476 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



incestuous relationships in Mohave society were "brazened out" — sometimes in 

 a startingly cynical manner (Devereux, 1939 a) — and did not lead to suicide. 

 We must therefore assume that this Pi:it(II)'s suicide was, at least in part, 

 determined by his older paternal half brother's suicide (Case 118). 



CASE 120 (Informants : Hivsu : Tupo :ma and Hama : Utce : ) : 



Name: E.T. (Indian name not recalled.) Gens: Nyoltc. Race: Fullblood 

 Mohave. Sex: Male. Age at death: 22 (?). Marital Status: Married. Chil- 

 dren : None. Parents : Dead. Education : Sherman Institute. Occupation : 

 None. Date of death: 1928 (?). Cause of death: Suicide. He shot himself 

 in the heart with a revolver. Motive : Resentment over the infidelity of his 

 wife, exacerbated by alcoholic intoxication. (The wife herself was a chronic 

 alcoholic.) 



At that time E.T. was newly married to Po :ta (whose vital statistics are 

 listed in Case 119) whom he appears to have but recently taken away from her 

 most recent husband, Avunye Himiar. 



Shortly after marrying E.T., Po :ta began an affair with M.M. (Gens : Kum- 

 adhi:. Race: Fullblood Mohave. Sex: Male. Age: 27-30). Although she 

 continued to live with E.T., she made no effort to keep her adulterous affair a 

 secret. One day the exasperated E.T. went to the house of Po :ta's first hus- 

 band, Amaly Tamoo :ra, and, not finding him at home simply took Amaly 

 Tamoo:ra's revolver.* It could not be ascertained whether E.T. had called on 

 Amaly Tamoo :ra for the sole purpose of gaining possession of a revolver. 

 Next, E.T. proceeded to M.M.'s house and knocked at the door.^ When M.M. 

 came to the door, E.T. first fired two shots in the air, and then shot M.M. in the 

 stomach, inflicting a severe, but not lethal, wound. He then turned around 

 and went back to his own house. When a few deputy sheriffs from Needles, Calif., 

 began to pursue him and came to his home, E.T. hid himself in the bushes, near 

 his house. The deputies were afraid to follow him into the bushes because 

 they knew that he was armed. Around midnight, while the deputies were still 

 maneuvering around and looking for him, E.T. stealthily returned to his house 

 and shot himself in the heart. 



Comment 



This was the second suicide caused by Po :ta within a year's time. The other 

 one was that of Pi :it (II) (Case 119). 



The firing of two shots in the air and the fact that even though E.T. fired at 

 point-blank range at M.M. he only wounded him, suggested that E.T. shared the 

 average Mohave Indian husband's reluctance to attack his wife's lover. The 

 fact that he chose to purloin precisely a gun belonging to the man whose former 

 wife he, himself, had but recently abducted — i.e., a gun which Amaly Tamoo :ra 

 may well have used against him under similar circumstances — suggests that, as 

 an avenger, he identified with the man whose divorced wife he had abducted 

 from her next husband, and that, as a guilty person, he identified with the 

 man who deceived him. The latter is shown by the fact that he failed to kill 

 M.M. at point blank range, but shot and killed himself quite efiiciently. 



It is possible that E.T.'s act was also partly determined by Po :ta's record as 

 a "femme fatale," already responsible for another suicide (Case 119) and 

 irresistible to men because she (allegedly) owned a love charm, the lodestone 

 (katc humu:kwa) (Case 55). 



If, as we suppose, these three suicides constitute a cluster, it is noteworthy 

 that the purely sexual factor is practically absent in the first case, which was 

 motivated primarily by a more familial type of disappointment, but acquires 



•Although theft is quite exceptional among the Mohave, they sometimes borrow an 

 Item in the absence of its owner, but make no secret of it and return it after using it. 

 • The Mohave seldom knoclc before entering. 



