430 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



one (apparently of a person capable of going into a trance) and organized a 

 seance in the ava : hatcor (winter house). He would take the medium and lay 

 him down on the floor of the house, with his head pointing southward (i.e., 

 toward the land of the dead). On each side of this medium, I mean at each 

 side of his head and feet — in the four corners — there would be a pile of sand. 

 The shaman then sat down and picked up four handf uls of sand. Most shamans 

 did not take these handfuls of sand from the four piles, although a few did. 

 He then put these four handfuls of sand into the mouth of the medium. Then 

 the shaman got up and sang. After he sang four songs, the spirit of the lost 

 person — or his ghost, if he was already dead — came and entered (took posses- 

 sion of) the medium, who was lying there on the ground. If the lost person 

 was still alive, he would say so, and would tell where he was held captive. 

 If he was already dead, he would state this fact and tell people where his 

 corpse was to be found. Sometimes it was hard to understand these utterances 

 because the spirit or ghost did not speak clearly. At the end of the performance 

 people seized the prone medium's legs, and shook him until the sand poured 

 out of his mouth. Then the medium sat up, joined the rest of the group, and 

 listened while the shaman interpreted the medium's earlier utterances. 



These seances were not always successful. Sometimes a relative of the lost 

 person felt that it would be best to leave things as they were, because the 

 Mohave dislike speaking of the dead (and it was, obviously, impossible to know 

 before the seance whether the lost person was alive or dead). If a relative felt 

 that way, he would attend the seance, but would prevent it from succeeding by 

 retracting his foreskin and baring his glans ; he did this either surreptitiously 

 or else quite openly. The spirit of the lost person would then smell the stench 

 of the exposed glans, exclaim: "Pukcah(m) !" (phew!) and go away, without 

 saying anything else. 



A similar ceremony was also resorted to when one wished to find a lost 

 object, by locating the thief. [Who came to take possession of the medium in 

 such instances ? ] The soul of the thief .^' ( 1950. ) 



As regards self-suffocation, it was first mentioned by the Mohave 

 as an obsolete means of committing suicide (Case 123). Only much 

 later was it mentioned as a means for inducing a trance state. The 

 teclmique of inducing a trance by self-suffocation appears to be both 

 ancient and widespread (Courville, 1950). In fact, certain Eskimo 

 sometimes practice self-suffocation as a substitute for intoxication 

 (Freuchen, 1957). As regards the Yuma, Roheim (1932) reports a 

 reference to self-suffocation, but appears to imply that it pertained to 

 a shamanistic dream experience, rather than to the inducing of a 

 trance state. As regards the Maricopa, Spier (1933) states that 

 shamans "sucked up four piles of dirt" to obtain, through clairvoy- 

 ance, knowledge of the enemy's whereabouts. This differs from the 

 Mohave seance both in that the Mohave tried to obtain information 

 regarding a fellow Mohave's whereabouts, rather than knowledge 

 about the enemy and also in that the interpreter of the medium's ut- 

 terances, rather than the medium himself, was a shaman. Other 

 Yuman data are cited by Gifford, 1936, Kroeber (ed.), 1935, and 



»i This is the only reference to adult thieving In my field notes. 



