Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 479 



CASE 123: 



Name : Nyortc. Gens : Nyoltc. Race : Fullblood Mohave. Sex : Female. Age 

 at death: 40-50. Marital status: Widow (?). Children: The name shows that 

 she lost at least one child. Surviving son, Nyail Kwaki :yo. (Gens: Nyolte ac- 

 cording to some, O :otc according to others. Race : Fullblood Mohave. Age : 

 25.) Parents: Dead. Education: None. Occupation: None. Date of death: 

 First decade of 20th century. Cause of death: Suicide. Slie suffocated herself 

 by stuffing earth and sand into her mouth. Motives : Old age, illness, neglect, 

 "tired of life." 



Nyortc had been ill for several years and had no relatives, except a son who, 

 unlike the average Mohave son, neglected her to such an extent that in the end 

 she had to be given a home by a friend, Hispan Taruu :ly (vagina tixed-up- 

 good), of the O :otc gens, a fullblood Mohave approximately 40 years of age. 

 In this context Hama : Utce : remarked, "That sounds just like old Pantaruuly 

 (abridged form of the name) . He is always kind to people." 



One day Nyortc was dozing outside the house — a favorite resting place of 

 the Mohave — and "as she tossed about, she felt that she did not wish to live 

 any longer. Toward dawn she therefore stuffed dirt and sand into her mouth 

 until she choked. She must have died early at dawn." In the morning, when 

 Pantaruuly was bringing her breakfast, he found her dead. 



Comment 



It should be noted that, if her son's gentile affiliation was indeed Nyolte, she 

 and her husband (or lover) must have belonged to the same gens. Since the 

 Mohave consider this to be a form of incest, it might just possibly explain why 

 her son neglected her in so unusual a manner. The fact that she had no other 

 living relatives was actually cited by those informants who said that her son 

 was of the Nyolte gens, in support of the belief that gentile endogamy and in- 

 cest causes the extinction of entire families (Devereux, 1939 a). 



Before the introduction of guns, suicides by means of self-suffocation were 

 rather common, perhaps because, in addition to stillborn children, halfbreeds and 

 unwanted puppies were, in the past, disposed of by burying them alive (Dev- 

 ereux, 1948 d). Nyortc, however, seems to have had neither illegitimate, 

 nor half breed children. Be that as it may, it is interesting that Hama : Utce : 

 felt imijelled to add that Nyortc's son later on lost an eye. "Now he has a 

 glass-eye and looks much better." (Case 88.) Recently the son had been in 

 the Reservation Hospital with an ulcerated leg, which caused some unpleasant 

 gossip on the reservation. 



Whether Nyail Kwaki :yo lost his eye "accidentally on purpose" as a result of 

 a need for self -punishment, and whether the loss of the eye, rather than some 

 other misfortune, was caused by an unconscious need to "allude" in some man- 

 ner to his, possibly incestuous, descent — in that the loss of an eye and an in- 

 cestuous marriage call for similar types of feasts (pt. 7, pp. 35G-371) — is some- 

 thing which only an actual psychonaualysis of this man would enable one to as- 

 certain. Such a hypothesis is, inherently, quite plausible, since, unless we assume 

 that his presumably incestuous descent troubled Nyail Kwaki :yo and caused him 

 to neglect his mother, his altogether atypical lack of filial piety would 

 be incomprehensible. 



As regards the loss of Nyail Kwaki :yo's eye, the very fact that Hama: Utce: 

 felt impelled to mention this (seemingly irrelevant) detail, suggests that she, 



