366 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 173 



was said that "incestuous marriages cause the sickness and death of 

 one of the spouses, the surviving spouse usually following the de- 

 ceased within a year" (Case 90). (Compare, in this context, the 

 belief that the death of one twin is usually followed by the death of 

 the other twin, especially if the two were husband and wife in heaven 

 (pt. 7, pp. 348-356) . Also, the children of such couples were likely to 

 be born mute, which was considered a form of "insanity" (yamomk) 

 (pt. 5, pp. 248-251). A minor, additional calamity was that the 

 cliildren of such couples usually had some unpigmented spots, which 

 the Mohave find quite repulsive (Devereux, 1948 b). 



(5) Incestuous marriages, unlike the impulsive incestuous acts of 

 shamans, were not dismissed with vague references to temperamental 

 compulsion. Moreover, when such a family died out, the tribe re- 

 acted, at least in theory, by saying that it served them right. TVliether 

 the Mohave did, in fact, react in this way to the extinction of a family 

 is, of course, open to debate, especially since one notes in connection 

 with various other types of suicide that the expected condemnatory 

 reaction to a given act is often very different from the Mohave's 

 compassionate actual reaction to the people who perpetrated that act. 



In summary, if one disregards the differences of opinion between 

 informants on points of minor significance, it is quite clear that the 

 alienation of farmland or the killing of a horse at incestuous mar- 

 riages represented a kind of symbolic or social vicarious suicide of the 

 bridegroom. The fact that only the groom was so penalized was ex- 

 plained by Hivsu : Tupo :ma as follows : "Since the boy transmits the 

 gentile name, they consider him the guiltier of the two. Hence, it is 

 he who is deprived of some farmland or of a horse." -^ 



The last point to be mentioned is that the occurrence of incestuous 

 marriages among the Mohave became known to the adjoining tribes, 

 one such marriage being explicitly referred to by GifTord's (1931) 

 Kamia informants. 



The real meaning of the rite in question was far from clear even to 

 the best informants. In seeking to elucidate its significance, the in- 

 formants repeatedly referred to two other practices which, in their 

 estimate, were related to the rite under consideration. In other words, 

 they treated these two related practices as "free associations," likely to 

 cast light upon the latent meaning of the incestuous wedding rite ; a 

 procedure which is methodologically quite sound (Devereux, 1955 a). 



The eye-loss ceremony. — ^AVhen a young person loses an eye, the 

 maimed individual's family gives a special feast, at which a horse is 

 killed. The purpose of this rite is to "accustom" the tribe to that 

 person's changed appearance. 



** A possible alternative explanation, In terms of a hypothetical matrillneal survival, Is 

 wholly unacceptable. 



