Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 475 



be seen that the same flightiness, carried to even greater extremes, was a 

 crucial motivating factor also in the other two suicides belonging to this 

 cluster, while pressure (nagging) was markedly a motivating element in one 

 of the other two related cases (Case 119). 



CASE 119 (Informants : Hivsu: Tuyo :ma and Hamma : Utce :) : 



Name: Pi : it (II) (not to be confused with Case 118). Gens : Nyoltc. Race: 

 Fullblood Mohave. Sex: Male. Age at death: About 27. Marital Status: 

 Single. Children : Apparently none. Parents : Father dead. Education : Phoenix, 

 Ariz. Occupation: None. Date of death: 1928 (?). Cause of death: Suicide. 

 He shot himself in the heart with a .32 revolver. Motive: Family pressure put 

 an end to an adulterous and "incestuous" relationship. 



Pi: it (II) was living at Needles, Calif., with, and apparently off, some 

 relatives of his. A man named Amaly Tamoo:ra (mentioned also in Case 

 120) and his wife Po : ta, a distant relative of Pi : it, lived in the same house. 

 Po : ta's gens was Po : ta. Race : Father, Mohave ; mother, Wanyume :. Sex : 

 Female. Age : 33. Marital status : Married. Children : None. Parents : 

 Thought to have been alive. Occupation: Housewife. Psychiatric status: 

 Chronic alcoholic. She was first married to Amaly Tamoo :ra, whom she later 

 deserted to marry Avunye Humar. However, she soon deserted the latter as 

 well and married E. T., who was at that time about 19 to 22 years old (Case 

 120). 



Soon after Pi : it (II) moved into this household, his kinswoman Po : ta became 

 also his mistress. Although this relationship had been known, or at least 

 suspected, for some time, nothing was done about it for quite a while. Then, 

 suddenly, Po: ta's family began to accuse Pi: it (II) of incest, since the lovers 

 were third cousins, so that Pi : it was "supposed" to address her as "older sister" 

 (hintcienk). Po:ta, who, all along, had been fully aware of the fact that 

 the relationship was both an adulterous and an "incestuous" one, thei-eupon 

 ceased "going with him", and refused him all further sexual favors. It is 

 interesting to note that the husband himself does not seem to have interfered, 

 and that neither Po : ta's relatives nor my informants seem to have stressed the 

 fact that this relationship was not only incestuous, but also adulterous. 



Exasperated both by the cessation of the affair, and by the publicity given to 

 its incestuous nature, Pi:it(II) went outdoors and, just before sunrise, shot 

 himself in the breast, in the immediate vicinity of the house in which he was 

 living. 



Comment 



Pi: it (II) was the paternal half-brother of another Pi : it (I) (Case 118), who 

 committed suicide by identical means some 27 years earlier. Shortly after 

 Pi : it (II)'s death Po :ta also drove E.T. (Case 120) to suicide, and then deserted 

 her husband Avunye Humar, to whom she was married at that time. 



It may perhaps be significant that the case of the other Pi:it (I) (Case 118) 

 had to be interpreted not so much as a typical form of marital discord as 

 an incident comparable to the type of frustration and disappointment likely 

 to occur between relatives. If this interpretation is valid, it is just barely 

 possible to consider as significant — f« so far as the mechanisms of "clustering" 

 are concerned — that Po:ta was related to this Pi :it (II), and also violated her 

 kinship obligations (by having intercourse with him, at least for a while). 

 While this parallel may seem farfetched in the light of available data, it is pre- 

 cisely the farfetched type of "logic" which characterizes the typical (un- 

 conscious) "primary thought processes," and therefore deserves mention at 

 least as a tentative hypothesis. Be that as it may, it is a fact that some other 

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