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Lütke declares that suicide is unknown among the Tlinglit. He says that there is not even an instance of a slave taking his life. According to our findings, suicide is not such an unknown act. An injured person who has no possibility of revenge, or someone who is pursued and sees no way out, takes his life with the thought that he is thereby injuring his enemies, for the person who drives another to suicide will still be held responsible by the dead man’s friends and relatives, just as though he had killed him outright. A woman was accused by a shaman of the Stikine of causing the illness of another woman by witchcraft, and the relatives of the latter faced her with this accusation. This upset the accused woman that she seized a knife and cut her throat. As a result the shaman, as well as the relatives of the sick woman who brought the accusation, were besieged by the relatives of the dead woman in their homes until they acknowledged their guilt. A way of seeking death by those who wish to end their lives is to commit themselves to the sea in a canoe without paddles. The story goes that a Chilkat Indian who was badly scratched up in a fight with his wife, through shame and anger, left without a word to commit suicide after spending the night sitting in the trader’s house. However, this time it went no further than the attempt. After dark the following evening the supposed dead man returned and without much resistance allowed himself to be reconciled with his wife.

When in 1875 a Stikine chief, Fernandeste by name, committed suicide while he was being taken to Portland for a hearing because he became depressed on account of his circumstances, according to the report, his relatives demanded compensation of General Howard, claiming that the other Indians called them cowards because they had not taken revenge for his death. To pacify the Stikine, Howard gave them 100 blankets and delivered the body of Fernandeste.

[#44] Aurel Krause, The Tlingit Indians. Seattle: University of Washington, 1956, pp. 155, 281

The ceremonies attending the dead are very singular, and quite peculiar to this tribe. The body of the deceased is kept nine days laid out in his lodge, and on the tenth it is burned. For this purpose a rising ground is selected, on which are laid a number of sticks about seven feet long, of Cyprus neatly split, and in the interstices is placed a quantity of gummy wood. During these operations invitations are dispatched to the natives of the neighboring villages requesting their attendance at the ceremony. When the preparations are perfected the corpse is placed on the pile, which is immediately ignited, and during the process of burning the by-standers appear to be in a high state of merriment. If a stranger happen to be present they invariably plunder him; but if that pleasure be denied them, they never separate without quarreling among themselves. Whatever property the deceased possessed is placed about the corpse; and if he happened to be a person of consequence, his friends generally purchase a capot, a shirt, a pair of trousers, &c., which articles are also laid round the pile. If the doctor who attended him has escaped uninjured, he is obliged to be present at the ceremony, and for the last time tries his skill in restoring the defunct to animation. Failing in this, he throws on the body a piece of leather, or some other article, as a present, which in some measure appeases the resentment of his relations, and preserves the unfortunate quack from being maltreated. During the nine days the corpse is laid out, the widow of the deceased is obliged to sleep alongside it from sun-set to sun-rise; and from this custom there is no relaxation, even during the hottest days of summer! While the doctor is performing his last operation she must lie on the pile; and after the fire is applied to it, she cannot stir until the doctor orders her to be removed; which, however, is never done until her body is completely covered with blisters. After being placed on her legs, she is obliged to pass her hands gently through the flames, and collect some of the liquid fat which issues from the corpse, with which she is permitted to rub on her face and body! When friends of the deceased observe the sinews of the legs and arms beginning to contract, they compel the unfortunate widow to go again on the pile, and by dint of hard pressing to straighten those members.

If during her husband’s lifetime she had been known to have committed any act of infidelity, or omitted administering to him savory food, or neglected his clothing, &c., she is now made to suffer severely for such lapses of duty by his relations, who frequently fling her on the funeral pile, from which she is dragged by her friends; and thus, between alternate scorching and cooling, she is dragged backwards and forwards until she falls into a state of insensibility.

After the process of burning the corpse has terminated the widow collects the larger bones, which she rolls up in an envelope of birch bark, and which she is obliged for some years afterwards to carry on her back! She is now considered and treated as a slave; all the laborious duties of cooking, collecting fuel, &c., devolve on her. She must obey the orders of all the women, and even of the children belonging to the village, and the slightest mistake or disobedience subjects her to the infliction of a heavy punishment. The ashes of her husband are carefully collected and deposited in a grave, which it is her duty to keep free from weeds; and should any such appear, she is obliged to root them out with her fingers! During this operation her husband’s relatives stand by and beat her in cruel manner until the task is completed, or she falls a victim to their brutality. The wretched widows, to avoid this complicated cruelty, frequently commit suicide. Should she, however, linger on for three or four years, the friends of her husband agree to relieve her from her painful mourning. This is a ceremony of much consequence, and the preparations for it occupy a considerable time, generally from six to eight months. The hunters proceed to the various districts in which deer and beaver abound, and after collecting large quantities of meat and fur, return to the village. The skins are immediately bartered for guns, ammunition, clothing, trinkets, &c. Invitations are then sent to the inhabitants of the various friendly villages, and when they have all assembled the feast commences, and presents are distributed to each visitor. The object of their meeting is then explained, and the woman is brought forward, still carrying on her back the bones of her late husband, which are now removed, and placed in a carved box, which is nailed or otherwise fastened to a post twelve feet high. Her conduct as a faithful widow is next highly eulogized, and the ceremony of her manumission is completed by one man powdering on her head the down of birds, and another pouring on it the contents of a bladder of oil! She is then at liberty to marry again, or lead a life of single blessedness; but few of them I believe wish to encounter the risk of attending a second widowhood.

The men are condemned to a similar ordeal, but they do not bear it with equal fortitude; and numbers fly to distant quarters to avoid the brutal treatment which custom has established as a kind of religious rite.

[#43] Chilkotin/Talkotin: Ross Cox, The Columbia River, Or scenes and adventures during a residence of six years on the western side of the Rocky Mountains among various tribes of Indians hitherto unknown. Edgar I. Stewart and Jane R. Stewart, ed., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957, pp. 380-382., attributed to Duncan M’Gillivray, Journal of Duncan M’Gillivray 1794-95, ed. Arthur S. Morton.   Toronto: Macmillan, 1929.

The Kwakiutl recognized only one gamut of emotion, that which swings between victory and shame. It was in term of affronts given and received that economic exchange, marriage, political life, and the practice of religion were carried on. Even this, however, gives only a partial picture of the extent to which this preoccupation with shame dominated their behavior. The Northwest Coast carries out this same pattern of behavior also in relation to the external world and the forces of nature. All accidents were occasions upon which one was shamed. A man whose axe slipped so that his foot was injured had immediately to wipe out the shame which had been put upon him. A man whose canoe had capsized had similarly to ‘wipe his body’ of the insult. People must at all costs be prevented from laughing at the incident. The universal means to which they resorted was, of course, the distribution of property. It removed the shame; that is, it reestablished again the sentiment of superiority which their culture associated with potlatching. All minor accidents were dealt with in this way. The greater ones might involve giving a winter ceremonial, or head-hunting, or suicide. If a mask of the Cannibal Society was broken, to wipe out the count a man had to give a winter ceremonial and initiate his son as a Cannibal. If a man lost at gambling with a friend and was stripped of his property, he had recourse to suicide.

The great event which was dealt with in these terms was death. Mourning on the Northwest Coast cannot be understood except through the knowledge of the peculiar arc of behavior which this culture institutionalized. Death was the paramount affront they recognized, and it was met as they met any major accident, by distribution and destruction of property, by head-hunting, and by suicide. They took recognized means, that is, to wipe out the shame. When a chief’s near relative died, he gave away his house; that is, the planks of the walls and the roof were ripped from the framework and carried off by those who could afford it. For it was potlatching in the ordinary sense, and every board must be repaid with due interest. It was called ‘craziness strikes on account of the death of a loved one,’ and by means of it the Kwakiutl handled mourning by the same procedures that they used at marriage, at the attainment of supernatural powers, or in a quarrel.

There was a more extreme way of meeting the affront of death. This was by head-hunting. It was in no sense retaliation upon the group which had killed the dead man. The dead relative might equally have died in bed of disease or by the hand of an enemy. The head-hunting was called ‘killing to wipe one’s eyes,’ and it was a means of getting even by making another household mourn instead. When a chief’s son died, the chief set out in his canoe. He was received at the house of a neighboring chief, and after the formalities he addressed his host, saying, ‘My prince has died today, and you go with him.’ Then he killed him. In this, according to their interpretation, he acted nobly because he had not been downed, but had struck back in return. The whole proceeding is meaningless without the fundamental paranoid reading of bereavement. Death, like all the other untoward accidents of existence, confounded man’s pride and could only be handled in terms of shame.

There are many stories of this behavior at death. A chief’s sister and her daughter had gone up to Victoria, and either because they drank bad whiskey or because their boat capsized they never came back. The chief called together his warriors. ‘Now I ask you tribes, who shall wail? Shall I do it or shall another?’ The spokesman answered, of course: ‘Not you, chief. Let some other of the tribes.’ Immediately they set up the war pole to announce their intention of wiping out the injury and gathered a war party. They set out and found seven men and two children asleep and killed them. ‘Then they felt good when they arrived at Sebaa in the evening.’

A man now living describes an experience of his in the ’70’s when he had gone fishing for dentalia. He was staying with Tlabid, one of the two chiefs of the tribe. That night he was sleeping under a shelter on the beach when two men woke him, saying: ‘We have come to kill Chief Tlabid on account of the death of the princess of our Chief Gagaheme. We have here three large canoes and we are sixty men. We cannot go home to our country without the head of Tlabid.’ At breakfast, the visitor told Tlabid, and Tlabid said, ‘Why, my dear, Gagaheme is my own uncle, for the mother of his father and of my mother are one; therefore he cannot do any harm to me.’ They ate, and after they had eaten, Tlabid made ready and said he would go to get mussels at a small island outside of the village. The whole tribe forbade their chief to go mussel-gathering, but Tlabid laughed at what his tribe said. He took his cape and his paddle and went out of the door of his house. He was angry, and therefore none of his tribe spoke. He launched his canoe and when it was afloat his young son went aboard and sat in the bow with his father. Tlabid paddled away, steering away for a small island where there were many mussels. When he was halfway across three large canoes came in sight, full of men, and as soon as Tlabid saw them, he steered his canoe toward them. Now he did not paddle, and two of the canoes went landward of him and one canoe seaward, and the bows of all three canoes were in a line. The three canoes did not stop, and then the body of Tlabid could be seen standing up headless. The warriors paddled away, and when they were out of sight the tribe launched a small canoe and went to tow in the one in which Tlabid was lying dead. The child never cried, for ‘his heart failed him on account of what had been done to his father.’ When they arrived at the beach they buried the great chief.

A person whose death was determined upon to wipe out another’s death was chosen for one consideration: that his rank was equivalent of that of the dead. The death of a commoner wiped out that of a commoner, of a prince that of a princess. If, therefore, the bereaved struck down a person of equal rank, he had maintained his position in spite of the blow that had been dealt him.

The characteristic Kwakiutl response to frustration was sulking and acts of desperation. If a boy was struck by his father, or if a man’s child died, he retired to his pallet and neither ate nor spoke. When he had determined upon a course which would save his threatened dignity, he rose and distributed property, or went head-hunting, or committed suicide. One of the commonest myths of the Kwakiutl is that of the young man who is scolded by his father or mother and who after lying for four days motionless upon his bed goes out into the woods intent on suicide. He jumps into waterfalls and from precipices, or tries to drown himself in lakes, but he is saved from death by a supernatural who accosts him and gives him power. Thereupon he returns to shame his parents by his greatness.

In practice suicide was comparatively common. The mother of a woman who was sent home by her husband for unfaithfulness was shamed and strangled herself. A man whose son stumbled in his initiation dance, not being able to finance a second winter ceremonial, was defeated and shot himself.

Even if death is not taken into the hands of the shamed person in actual suicide, deaths constantly are regarded as due to shame. The shaman who was outjuggled in the curing dance, the chief who was worsted in the breaking of coppers, the boy worsted in a game, are all said to have died of shame. Irregular marriages take, however, the greatest toll. In these cases it was the father of the bridegroom who was most vulnerable, for it was the groom’s prestige which was primarily raised by the marriage transfer of property and privileges, and his father therefore lost heavily in an irregular marriage.

[#42] Kwakiutl: Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934, pp. 215-219.

Some data on suicide was obtained from Johnie Louie which may be added here. The pattern for suicide seems to be by hanging. No one was ever hung for punishment. Suicide was rare among men, but common enough among girls. For instance, if a girl was angry she might kill herself, or if a wife was beaten on unfounded suspicion of adultery she might hang herself. If a girl got a reputation as loose, her father might whip her; she, feeling hurt, might kill herself. A child who suggests something important to its parents, which the latter refuse, has good cause to kill himself for shame. Thus, sixty years ago a man was sent by the priests to convert his family. His father disagreeing, the son shot himself through the mouth. Cecile Brooks said that suicides were more frequent in early days than at present. Women particularly were given to it on such provocation as a parental scolding, a disagreement over betrothal, or the like. They would hang themselves with a pack rope. Men also killed themselves, for example, because of jealousy. “They rigged up some sort of arrangement by which they could release an arrow with their toes.”

[#41] Salish: W. Cline, R. S. Commons, M. Mandelbaum, R. H. Post, and L. V. W. Walters, The Sinkaietk or Southern Okanagon of Washington. L. Spier, ed., General Series in Anthropology 6,:1-262 (1938), p. 127A.

Strained sex relations sometimes resulted in suicide. When eloping couples were overtaken and brought back it was not uncommon for the girl to kill herself. Forced marriage to an undesirable husband sometimes resulted in a like action, but more often such a situation was endured for a time until an opportunity to run away appeared. Since she had been married the girl was no longer subject to return to her parents in such a case. A woman ended her life by hanging or by falling forward on her digging stick.

Burke’s maternal grandmother committed suicide by hanging. She had been away with a man for several days. Upon her return she was reprimanded by her older sister and told never to see him again. She then took a tumpline and left the house. Her sister thought she was going for wood. Instead she found a fallen log with a limb projecting upward, tied the line around her neck, crawled out on the end of the limb and jumped off.

Male suicide was not as common as female. Men probably never hung themselves but rather thrust a knife into the heart or shot an arrow into the air and ran under it. A Sanpoil man named taxpa-ikst was told that his wife was cohabiting with his brother. He announced that he was going to kill himself. He went out, shot several arrows into the air, ran underneath, but each time one came near he dodged. Then he went into the house, procured a gun and shot himself through the shoulder. After that he called upon his brother, told him what he had done and gave the reason, and told him that he might have his horse for he was going to die. But he did not die. Instead he took back his horse and his wife.

[#40] Salish: V. F. Ray, The Sanpoil and Nespelem: Salishan Peoples of Northwestern Washington. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 1932, p. 149.

The Klamath Indians are very much prejudiced against one taking their own life. They look down on the act, and if one should take his own life, which we call o-motch-ser-mer-yer, there is no chance for them to be saved and they go down the broad road that leads to the old woman and she gives them over to the man in the boat and he takes them over and leaves them in the wilderness where they live in misery until the judgement (sic) day and then are destroyed forever, there being no salvation for them and the family will be looked down upon for many generations to come and held back in taking part in any of their social functions. The children will be shunned by their playmates. The Indian seldom commits suicide and will avoid self-destruction by wishing that some wild animal will take them while they sleep, and of such cases they tell some very weird and touching tales. There was a girl taken by a wild animal…

Another was a young man of good family belonging to the Pee-wan village and he wanted to marry a girl of the upper division. The young woman refused him and this nearly broke his heart, so he went back into the mountains all alone and there he busied himself by trapping and hunting until he had accumulated great riches of valuable furs and other things and was there for a number of years when he returned to his home. He never married and lived to be an old man and all the children called him grandpa. As he became old he also became blind but the children all loved him and any of them were always ready to lead him wherever he wanted to go, and he was always ready to give blessings to the newly married couples and to newly born babies. He always wanted to visit where there was a new born baby. This old man would sweep and keep clean the village, even down to the creek and river, feeling and sweeping the whole day long and when he was tired some of the children would lead him home, and he thus lived to a good old age. So this is the way it would go in accordance with their belief in the hereafter. A Klamath Indian would never commit suicide if there was any way to prevent it on account of the stigma it would place on the family.

[#39] Klamath: L[ucy] Thompson, To the American Indian [later subtitled Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman]   Eureka, CA: Cummings Print Shop, 1916, pp. 76-77.

Modern inquiry into the subject of suicide is revealing a growing number of tribes in northeastern California in which suicide was practised.

In my own experience during a summer’s ethnographic survey work, [1936] I found either aboriginal or recent cases of suicide acknowledged for exactly half of the groups visited (northern foothill Nisenan, McCloud and Upper Sacramento Wintu, Hat Creek Atsugewi, western and eastern Achomawi, Modoc, Klamath), while the other groups visited explicitly denied the practise (western and eastern Shasta, Hayfork Wintu, mountain, foothill, and valley Maidu, northern and southern mountain Nisenan). Out of this total of sixteen groups, the two Wintu groups are notable in their claim to an old and elaborately patterned form of suicide. Somewhat less clearly delineated procedures prevailed among neighboring groups.

Wintu

…This case is said to have occurred “a long time ago.” It concerns a man whose wife had insulted him. (My informant commented, “She may have insulted him because she was jealous of him; perhaps he had been going with another woman.”) The man took his bow and arrow and went to a sacred spot on the river; when he arrived at the spot he dove in once, then later two or three times more, then again. He was seeking to pick up something on the bottom. But he failed to find anything, so he got out of the water and lay down by the fire; he wanted to sleep and dream. However he could not sleep because he was so angry. Before daylight he slept a little, but did not dream. He woke up, and started the fire at daylight; by sunup he got up and dove in the water again. When he came out of the water, he lay down on his side; he napped, but had no dreams. So he kept sitting around, thinking, praying, smoking; he kept this up all day, going into the water at intervals and diving around on the bottom. He ate nothing all day.

That night he dove into the water again, four or five times, feeling around on the bottom. At the last dive he found a small hole under a rock, but obtained nothing from the bottom. So he came out of the water and warmed himself by the fire, lying on his side, resting his head on the palm of his upturned hand. This time he fell asleep and dreamt; he saw a black crow in his dream. The crow lit near the man’s foot and scratched the man’s ankle with his claw. Then the man woke; it was nearly daylight. He pondered over his dream; “I wonder why a crow scratched my ankle?”

He went home early, about the middle of the morning. All his female relatives had acorn mush and salmon ready for him to eat (after his fast for power), but his wife had prepared nothing for him. The man’s uncle was there talking to the mountains, praying for the man. All the people told him to come and eat, that he must eat now.²¹ But he refused to eat; he said, “Eat, you folks; I guess my wife doesn’t want to see me eat; go on, you eat.”

His mother and father coaxed him; they said that everyone ate after they came out of a [sacred] spring. His father told him, “You’re young; you can go and get another woman; you shouldn’t feel badly because this woman has treated you this way. You can take another woman; but now you must eat, my son.”

But the man refused to eat; he went to his father’s house and stayed there two days and nights, not eating anything.

Then people came from the south and told the people there to come south; that they were going to have a war dance. The man whose wife had insulted him wanted to go; he had an elkskin robe and cap, and a fisherskin quiver. He took these out and left his father’s house in the morning and swam in the water. The women told him to eat, and made lunch of acorn bread for him to take; but he would not eat. He was singing all the time.

The party of men he was with camped four or five times; still he would not eat. When the party arrived at their destination there was a big fight. The fighting went on, back and forth; finally, the man’s father and brother caught him, because the man was very nearly out of arrows. They advised him to return home.

“No, I’m not going back; I’ve come down here to die. You go back,” the man said. Then he returned to the fight. Finally he was shot by the enemy in the ankle, where the crow had scratched him. His father said, “You’re shot; you’d better go back.” “No, I came to die,” his son replied. So he let the enemy capture him, and kill him, and take his elkhide armor and fisher quiver.

My informant from the Upper Sacramento group of Wintu confirmed the four cases of suicide detailed above, and volunteered the interesting comment that any blame for the act of suicide attached itself to the wives of the suicides, rather to than to the men themselves.

Treatment of the corpse of a suicide was the same as that for persons dying a natural death, provided of course that the body was recoverable. Only the parents of the deceased cried for the dead, however, at the burial of a suicide.

When first questioned on the topic of suicide both McCloud and Upper Sacramento Wintu informants denied that the practice prevailed in aboriginal times. It was only in connection with another subject, and several hours after I had asked about suicide, that my McCloud informant retailed the first of the cases given above; when she realized my interest in the case she gave the other cases in the same succession in which I have presented them. When I went on to my next informant, among the Upper Sacramento Wintu, I again met with a point blank denial of any cases of aboriginal suicide; but when I briefly outlined the McCloud data this informant nodded immediate agreement and remarked, “Yes, that was what people used to do.” There was no hint in his manner that he equated this behavior with suicide as it prevails today.

CONCLUSIONS

 Assuming that suicide is an old practise among the Surprise Valley Paiute, we find that there is a practically continuous line of distribution for the aboriginal occurrence of suicide procedures from the Surprise Valley Paiute westward through the Achomawi proper and the Hat Creek Atsugewi, to the McCloud and Upper Sacramento Wintu. To the north among the Modoc and Klamath suicide was also practised under aboriginal conditions. As regards the Hammawi Achomawi who are situated between the Surprise Valley Paiute and the Achomawi proper, and who disclaim aboriginal suicide practices, the negative statement of a single informant cannot be taken as the final word on the subject, especially when this informant admits to a recent case of suicide being accomplished by eating wild parsnip root, which was elsewhere an aboriginal procedure.

In the cluster of groups mentioned above, three disparate suicide patterns are encountered. Of these three patterns that of the Wintu has already been discussed in detail. As regards the second pattern, found among the Klamath and Modoc, we lack at present many specific details, but at least one notable fact emerges from our various references to suicide in these two groups. For both the Klamath and Modoc suicide is a romantic gesture, motivated by disappointments in love and, indirectly, jealousy. Women hang themselves, men in some instances drown themselves.

The third pattern, found among the Atsugewi, Achomawi, and Surprise Valley Paiute, may be briefly summarized as follows. Suicide was usually motivated either through jealousy or quarreling; eating wild parsnip root was one of the more generally accepted modes of committing suicide; the bodies of suicides were accorded the same disposal as the bodies of persons dying natural deaths, but only close relatives wailed; suicide was regarded with disapproval, and among most of the groups occurred only rarely. If we were seeking for a more extended areal distribution of this latter, or characteristically northeastern California suicide pattern, we would first of all turn eastward to the Great Basin tribes of Nevada, since among the Modoc and the Klamath to the north there is a definite change in pattern, among the Wintu to the west the pattern is also of a different order, while among the Maidu-speaking people to the south all suicide practises are consistently denied.

[#38] Wintu and others: Erminie W. Voegelin, “Suicide in Northeastern California, “ American Anthropologist 39:445-456 (1937), pp. 445-449, 454-456.

The Pomo Indians of Northern California cannot comprehend suicide as we know it….

Although suicide, as we are familiar with it, did not occur among the Pomo, this form of “psychological death” occurred frequently. It was a form of self-destruction on the basis of mental processes…. The varieties of anxieties which the Pomo indulged in were instrumental in bringing about psychotic states equivalent to what we call suicide. In our society we have cases of individuals “drinking themselves to death,” of individuals taking their own lives, that is, being the cause of their own death due to emotional upsets. No one would say that the Pomo pattern of self-death was the same as ours, but nevertheless it was self-death if no one interfered.

As we have seen, there were two important categories concerning death. In the first category, the individual, by being full of anxiety and apprehension, brought about a psychological condition in himself whereby he reacted to a fancied meeting with a malevolent supernatural which resulted in a state somewhat resembling catatonia, or had what we call an accident and fell out of a tree or fell down a mountain, etc. The illness resulted from the retaliation by the supernaturals for the negative or positive infringement of a taboo…. The illness resulting from impregnation by poison was the retaliation by a person for some real or fancied wrong…. [hexing?]

Enquiries concerning suicide as we know it brought forth responses showing that the Pomo not only could not conceive of such a thing, but that they explained it in other societies because the supernaturals or the doctors in the cultures discussed, had caused the individual to do the act. As for themselves, they had never heard of anyone in their history who had ever committed suicide.

[#37] B.W. Aginsky, “The Socio-Psychological Significance of Death Among the Pomo Indians” in American Imago (1940) vol. IC, pg. 1

It is a basic Mohave tenet that all possible events in life, as well as all beliefs, customs, and rituals constituting culture, were established during the period of creation, usually by means of a mythical precedent.

The mythical origin of death. – The precedent for all deaths, from any cause whatsoever, was set by Matavilye. He decided that man had to be mortal, lest the earth should become so crowded that people would have to void their excreta on each other. He was in the primal house when he resolved to die, so as to set a precedent. He was ill at that time and felt the need to defecate. Rising from his bed, he headed toward the door and, according to the Yuma version, on passing near his daughter, he deliberately touched her genitals. According to the Yuma account, it was this act which exasperated his daughter, while according to the Mohave account she was offended because her father wished to void his stools. Be that as it may, the daughter, who was also the first witch, immediately dived into the ground, emerged exactly under her father, and, by swallowing his excreta, bewitched him. Shortly thereafter Matavilye died, as he intended to die, thereby bringing death into being….

If one examines this account, the following points help one to understand the place of suicide in Mohave culture:

• The first death, which is the cause and prototype of all deaths on earth, was due to an act of will: Matavilye decided to die. Otherwise expressed, the prototypal death was a vicarious suicide….

… There exists a radical difference between murder and suicide on the one hand and death from natural causes, such as old age, on the other hand. This difference consists in the fact that it is possible to die of illness or of old age without either imagining or accepting the fact of death, whereas, at least in the human being, both murder and suicide presuppose the idea of death and its acceptance. It is suggested that this fact suffices to explain why intellectual explanations of the origin of death – even when they are heavily tainted with fantasy, as in myths concerning the origin of death – tend to favor theories, hypotheses, and mythical occurrences which include the psychic representation of death and the acceptance of the idea of death, and therefore view either suicide or murder, or some intermediate model, such as the Mohave myth of the death of Matavilye, which blends murder and suicide into a unified whole, as the basic prototype of death….

The Mohave apply the term suicide to the following occurrences:

(1) Certain stillbirths, with or without the simultaneous death of the mother, which are believed to be caused either by the spontaneous unwillingness of a future shaman to be born, or else by the fact that the bewitched nonshamanistic fetus was taught by a witch “the fatal trick” of killing both itself and its mother at birth.

(2) The death of a suckling who, because its mother is pregnant once more, has to be weaned suddenly and therefore allegedly makes itself sick from spite.

(3) The death of one or both twins either at birth or at any time before they get married.

(4) The symbolic or social pseudo-suicide of a man who, on marrying a kinswoman, consents to his own partial social death by allowing a horse to be killed at his wedding. The death of the horse (= bridegroom) supposedly dissolves the bonds of kinship between the future spouses, and enables a “new boy” to marry the “former” kinswoman.

(5) A bewitched person may actually wish to become the victim of the beloved witch and may therefore refuse to cooperate with his or her therapist.

(6) An aging witch may overtly or tacitly incite the relatives of his victims to kill him, so that he can join – and permanently retain his hold over – the beloved ghosts of his victims.

(7) A warrior, weary of life, may deliberately stray alone into enemy territory, in order to be killed.

(8) Funeral suicide.

(9) Real suicide.

…It is psychologically interesting that no language (so far as I know) has a special root-word denoting suicide. This suggests that, both historically and psychologically, the concept of self-killing is derived from the concept of killing someone else….

In Mohave, real suicide cannot be designated in less than two words, and vicarious suicide in less than three words….

… Generally speaking, the Mohave condemn suicide, and seek to prevent it by all means at their disposal. On the other hand, they do not disapprove to the same extent of all forms of suicide, the intensity of their disapproval being, to a large extent, determined by the actual or imputed causes of the suicidal act. Moreover, even though the Mohave disapprove wholeheartedly of suicide per se, they are quite capable of being lenient toward those individuals whose suicidal motivation seems more or less “adequate” and “reasonable” to them – i.e., toward those with whose despair they are able to empathize….

The suicide of stillborn children is deplored, since it interferes with the perpetuation of the tribe….

The suicide of forcibly weaned babies is viewed somewhat more critically. The sick baby suffering from a weaning trauma is admonished not to be jealous of its unborn sibling and not to begrudge another Mohave the chance to be born.

The suicide of twins elicits a rather ambivalent reaction. On the one hand, in accordance with the theory that twins are heavenly visitors, the Mohave blame those who have offended the twins. On the other hand, however, in accordance with the theory that twins are acquisitive ghosts who return to earth for additional funeral gifts and property, the Mohave blame twins for being overly sensitive and demanding and admonish them to be more tolerant and patient.

The symbolic social suicide of a man who marries his cousin is criticized not so much because it is a form of suicide, but because such a marriage disturbs the smooth functioning of the intratribal system of kin and gens exogamy and also because it jeopardizes the survival of the incestuous couple’s entire extended kin.

The willing victims of witches, who refuse to cooperate with their therapists, are blamed for their foolish compliance with the wishes of murderous witches.

The vicarious suicide of witches is viewed as the inevitable consequence of their personality makeup and of their nefarious activities. Hence, persons not related to a slain witch sometimes overtly express their satisfaction over the slaying of the witch…. In fact, whenever the guilt of the witch is generally accepted, his own relatives often refuse either to protect him or to avenge him. Thus, the Mohave Indians’ disapproval of such witches is not due primarily to their vicarious suicidal behavior; they are criticized for being witches. On the other hand, when the slain shaman is not believed to be a witch, he is sincerely pitied… and his killers are condemned. An unjustly accused shaman, who commits suicide is, likewise, pitied rather than blamed….

The suicidally motivated straying of senior warriors into enemy territory is viewed as behavior compatible with the character structure of braves, who know that they are not meant to reach old age….

Here, as in many other contexts, the “official” Mohave reaction seems to be: “It is their nature; they can’t help it.” Yet there are indications that this superficial tolerance masks quite a lot of resentment, since the lost warrior’s male relatives sometimes frustrate the attempts of a shaman to discover, with the help of a medium, his fate and whereabouts.

Funeral suicides elicit a rather complex reaction: while the attempt itself is, more or less, a minor custom, it is not one which has the unambivalent backing of Mohave society. The suicidal attempt of a widow… was ridiculed, because her subsequent marriage allegedly proved her gesture to have been hollow exhibitionism. A father who threw himself on the pyre of his son, whom his nagging had driven to suicide… was criticized more because of his cruelty toward his son than because of his suicidal gesture.

Finally, males attempting to commit funeral suicide are criticized more than females, since funeral suicide is viewed as a typically feminine gesture.

Real suicides are condemned more consistently than other types of suicide. This disapproving attitude is present – at least in theory – even where explicit cognizance is taken of the fact that the suicide has been seriously wronged. This, however, simply means that the Mohave criticize not only the suicide, but also those who have wronged him. The suicidal person is considered “weak” or “crazy” and is said to lack the Mohave Indian’s traditional strength of character and stoicism….

In addition to being called “weak and crazy,” the person who commits suicide is also blamed for being stubborn, since he refuses to listen to well-meaning persons who try to comfort him and to dissuade him from killing himself [… as are others …] for causing grief to their relatives and to the community.

Yet… the Mohave… is far from consistent in his attitude….

On the whole, no great significance should be attached to the Mohave view that suicides are objectionable simply because they are weak enough to experience extreme psychic distress. This attitude is nearly always voiced only in the form of general statements about suicide. Thus… whenever a concrete case was discussed [… every Mohave] nearly always added a word of regret, made a more or less lame attempt to justify the suicide, or tried at least to arouse compassion for the person who killed himself.

Finally, there is a marked difference in the Mohave Indian’s reaction to those who kill themselves because their feelings were hurt in some manner, and to those who kill themselves because they grieve over the death of a brother or relative. The latter are hardly ever described as “crazy” or “weak,” perhaps because the idea of following the dead to the land of ghosts pervades many aspects of Mohave culture….

…The Mohave view of the white suicide is quite uncharitable and therefore clearly reflects the intensity of his basic condemnation of suicide, even if one makes allowances for the fact that, in Mohave opinion, nearly everything a white does is necessarily bad.

The chief difference between the Mohave Indian’s evaluation of the suicide of a white person, and of that of a Mohave is that, in his opinion, the Mohave suicide regrettably failed to live up to both ideal and (supposedly) real Mohave standards, whereas the white who killed himself acted in a manner which is (supposedly) precisely what one can expect from members of a characterologically and ethically defective group, which consistently fails to live up even to the most basic standards of human ( = Mohave) dignity. …In brief, whereas the Mohave suicide is viewed as a maladjusted member of an ethical society, the white suicide is held to be a fully adjusted member of an unethical society.

[#36] Mojave: “The First Death: Matavilye, and Suicide in Childbirth, Weaning, and Twins,” from George Devereux, Mohave Ethnopsychiatry and Suicide: The Psychiatric Knowledge and the Psychic Disturbances of an Indian Tribe. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 175, Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1961, pp. 286-289, 291, 308-312, 331-333, 336-341, 344-345, 348-354.

There are a number of other war customs which deserve mention. When older male captives were taken, they were tied to posts and slain by women with lances. Usually these were women who had lost relatives in battle and were taking this means of retaliation. If we are to believe numerous tales and descriptions, the Plains Indians and Jicarilla tried to infuriate each other by the capture or mutilation of children. Jicarilla war songs threatened that the enemy’s children should be captives. Jicarilla mothers were specifically ordered to cut the throats of their children rather than allow them to fall into enemy hands. Jicarilla chiefs, when they faced the line of the enemy before conflict, would taunt and be taunted in turn about the impending captivity of their children. Though the Jicarilla took only scalps of enemy men and women, they also took the thumbs and ears of slain enemy children. When very young children were taken captive, however, they were treated quite decently. Their lot, in terms of manual labor, was sometimes more difficult than that of others, but ordinarily they were accepted into Apache life. If they married within the tribe, there was no discrimination whatever against their offspring.

If an enemy woman were taken captive, she could not be molested until she had been brought back and a ceremony had been performed over her. Captive women were not considered fit wives; they were sexually used and sent from camp to camp to do the heavy work. Their children by Apache men, however, were recognized as Jicarilla.

If a Jicarilla had been made captive by the enemy, though only for a day, he was considered unclean, and at his escape or recapture, a ceremony had to be performed over him to “bring him back” to his people. When scalps of slain Jicarilla were recovered, they were brought back to the encampments and there were wailed over.

When a warrior, because of grief or desperation, resolved to sacrifice his life, he divested himself of all clothing, tearing off even his loin-cloth, to signify that he had broken completely with all the ordinary conventions of life. He then threw himself into the thick of the fight and exposed himself until he received a fatal wound.

[#35] Jicarilla Apache: “Apache War Customs” from M. E. Opler, “A Summary of Jicarilla Apache Culture,” American Anthropologist 38 (1936), p. 213.