Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 445 



Indeed, due to the Mohave pattern of generosity, not only those 

 who live under the same roof, but also relatives and friends are free 

 to borrow each other's property whenever they need it.^® Hence, 

 those who use another person's property consistently come to rely 

 on its availability to the point where they almost consider it (psycho- 

 logically) "their" property ,^^ i. e., as part of their social integrity 

 (Pareto, 1935), and possibly even of their "body image." ^^ Thus, 

 when the mourners were forced to burn a man's property, which they 

 were accustomed to use, they necessarily felt that the deceased had 

 suddenly become avaricious °^ and was forcing them to destroy 

 what, through prolonged use, they had begun to regard as at least 

 partly their property. Their conviction that the dead are strongly 

 property-minded is also reflected in the belief that if the property 

 of the deceased is not destroyed, he will return to get it. Needless 

 to say, the sudden change in character attributed to the dead ^° is 

 simply a projection of the mourners' own changed attitude toward 

 the person who just died, and who, after a life-long display of gener- 

 osity, suddenly forces them to destroy badly needed property. 



'^ A Mohave who wishes to borrow something and does not find the prospective lender 

 at home, may even take the needed Item In the absence of Its owner, but will return it as 

 soon as he no longer needs It. By contrast, theft was practically unheard of among the 

 Mohave (Case 76). This was fully understood by the late M. A. I. Nettle, M.D. When 

 a hospitalized Mohave woman, who was given scissors to enable her to do some sewing, 

 took them home after being discharged, Dr. Nettle refused to call this a theft, rightly stress- 

 ing that the woman felt that the scissors had been given to her, or, if they had only been 

 lent to her, that the hospital only had to ask for their return in order to get them back Im- 

 mediately. The Mohave are so baffled by theft, that when a white man stole and gelded the 

 finest stallion of the reservation, its owner did manage to get It back, but took no steps 

 to punish the thief either legally or extralegally. 



" The owners of property actually encourage this attitude. When Hivsu : Tupo :ma and 

 Hama : Utce : learned In 1938 that I had had some very hard sledding in recent years, 

 Hivsu : Tupo :ma declared with tears in his eyes that I should have come to Parker, so 

 that he could have slaughtered a horse to feed me. As for Hama :Utce :, she angrily 

 reprimanded me for my "unfriendly" failure to let her know of my plight : "Don't you 

 know that as long as there is a dollar In my house, half — or even all — of it is yourat 

 Don't ever let it happen again !" 



MTeitelbaum (1941) discovered that clothes were parts of the body image when his 

 hypnotized subjects, instructed to develop agnosia for the parts of the body, developed 

 agnosia also with regard to their clothing. 



™ The acquisitiveness of ghosts is explicitly referred to in one of the two theories account- 

 ing for the origin of twins (Devereux, 1941, and pt. 7, pp. 348-356). 



™ Note an earlier reference to the fact that old women approaching death suddenly begin 

 to hoard property for their funeral (Kroeber, 1925 a). At the same time Tcatc, when she 

 felt certain that she would not live much longer, gave me a gift which she had refused to 

 give me all her life : She had herself photographed, so that I would not forget her. Both 

 the fact that she allowed herself to be photographed and her desire not to be forgotten by 

 me violated basic Mohave tenets and may therefore have represented not only the wish to 

 leave me a memento, but — unconsciously at least — also an attempt to induce me — whom 

 she often called her "favorite grandson" — to Join her in the beyond (Devereux, 1951 b). 

 The fact that she implemented her psychologically human, but culturally un-Mohave 

 wish not to die entirely, i.e., to be remembered, through the medium of a non-Mohave — 

 myself — is a culturally and psychologically Important fact. Indeed, in all societies there 

 seems to exist a tendency to actualize culturally forbidden Impulses through cooperation 

 with aliens. This tendency is probably to be thought of as an Important motivating 

 factor underlying acculturation processes. 



