402 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 175 



provides excellent insight into the f)sychology of the witch killers: 

 as for the witch, he is asleep and plays a purely passive role. The 

 next to last case (Case 105)'=^ casts a vivid light on the manner in 

 which a sorceress manipulated herself into a position where her 

 victim's son sunply had to kill her. Indeed, from the moment when 

 Haq'au raped Sahaykwisa: everything tliis lesbian-turned-nympho- 

 maniac did to gratify her neurotic needs and to escape her difficulties 

 only served to hasten her doom. Such perfect convergences between 

 neurotically idiosyncratic psychological processes and culturally 

 mandatory behavioral sequences, both leading to, and culminating in, 

 the same "solution," are far from rare in primitive society ^'^ and, 

 presumably, also in our culture, though in the latter case our auto- 

 matic scotomization of cultural factors familiar to us tends to create 

 the impression that the decisive forces are the purely psychological 

 ones. 



The last case in this series (Case 106) is, strictly speaking, not a 

 vicarious but an actual suicide. It was, however, decided to include it 

 in the present series, instead of in the series of cases illustrating types 

 of actual suicide (pt. 7, pp. 465-484) ^^ because it demonstrates that ac- 

 cusations of witchcraft can enrage a shaman to the point of becoming 

 suicidal. '''' 



CASE 95 (Bourke, 1889; information he obtained from Merryman, a Mohave.) : 

 "Once a witch was paid seventeen dollars by a Mohave to kill another Indian 

 whom he disliked. She watched and followed in the trail of the victim, stepping 

 carefully in his foot-prints. 'Tis well,' she said, 'say nothing : he dies in four 

 days : say nothing. I don't want to be killed just yet. I've killed only two, and 

 when I die, I want to rule a bigger band than that' 



"But the spirit doctors consulted the spirits and knew that the victim had 

 been murdered. 



" 'We can't tell who killed him,' they said to the relatives, 'but watch near the 

 sjjot where his body was burned. The poison which the witch put in his body 

 must come out from the ashes in four days, and if the witch don't be on hand 

 to gather it up, it will do her great harm.' So they watched, and, sure enough, 

 they saw tracks and they caught the witch, and they killed her with rocks and 

 then burnt her, and I was a very small boy at the time and saw them do it over 

 there on that spit of land next the sand-bar." 



Comment 



The hiring of a witch to kill an enemy is mentioned also in mythology (pt. 3, 

 pp. 91-106, and Devereux, 1948 h). However, according to my informants, 

 the witch does not recruit the ghosts of those she or he killed for pay for 



"' Originally published as an instance of Mohave female homosexuality (Devereux, 

 1937 b). 



«« Compare, to take an example at random, the Incest and suicide of a Mnong Gar named 

 Tleng, which Condomlnas (1957) only analyzed from the cultural and "behavioral 

 sequence" point of view. 



«»It Is, however, also brieny summarized in part 7, page 478, as Supplementary Case C. 



'" The possibility that this shaman may have been drowned by others and that 

 the killing was successfully misrepresented to the tribe as a suicide Is wholly Incompatible 

 with the Mohave tendency to gossip. 



