Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 373 



widely separated cultures. Be that as it may, the designation of the 

 deer's killer as their "maker" calls for a careful scrutiny of jMohave 

 data which may clarify this seemingly paradoxical designation.^^ 

 The notion that parents may harm and destroy their children is 

 deeply embedded in Mohave culture, and, presumably, also in other 

 cultures. The following are the principal Mohave beliefs that reflect 

 this conviction. 



( 1 ) The Mohave account of the origins of agriculture specifies that 

 in preagricultural days starving parents sometimes had to kill their 

 children (Devereux, 1948 d). 



(2) The Mohave woman sometimes aborts her child, either by 

 mechanical means (ibid.) or with the help of a witch (pt. 7, pp. 

 331-339). 



(3) The child in utero may be damaged if the man cohabits too 

 violently or abnormallj'^ with the pregnant woman (Devereux, 1948 b) . 



(4) The fetus can also be damaged by the failure of its parents to 

 observe certain pregnancy taboos (ibid., and pt. 5, pp. 248-251). 



(5) The evil shaman bewitches preferably his own family or else 

 people he loves. If a witch starts an epidemic, most of his victims 

 tend to be children (Devereux, 1937 c). Moreover, Kumadhi: Atat's 

 children openly accused her of having bewitched them (Case 49), 

 while Ally ay Ha :m allegedly bewitched his own son (Case 104) . 



(6) The ghosts of dead parents and relatives seek to lure their 

 surviving kin to the land of the dead, thereby causing them to contract 

 a type of illness that is almost identical with the illness resulting 

 from contact with enemies and aliens (pt. 4, pp. 128-186). For this 

 and other reasons both Fathauer (1951) and the present writer (pt. 4, 

 pp. 128-186) concluded that the Mohave imconsciously equate the 

 ghosts of their dead relatives with enemies and aliens. 



»s It is desirable to stress tliat in many primitive religions the originator of death — and 

 therefore the one responsible for man's death — is usually not the creator and fiiver 

 of life, but a so-called "marplot." In somewhat higher religions, however, man's killers 

 are usually the deities, or at least their supernatural messengers : a belief that forces man 

 to accept death with submission and good grace. Thus, the Greeks referred to Artemis' 

 lethal missiles as her "gentle arrows." The deeper significance of this murderous con- 

 ception of Artemis becomes understandable only if one realizes that originally Artemis was 

 not exclusively the slender and virginal huntress of classical sculpture. Artemis the 

 Maiden was but one aspect of a triple Goddess, whose two other— and originally far 

 more important— aspects were a many-breasted, maternal Earth Goddess (protectress of 

 the wild animals who were Artemis the Huntress' natural prey), and the death Goddess 

 Hecate. These three together represent the virgin, mother, and hag aspects of the same 

 female deity; the giver of love, the bearer of life, and the ultimate destroyer. The 

 equating of man's maker with his destroyer is also present in many of the higher 

 religions, the transition from the one aspect of the deity to the other being usually triggered 

 by man's sexuality. Thus, Matavilye decided to bring death into being because, by 

 reproducing itself, mankind would have multiplied to such an extent tliat living condi- 

 tions would soon become quite intolerable. It is also not without interest that, in a way, 

 the "individual" protozoa do not die of old age. The death of the individual organism 

 from old age first occurs at a stage of evolution where sexual reproduction replaces more 

 primitive forms of nonsexual multiplication. 



