462 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



that this finding in nowise undermines the validity of the psychoanaly- 

 tic thesis that suicide is a pathological form of mourning. In Mohave 

 society, too, suicide is a kind of mourning, though cultural conditions 

 determine lohom one mourns in so self-destructive a manner.^^ Thus, 

 the finding that the mourned-f or person is often a brother or a person 

 of the suicide's own generation is satisfactorily explained by the fact 

 that the Mohave child is educated prunarily by its own age group 

 (Devereux, 1950 h), instead of being chiefly under the tutelage of 

 adults, as is the case in our society. 



(2) Cultural factors responsible for the clustering of suicides are 

 partly mythological and partly related to current patterns of belief. 

 {a) The mythical precedent for death is the quasi-suicide of the 

 god Matavilye (Bourke, 1889 ; Kroeber, 1925 a and 1948), who 

 decided to die in order to set an example and a precedent for 

 all future deaths. Thus, in accordance with the Mohave 

 dogma, that every single contemporary occurrence, belief, and 

 practice has a mythical prototype, every Mohave death is, 

 basically, a replica of Matavilye's intentional death. Other- 

 wise stated, every single death is — in theory at least — 

 the second component of a cluster, the first of which is the 

 supernatural precedent set by Matavilye. In this context the 

 term "supernatural" pertains, on the psychological levels to 

 the example or to the activities of the dead. In Mohave belief, 

 the dead include all deities and mythological personages, 

 with the possible exception of the — apparently catatonic (pt. 

 2, pp. 50-54) — culture hero Mastamho, who is today simply 

 an osprey or fish eagle completely devoid of sense (Kroeber, 

 1948). They also include all deceased human beings, but 

 more especially the ghosts of the recently dead, who are still 

 in the fii*st of the four stages through which men go after 

 dying (Devereux, 1937 a), and are therefore still close enough 

 to the living to influence them effectively. 

 {h) Cultural tenets pertaining to life, as it is lived now, also tend 

 to emphasize the contagiousness of death. 

 Types of clustered deaths: 



( 1 ) A family in which incest has taken place soon becomes extinct 

 (Devereux, 1939, a, and pt. 7, pp. 357-371). 



(2) The ghost of the dead seeks to lure the livmg to the land of 

 the dead (pt. 4, pp. 128-186). 



(3) The shamanistic or bewitched fetus, who refused to be born, 

 kills both himself and his mother during parturition (Devereux, 

 1937c; and pt. 7, pp. 331-339). 



•* In the same eense, the child has oedlpal conflicts even In a matrlllneal society, though 

 the actual personnel of the oedlpal situation consists of four persons (father, mother, 

 mother's brother, and child) rather than of three, as in the Western world. 



