394 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



(13) The witch may openly confess his evil deeds, may boast of 

 them and may deliberately incite others to kill him. He may do so 

 either in response to an accusation, or else spontaneously and in a 

 threatening way (Case 104). In still other instances the witch may 

 make a confession while intoxicated (Devereux, 1937 b; 1948 i; of. 

 also pt. 7, pp. 383-386, and Cases 92 and 105). 



(14) The witch may be seen killing his cremated victim's "owl" 

 heart (Case 95). 



Summing up, in the opinion of the Mohave a witch always com- 

 mits vicarious suicide by allowing his identity to become known. At 

 the same time, not all INIohave may be convinced that a particular 

 murdered shaman was actually a witch (Case 100). 



Motivation. — In seeking to understand the suicidal impulses of 

 Mohave witches, and their decision to commit suicide by causing them- 

 selves to be killed, it is necessary to differentiate, first of all, between 

 their allegedly innate (pt. 7, pp. 331-339) unconscious suicidal im- 

 pulses on the one hand, and their culturally defined conscious motiva- 

 tion on the other hand. Only after this distinction is made is it 

 possible to analyze the interplay between these two sets of motives in 

 the causation of actual cases of vicarious suicide. 



{a) The unconscious suicidal impulses of aging shamans were al- 

 ready discussed in some detail (pt. 7, pp. 331-339) and need not be 

 repeated in the present context. 



(&) Mohave culture postulates that it is advantageous for the witch 

 to commit vicarious suicide. We will ignore here the (supposedly ex- 

 ceptional) bewitching of those whom the witch hates unambivalently, 

 or whom he bewitched for a fee, on behalf of another person 

 (Devereux, 1948 h), since he has no use for the souls of such persons 

 and therefore allows them to enter the land of ghosts in the usual way. 

 Such acts of witchcraft do not appear to elicit suicidal impulses in the 

 witch. The usual victim of the witch — and the one whose death 

 ultimately induces the witch to commit vicarious suicide — is, however, 

 generally a person whom the witch both loves and is angry with, in a 

 markedly ambivalent manner.^^ He therefore does not allow them to 

 go to the land of ghosts until he himself dies. While the souls of his 

 victims are confined to a certain special "place" belonging to him, 

 he dreams of them and has extremely satisfying dream intercourse 

 with them (Devereux, 1939 a). In fact, his gratification is so intense 

 (pt. 7, pp. 385-386) that he gradually develops an irresistible desire to 

 join his victims permanently, instead of communicating and cohabit- 



" In stating that the Mohave witch seems to be ambivalent about his victims, we do not 

 Impute to the Mohave an attitude of which they, themselves, are Ignorant. Thus, accord- 

 ing to the Mohave, if a young man hears that a girl speaks ill of him and mentions his 

 dead relatives, he exclaims : "She is as good as mine," and proceeds to her house in order 

 to cohabit with her. Moreover, when I explained to Hama : Utce : the meaning of the 

 word "ambivalence," she replied : "If someone says that he hates a certain person, the 

 Mohave tell him that he must love that person very much." 



II 



