Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 363 



The final point to be made is that casual incest appears to be men- 

 tioned only in ribald Coyote tales (Devereux, 1930 a), and not in 

 myths. 



The rite. — ^The Mohave man was not allowed to marry a woman 

 of his own gens, nor a woman of another gens whose grandparents or 

 great-grandparents were also his forebears. If two cousins absolutely 

 insisted upon getting married, they could do so only after the per- 

 formance of a certain ritual, which dissolved the kinship between 

 the future spouses. This rite, like the incest taboos, was established 

 by Matavilye. 



Before the introduction of the horse, a piece of the bridegroom's 

 farmland was alienated. According to Drucker (1941) the couple's 

 relatives also cut their hair (like mourners) and burned down the house 

 (of the groom?). Pulyi:k said, however, that the couple's relatives 

 only destroyed his property, but neither burned down the house 

 nor cut their hair. Since the alienation of farmland, the burning 

 of the house, and the cutting of one's hair (or, if Pulyi :k's alternative 

 is accepted, the destruction of property) are all mourning observances, 

 the precise minutiae of what was, and what was not, done at such 

 weddings are relatively unimportant, as long as it is made evident that 

 the rite reserribled certain basic funeral customs, thus indicating that 

 in such marriages someone was supposed to have "died." 



After the introduction of horses, the alienation of farmland was 

 replaced, both in funeral practices and at incestuous marriages, by the 

 killing of a horse. According to Hivsu : Tupo :ma, when an incestuous 

 marriage was finally decided upon, the father — or, sometimes, the 

 grandfather (Case 89) — of one of the spouses, but preferably the 

 father of the bridegroom, went around, announcing to people that 

 the two cousins had decided to marry on a certain day. He also told 

 people that a feast would be given, at which a horse would be 

 killed, so that the cousins, who wanted to get married so badly that 

 they were willing to disregard even the incest taboo, would have to 

 stay married as long as they lived. Then, on the appointed day, the 

 bridegi-oom's family gave a feast at which a hoi-se belonging to the 

 bridegroom — or, if he had none, to his family — was killed and, accord- 

 ing to most informants, eaten." The killing of the horse "broke off 

 the kinship ties" between the two spouses and, possibly, also between 

 their immediate families. 



Most informants insisted that people cried over the horse, either 

 because it "was" a dead kinsman, or else because the killing of the 

 horse was part of a symbolic funeral. Hivsu : Tupo : ma at first de- 

 clared that people simply cried because such marriages dissolved the 



*3 This was apparently also done at funerals, 

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