Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 409 



years of age, and not related to him in any way, partly because he was angry 

 with Ma :tas for having failed to return an ax, a shovel, and a shotgun which 

 he had borrowed, and partly because Kwitcia :r "liked people." "He liked his 

 relatives so much that he killed them all by means of witchcraft." Since 

 Kwitcia :r specialized in the cure of respiratory disorders, he bewitched Ma:tas 

 by "taking away his breath." His victim gasped, "had a short breath" and, 

 being on the verge of death, begged the witch to cure him. Although Kwitcia :r 

 professed to know nothing about this illness, he finally agreed to treat Ma :tas. 

 However, Ma :tas soon died "still gasping for breath," because Kwitcia :r 

 "either could not or would not cure him." Although Kwitcia :r was blamed 

 for Ma :tas' death, the victim's relatives did not attack him and he was 

 eventually killed by witchcraft, for a wholly different reason, and therefore his 

 bewitcher was not punished the way some shaman killers are — supposedly — 

 punished by the indignant relatives of the slain witch. 



Kua :lyec, of the Nyoltc gens, a f ullblood Mohave shaman about 50 years 

 of age, could ("like Ahma Humatre") cure various diseases caused by eating 

 certain (alien?) foods. This shaman was not related to Kwitcia :r, whom he 

 disliked for some unspecified reason. He therefore "put some power" into the 

 horsemeat Kwitcia : r was eating and "poisoned" him. Though Kwitcia : r, who 

 was a shaman, must have known who had bewitched him, no attempt was made 

 to induce Kua :lyec to treat his victim, who died that very night, at midnight. 



No one tried to punish Kua :lyec for having bewitched Kwitcia :r, presumably 

 because "Kwitcia :r's relatives were convinced that he had been a witch and 

 therefore felt that he deserved to die of witchcraft." The Mohave were so con- 

 vinced of Kwitcia :r's guilt that Hama : Utce : — who was not even born yet 

 when Kwitcia :r died — concluded her translation of Hivsu : Tupo :ma's account 

 with the gloating remark : "They cremated Kwitcia :r the next day, and then this 

 witch was nothing but charcoal and ashes." In order to grasp the extraordi- 

 nary hostility of this remark, it is necessary to stress that Hama : Utce : did more 

 than just gloat over the fact that this man's hody was now simply a small pile 

 of ashes. Had she meant nothing more than that, she would have specified in 

 some way that she was speaking of the man's corpse, as distinct from his "total 

 personality" (souls). In failing to differentiate between the two — which the 

 Mohave nearly always do when discussing death and cremation — she not only 

 expressed pleasure over the destruction of Kwitcia :r's corpse ; she also more or 

 less "jumped the gun," by implying that all of Kwitcia :r had become charcoal and 

 ashes the next day, even though the soul of a dead person is reincarnated four 

 times before it turns into charcoal and ashes (Devereux, 1937 a). In other 

 words, in seeming to gloat over the destruction of Kwitcia :r's body, Hama : 

 Utce : also prematurely "annihilated" his soul, the way a witch annihilates the 

 owl heart of his victim. 



Comment 



Although, strictly speaking, Kwitcia :r did not commit vicarious suicide, the 

 Mohave felt that he may not have wanted to be cured, since, even though he 

 supposedly knew who had bewitched him, he made no attempt to persuade 

 Kua:lyec to treat him.™ It is also interesting to note that, just as braves 

 who kill a recognized witch are not molested by the victim's relatives, so 

 Kua :lyec, who killed the witch Kwitcia :r by witchcraft, was not punished by 

 his victim's relatives. As regards Plama : Utce :'s gloating over the death of 

 Kwitcia :r, it is almost inexplicable, since she herself was not even born until 

 after Kwitcia :r's death. Moreover this witch does not seem to have killed any 



*• Since Kwitcia :r died shortly after eating horse meat, possibly from a horse slaughtered 

 several days before, he may have died of some kind of acute food poisoning. 



