414 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



in somewhat remote and complex ways, Anyay Ha :m had personal connections 

 with a man who had been involved in a suicide. 



Tcematcem(a), of the O :otc gens, had, apparently rather early in his life, se- 

 duced the wife of a man who thereupon killed himself (Case 125).'* Later 

 on — perhaps because he had caused one woman to lose her husband — he married 

 Nyoltc, the widow of Anyay Ha :m's bewitched son, thus stepping into a dead 

 man's shoes. Later on, when O :otc — a woman of his own gens ! — was doubly 

 bereaved, by the killing of her lover Anyay Ha :m and the imprisonment of 

 her husband Huau Husek'," he took two "dead" men's places at a single stroke, 

 by allegedly becoming one of O :otc's lovers. Tcematcem(a)'s psychological need 

 to become connected with the two "widows" of three men is culturally 

 quite atypical, since the Mohave is somewhat reluctant to marry a woman 

 who has lost one or more husbands, for fear that his wife's bad luck will affect 

 him, too, and cause him to die like his predecessors. Hence Tcematcem(a)'s 

 readiness to become connected sexually first with a simple widow and then 

 with a "double widow" suggests that his repeated choices of widowed partners 

 must represent a restitution, presumably because he had caused one woman to 

 become a widow.*' 



This, however, is only one side of the problem. The more interesting aspect 

 of Tcematcem ( a ) 's early adulterous afCair which led to a suicide, his subsequent 

 marriage to the widowed Nyoltc, and his later affair with the doubly "widowed" 

 O'otc, is the complex, though somewhat indirect, connection between Nyoltc 

 and O :otc. 



Ajiyay Ha :m was Nyoltc's father-in-law and, later on, the lover of O :otc, who 

 was his daughter-in-law's maternal aunt by marriage. If, for the sake of sim- 

 plicity, we ignore in the following discussion the difference between affairs and 

 marriages — which is quite minimal in Mohave society — Tcematcem (a) first re- 

 placed Anyay Ha :m's son and then Anyay Ha :m himself. He first married a 

 woman of his own generation and then a woman who, though belonging, in terms 

 of actual age, to his generation, was connected sexually with Anyay Ha :m, a man 

 of the parent generation. Indeed, had O :otc married Anyay Ha :m, she would 

 have not only become the stepmother of R.E.L., whose aunt-in-law (by marriage) 

 she already was, but, in a loose way, she would also have become the step- 

 mother-in-law of Tcematcem (a) who married R.E.L.'s widow, whose aunt by 

 marriage she already was. Hence, it was almost as improper for Tcematcem (a) 

 to have connections with O :otc, as it would have been for R.E.L., whom he re- 

 placed by marrying his widow. These connections may seem loose and far- 



** He Bcems to have been related also to another suicidal man (Case 118). 



** It is quite certain that the long Imprisonment of Huau Husek' was equated by the 

 Mohave with death. Thus, O :otc complained that, when she wished to marry a certain 

 man shortly after her husband was Imprisoned, her mother prevented the marriage by 

 Insisting that, like a proper "widow," O :otc should not remarry for at least a year 

 (Devereux, 1948 f). 



87 The substitution of the murderer for the murdered man Is a formally Institutionalized 

 practice In numerous societies (Devereux, 1942 d). What Is less obvious Is that even where 

 this substitution Is defined as an act of triumph, the underlying psychic mechanism la 

 still that of a restitution, although It Is disguised as an act of triumphant hostility, 

 whose oedlpal sources are not hard to see. Thus, Genghis Khan Is quoted as listing among 

 the greatest pleasures of life, holding in one's arms the wives of one's foes, whom one had 

 just slain (Grousset, 1941). Such an utterance, coming from Genghis Khan, is of 

 great significance. Indeed, his father Yesukal had many years before, kidnaped HS'elum, 

 Genghis Khan's mother, from her Morklt husband. Therefore, Genghis Khan's own 

 Empress, Borte, was kidnaped by his deceased father's Merkit enemies so early in their 

 married life, that no one ever knew whether BOrte's oldest son. Djotchl, was fathered 

 by Genghis Khan or by the kidnaper. Moreover, on at least two other occasions Genghis 

 Khan — who was not noted for clemency — proved himself to be singularly tolerant of real or 

 alleged sexual rivals, even surrendering to a poor boy a girl who had Just been presented 

 to him, and whom the boy loved. 



