424 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



The first decisive step was Sahaykwisa :'s culturally atypical maneuver of 

 selecting the bewitched man's son as his substitute and successor. In other 

 words, Sahaykwisa :'s next love object was a man who — had Tcuhiun married 

 her — would have been her stepson. Now, if one views Sahaykwisa : as a 

 "woman," her choice of this love object was atypical, since stepson marriages 

 are unknown among the Mohave, though marriage to a former son-in-law is 

 a minor pattern (Devereux, 1951 f). Her choice is, however, equally 

 atypical if one views Sahaykwisa : as a "man," since in the same marginal 

 marriage pattern the man, after marrying a woman of his own generation, pro- 

 ceeds to marry a woman of the parent generation.^ As for the polyandrous 

 arrangement of living simultaneously with two men — and a ghost— more or less 

 under the same roof, it is absohately deviant and iinique, and differs even from 

 the case of Melyikha :, who lived alternatingly with Mivsu : Tupo :ma and with 

 Ahma Huraa:re (Devereux, 1950 a). 



We must therefore carefully examine the hidden purpose of this extraordinary 

 arrangement which, be it said, was possible only because both Suhura rye and 

 his friend were presumably deviant personalities. It is suggested that this 

 arrangement had a very definite, though unconscious, self-destructive purpose. 

 By living constantly with a man whose father she bewitched, Sahaykwisa : made 

 (accidentally on purpose) absolutely certain that he would be present when, 

 sooner or later, she got drunk enough to confess her misdeed. Moreover, by 

 giving Suhura :ye a rival, she saw to it that his filial anger would be reinforced 

 by latent jealousy and resentment over this abnormal polyandrous arrangement, 

 which placed him in a position of rivalry not only with his friend, hut also with 

 the ghost of his otvn father, tvith whom Sahaykwisa: supposedly cohabited in 

 dream. 



Once this arrangement came into being, Sahaykwisa : was irrevocably doomed 

 to die. Indeed, it would have doomed her to death also in almost any other so- 

 ciety, though it is obvious that the IMohave cultural mandate, which requires 

 witches to court death and the surviving relatives of bewitched persons to exact 

 revenge, greatly reinforced both Sahaykwisa :'s self-destructiveness and Su- 

 hura :ye's vengefulness. This explains why they first thought that her death 

 was a suicide. 



In brief, from the psychoanalytic point of view, Sahaykwisa :'s self-destruc- 

 tiveness would have led to her being murdered even in the absence of a highly 

 specific cultural mandate. Moreover, she would have developed such self- 

 destructive urges even if she had not been conditioned by Mohave culture to 

 become suicidal. Conversely, given her self-destructive and provocative maneu- 

 vers, Suhura :ye would have murdered Sahaykwisa : even if he had not been 

 culturally conditioned to exact revenge for the death of his father. In this 

 Instance these cultural mandates probably did little more than reinforce the 

 subjective motivations of these persons, by neutralizing their remaining scruples 

 and reticences. 



Even the actual conditions of Sahaykwisa :'s death fit the above pattern 

 perfectly. She was murdered by her lover and his friend, who was also her 

 lover, so as to avenge her third, invisible and ghostly, dream lover, Tcuhu :m. 

 This setup corresponds perfectly to the small girl's infantile-masochistic fan- 

 tasies, in which she visualizes herself as simultaneously loved and destroyed by 

 her oedipal love object. The fact that she managed to confess her guilt while 

 drunk "' — and therefore to be killed while drunk — also fits the infantile pattern, 

 since infantile fantasies are liberated by alcoholic intoxication which, as pointed 

 out above, also serves as an alibi for normally prohibited and ego-dystonic types 



»o For an indirect sample of this pattern, see Case 104. 



" Similarly, Hivsu : Tupo :nia was drunk both when he confessed to me that he was a 

 witch, and when he exposed himself to a fatal chilling (Devereux, 1948 i). 



