364 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



kinship tie between two families. However, as he went into further 

 details, he spontaneously concluded that the dead horse was, after all, 

 "sort of considered as a dead relative." 



According to one informant, both the occurrence of incest and the 

 rites consolidating incestuous marriages were established by Matavilye 

 at the time of creation. 



Since the rite in question is — and has been for some decades — 

 wholly obsolete, informants disagreed on a number of minor points, 

 or even on mere nuances. The points on which there was some 

 disagreement fall into three broad categories: 



/. Disposal of the liorse : 



(1) A horse of either sex was killed, mourned for, and cremated, as 

 though a Mohave — and, specifically, as though the bridegroom — had 

 died (Hivsu : Tupo : ma and other informants) . (Case 89.) 



(2) The horse was killed and eaten by the bride's kin at the bride's 

 camp, where the relatives and guests had assembled. (Tcatc.) 



(3) The horse meat was eaten, but the scraps and bones were cre- 

 mated and the family "held a cry" (wake, mourning) as though a rela- 

 tive had died. 



(4) A complete mock funeral, which even included the erection of a 

 pyre, was conducted at such wedding (cf . Drucker, 1941) . 



(5) The horse was killed, but not eaten. 



(6) Sometimes two horses were killed (Case 89). (This may pos- 

 sibly have symbolized the death of both bride and groom, unless, of 

 course, it was mere ostentation.) 



The only important divergence between these various statements 

 concerning the disposal of the horse is whether or not the horse was 

 eaten after being killed. On the whole, informants who stressed the 

 "funeral" aspect of the custom held that the horse was eaten, while the 

 minority which felt that the slaying of the horse symbolized chiefly the 

 "killing" of the bridegroom maintained that the horse was not eaten — 

 an understandable conclusion, since the Mohave did not practice 

 cannibalism, were horrified by cannibalistic actions occurring among 

 their neighbors (Devereux, 1951 b; Dobyns et al., 1957), and con- 

 sidered cannibalism one of the most horrible traits of mythical 

 monsters (Devereux, 1948 h). The one puzzling aspect of this 

 problem is that, according to Tcatc, the flesh of the horse was con- 

 sumed only by the girl's relatives, i.e., presumably by those who were 

 more closely related to the girl than to the boy. Were cannibalism a 

 Mohave practice, Tcatc's account of the disposal of the horse's meat 

 would clearly signify that, the kinship bond having been dissolved, 

 the horse representing the bridegroom could be eaten by those who were 



