388 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 176 



is why I kill people. Why do you not kill me?" Or he may hand a stick to a 

 man and say : "I killed your father." Or he may come and tell a sick person : 

 "Don't you know that it is I that am killing you? Must I grasp you and 

 despatch you with my hands before you will try to kill me?" 



Kroeber then notes that the Mohave speak of such utterances as being 

 frequent, and expresses the belief that some shamans — convinced as 

 they are of the reality of their powers — achieve a "delirium of provo- 

 cation and hate" especially if they believe themselves to be suspected 

 of witchcraft. My own informants fully confirmed Kroeber's charac- 

 terization of the provocative behavior of witches: "The witch will 

 say to someone: '"VVliy don't you kill me? Don't you know that I 

 bewitched your relative, who is now dead?" This is a doubly insult- 

 ing thing to say, since one should not refer to a person's deceased rela- 

 tives (Kroeber, 1925 a; Devereux, 1951 c). (See also Case 104.) 



Various informants also stated that some shamans are killed simply 

 because they lose several patients in a row. If this statement is taken 

 literally, it may mean that such shamans are killed either because they 

 are incompetent, or else because they fail to exert themselves to the 

 utmost. Taken in a less literal sense, tliis statement may simply 

 imply that the failure to cure a patient is viewed as prima facie evi- 

 dence of malice. Indeed, it is well to remember in this context that, 

 if a person is believed to have been bewitched by a certain shaman, the 

 relatives of the patient may use threats to compel the alleged witch to 

 treat his supposed victim. Then, if the treatment is unsuccessful, the 

 shaman is killed, partly for having caused the illness and partly for 

 having failed to cure it. Finally, the Mohave are so ready to blame 

 the shaman who fails to cure a patient that they may behave threat- 

 eningly (McNichols, 1944) toward a shaman who angers the sick 

 person's relatives by saying that they waited too long before consult- 

 ing him. 



Hence, according to McNichols (1944) , even a perfectly innocent and 

 unjustly accused shaman was once goaded into suicidally defiant be- 

 havior. When this shaman blamed an old man's kin for not having 

 called him in until it was too late to save the patient, the dying man's 

 daughter hurled the worst possible insults (Krober, 1925 a, Devereux, 

 1951 c) at the shaman, telling him that his father, his mother and 

 his paternal grandfather were all dead. The insulted shaman replied 

 defiantly that these relatives of his were indeed dead, since they had 

 the good sense not to live too long, adding that the dying man himself 

 would readily agree that he had been unlucky to live as long as he 

 did, because neither brave men, like the patient, nor shamans wish to 

 live long. He concluded his challenging remarks by saying that he 

 himself did not wish to live long and asked whether any man 

 cared to kill him then and there. 



