by witchcraft), it leaves us 

 when we are cremated." 



These two statements are admittedly irreconcilable, perhaps be- 

 cause the whole question is largely academic, since — though twins are 

 supposed to be extremely powerful shamans whose powers are derived 

 from heaven — no informant remembered any twin who was a witch, 

 or who had been killed by witchcraft. 



The implicit attitude of the Mohave toward the psychosomatic 

 suicide of twins is revealed by the fact that they have two sets of 

 beliefs concerning twins. Their more explicit attitudes can be stated 

 somewhat as follows. Twins are hypersensitive (because they are 

 heavenly beings) and sometimes also have a jealous and mean dis- 

 position (presumably because they are reincarnated, acquisitive 

 ghosts). If they do not like what is happening to them on earth, 

 they make themselves sick and die, secure in the knowledge that they 

 will return to heaven, to live there forever.^* While their suicidal 

 sickness and death causes much grief to their parents and relatives, it 

 is recognized that they acted in accordance with the inevitable dic- 



" The alternative, that they will return to the land of ghosts, from which they tempo- 

 rarily emerged to acquire further funeral property, was also mentioned, though less ex- 

 plicitly and with very few details. This is not surprising, since the twins = gho8ts pattern 

 is a secondary one and is therefore less fully elaborated than the twln8= heavenly beings 

 belief. 



