356 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



Comment 



Kunyii : th's wish to die was apparently caused by a prolonged mourning 

 reaction for her son, and was therefore part of a death "cluster." The fact 

 that her death wish was elicited by her son's death is in line with the belief 

 that, after twins get married, they are no longer attached to their twins, be- 

 coming attached instead to their own families. The same "clustering pattern" 

 is also present in the case of Kunyii: th's sister, who died at the same time 

 as her mother (because she did not wish to be separated from her?). In this 

 instance the pattern of one twin following the other twin into death is replaced 

 by the pattern of a twin following her mother into death. One presumes that 

 this must have occurred before this twin could marry, since otherwise her death 

 would not fit the traditional pattern. It is also interesting to note that, im- 

 mediately after stating that Kunyii : th did die, Tcatc suddenly referred to the 

 death of Kunyii : th's twin sister. This juxtaposition is probably due to Tcatc's 

 tacit assumption that — in accordance with the pattern that twin follows twin 

 into death — these two deaths were also somehow connected. (Cf. pt. 7, pp. 459- 

 478.) 



The one atypical feature of this case history is that old Kunyii :th, who had 

 been married and had borne at least one son who had died, was, despite the 

 Mohave belief that married twins lose their capacity to die at will, credited 

 with the ability to cause her own death, simply by wishing to die. Leaving 

 out of consideration the naturalistic explanation that a grieving, weak, and old 

 woman is quite likely to die because she hasn't anything left to live for, the 

 most likely explanation of Tcatc's statement is that the informant must have 

 felt that even a married twin had a greater capacity than other people to cause 

 herself to die when she no longer wished to live. Finally, Tcatc's statement "she 

 was leaving the earth" is, in a way, somewhat ambiguous, since it can be in- 

 terpreted either as a wish to die, or else as a preconscious awareness of the 

 proximity of death." 



SOCIAL SUICIDE 



The concept of total or partial social death, without any impair- 

 ment of the organism itself, is present in many societies. In early 

 modern times, when commerce was incompatible with the status of 

 nobleman, in at least one part of France an impoverished nobleman 

 could appear before the parliament of his province, place his nobility 

 temporarily in escrow, engage in commerce until he reestablished his 

 fortune, and then, after renouncing commerce, resume his noble status. 

 Simulated social death was a common judicial procedure in the feudal 

 age. When a suitably gagged recreant knight failed to answer the 

 herald's three-times-repeated shout: "Sir X. Y., knight!" the court 

 declared him dead and caused his knightl}^ regalia to be broken. 

 Wlien a Jew becomes an apostate, he is declared dead ; his father rends 

 his clothes and utters the prayer for the dead, as though his son had 

 actually died. 



»« It l3 interesting to note in this context that, even though Tcatc was not a twin, 

 she, too, appears to have sensed somewhat later that death was not far away, although 

 she was at that time apparently in good health, as is shown by the fact that she put on 

 all her finery and asked a young Mohave friend of ours to take her picture and to send me a 

 print, so that I would not forget her. In so doing, she violated the Mohave taboo against 

 being photographed, which she had observed all her life so conscientiously that she always 

 refused my repeated requests to allow me to photograph her (Devereux, 1951 b). (PI. 9, 

 h, c.) 



