370 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



(5) All three observances seek to regularize an unpleasant and 

 threatening situation, by publicizing both the occurrence itself and 

 its final social acceptance by means of a feast. 



(6) All situations which must be regularized in this manner repre- 

 sent fundamental threats: Incest threatens the survival of the kin 

 group, the loss of farmland threatens the group's basic food supply, 

 while the loss of an eye radically impairs the subject's body image. 



(7) In all three contexts a feast is given, so as to assemble a large 

 gathering, presumably in order to minimize the psychological, social 

 and practical threat by means of an intensification of one's social ties, 



CASE 89 (Informants : Hivsu : Tupo :ma and Hama : Utce :) : 



Altonio and Aoo :ra (from Spanish "oro"=gold) were full brothers and mem- 

 bers of the 0:otc gens. AJtonio's 30-year-old daughter Oo :tc and Aoo :ra's 

 daughter's 25-year-old son Humar Atcem, whose gens was not remembered by 

 the informants, decided to get married. Both were fuUblood Mohave Indians. 

 At the wedding the groom's grandfather, Aoo :ra, killed two horses, although the 

 rite was not accompanied by mourning. This wedding took place at Parker, 

 Ariz., "about 40 years ago" (1892?) and appears to have been the last, and al- 

 ready somewhat atrophied and simplified, performance of this rite. 



Comment 



Although this case history contains no explicit reference to suicide, it was 

 narrated in the course of a discussion of symbolically suicidal wedding observ- 

 ances. 

 CASE 90 ( Informants : Hivsu : Tupo :ma and Hama : Utce : ) : '' 



One of two girls, who were first cousins since their fathers were full brothers, 

 married Atci: Akw(o)ath, a "good shaman who specialized in the treatment of 

 diseases of the eye, and had never bewitched anyone." The Mohave considered 

 the couple the embodiment of all old-fasbioned Mohave virtues, partly because 

 of their staunch adherence to the old way of life and their consistently autiwhite 

 attitude, but chiefly because they had lived together all their lives, in exemplary 

 fidelity and barm<my. The son of this conservative couple, Sudhu:ra (Case 44) 

 of the Mah gens, eventually married Tcatc (N) who was not only a member of 

 his own gens, but also his second cousin, being the daughter of his mother's first 

 cousin. Their marriage took place after the girl went to Yuma for a visit and 

 came back pregnant At first she claimed that her unborn child had been 

 fathered by a Yuma Indian, but, in the end, admitted that Sudhu :ra claimed to 

 be the baby's father. As soon as the girl admitted her child's real paternity, 

 Mrs. Atci: Akw(o)ath made her son marry her, even though they were second 

 cousins. The extent to which the wedding rite for cousins was obsolete already 

 in the third decade of the present century is best shown by the fact that even 

 Atci : Akw(o)ath, the outstanding champion of the old way of life, did not kill a 

 horse at this wedding. Despite this omission, the validity of Sudhu iri's mar- 

 riage to Tcatc (N) was generally recognized, though people were critical of them 

 for having married within the family. 



According to some informants, Tcatc (N) worried so much over what she 

 had done, and over being a "social outcast" (sic!), that she came down with 



w A great debt of gratitude Is owed to Prof. George H. Fathauer, who kindly unraveled, 

 and checked In the field, an extremely complicated genealogy. The present account super- 

 sedes an earlier, Incorrect, version (Devereux, 1939 a). 



