DeTerenx] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SXHCIDE 403 



his or her own band of retainers, since that band is supposedly composed only 

 of the souls of those whom the witch liked. Be that as it may, the wording of 

 the preceding case is not specific enough to permit one to decide whether or not 

 the witch included this particular victim of hers into her ghostly retinue. The 

 method used by this witch for slaying her victim was not mentioned either by 

 my own informants, or by the informants of other contemporary anthropologists. 

 The statement that the witch must be on hand to collect the "poison" she had put 

 into her victim superficially contradicts both Bourke's own statement that the 

 heart turns into an owl and the data provided by my informants. However, if we 

 bear in mind that the power of a witch or of some other supernatural slayer 

 kills the victim by "going to his heart," it is probable that Bourke's informant, 

 Merryman, had in mind the poison-laden heart of the victim," and not simply the 

 "poisonous" (?) power which the bewitcher put into the victim's heart. The 

 watch for the witch near the funeral pyre clearly confirms the data provided by 

 Tcatc and E. S. concerning the disposal of the evidence. Merryman's typically 

 Mohave concluding reference to the burning of the witch's corpse explains why 

 Stratton (1857) mistakenly assumed that witches were killed by burning them 

 alive. This assumption is also supported by Hama : Utce :'s gloating references 

 to the final cremation of the witch Kwitcia :r (Case 101). Otherwise stated, 

 Stratton must have reached the conclusion that witches were burned alive 

 because his informant, Olive Oatman, the captive white girl, had (perhaps) 

 told him of a witch slaying and had, m the Mohave manner, concluded her 

 account of the slaying with a mention of the cremation of the {slain) witch. 



CASE 96 (Kroeber, 1925 a. Name of informant not recorded) : 



"When I was young, I was once with a friend at a shaman's house. My friend 

 proposed that we kill him. I took my bow and four arrows and said to the 

 shaman: 'I am going to shoot doves.' He assented. When I returned, the sha- 

 man seemed to be asleep under the shade before his house. My friend was in- 

 doors, and said : 'He is sleeping.' I took a (steel) ax and swung at the shaman's 

 head. I struck him in the cheek. As he sat up, no blood came from the wound. 

 Then suddenly a torrent gushed out. My companion became frightened, ran off, 

 returned, struck at the shaman's head, but hit only his legs, and ran off, hardly 

 able to drag his own. Two women had been sitting near, lousing each other, 

 and at first had not seen what we did. Then they began to cry and wail. I 

 crossed the river, and found some men gambling, and sat with them. In the 

 afternoon I said : 'I have killed so-and-so.' They thought I was boasting. 'Yes, 

 do it,' they said. 'That will be good. Too many people are dying.' 'I have done 

 it already,' I answered. Soon the dead man's relatives came, and it seemed that 

 we should fight with sticks. But on the next day the shaman's sou announced 

 that he would not fight, and nothing further happened." " 



Comment 



The preceding account sheds more light on the psychology of the witch killer 

 than on the vicarious suicide of shamans. The idea of killing the shaman arises 

 in an almost casual manner. The impulse does not seem to be either well moti- 

 vated or particularly strong, since the prospective murderer calmly goes off to 

 hunt doves for a while. The same casualness is reflected also by the fact that 

 the narrator does not even trouble to mention at first that he believed this sha- 

 man to be a witch. Only the reactions of the people, who are told that the sha- 



""■ See above and also Kroeber, 1925 a, and Devereux, 1937 c. 



""^ Certain passages of Kroeber's "Earth Tongue, a Mohave" seem to be a fictionalized 

 version of this killing (Kroeber, 1925 b). 



