Category Archives: Geographical Region

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.

The Appollonian attitude of the Pueblos toward death cannot outlaw the death of relatives nor the killing of enemies; it can at its best only make them sources of blessing and provide means of getting past them with the least violence. Homicide, the taking of life within the group, occurs so seldom that there are hardly even tales remembered of it, but if it occurs, it is settled without ado by payment arranged between the kin groups. The taking of one’s own life, however, is entirely outlawed. Suicide is too violent an act, even in its most casual forms, for the Pueblos to contemplate. They have no idea what it could be. Pressed to match stories, the Zuñi tell of a man who had been heard to say that he would like to die with a beautiful woman. One day he was called to cure a sick woman, and his medicine involved the chewing of one of their wild medicinal plants. In the morning he was found dead. It is as close as they can come to the idea of the act, and it does not occur to them that he could have taken his life. Their story is only of a man whose death occurred in the form he had been heard to wish for.

The situation that to us parallels our practice of suicide occurs only in folktales. A deserted wife in the tales occasionally asks the Apache to come in four days to destroy the pueblo and hence her spouse and his paramour. She herself cleanses herself ritually and puts on her best clothing. On the appointed morning she goes out to meet the enemy and be the first to fall before them. This, of course, falls within our category of suicide, though they think only of the ritual revenge. ‘Of course we would not do that now,’ they say; ‘she was mean.’ They do not get beyond the fact of her vengefulness. She was destroying her fellow villagers’ possibilities of happiness, from which she felt herself shut out. In particular she was spoiling her husband’s newfound pleasure. The rest of the tale is not really imagined in Zuñi; it is beyond their experience, like the supernatural messenger she gets to carry her message to the Apaches. The more particularly you illustrate the practice of suicide to a Zuñi audience, the more politely and smilingly incredulous they become. It is very strange, the things that white people do. But this is most laughable of all.

The Plains Indians, on the other hand, did far more with the idea of suicide than we do. In many of the tribes a man who saw nothing ahead that looked more attractive to him could take a year’s suicide pledge. He assumed a peculiar badge, a buckskin stole some eight feet long. At the end where it dragged behind upon the ground it had a long slit, and the pledger as he took his pledged place in the forefront of their guerilla warfare was staked to his position through the slit in his insignia. He could not retreat. He could advance, for the staking did not, of course, hamper his movement. But if his companions fell back, he must stay in his foremost position. If he died, he at least died in the midst of the engagements in which he delighted. If he survived the year, he had won by his courting of death all the kinds of recognition that the Plains held dear. To the end of his life, when great men publicly recounted their exploits in the constant, recognized boasting contests, he could name his exploits and the year of his pledge. He could use the counts he acquired in joining societies and in becoming a chief. Even a person who did not despair of his life at all might be so tempted by the honours that were attainable in this fashion that he would take the pledge. Or a society might try to pledge an unwilling member. The warrior’s pledge was by no means the only way in which suicide was recognized on the plains. It was not a common act among them as it is in some primitive regions, but tales of suicide for love often recur. They could well understand the violent gesture of flinging away one’s life.

[#34] Pueblo: “Ritual Revenge,” from Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934, pp. 117-118.

THE SPIRITS

“They act like Shiwanna,” Cloud people, Keres say of the society chiefs performing their winter solstice ceremony…

When Hümi dies, he will join Cloud. The Rain society chiefs of Zuni probably are thought of as joining the Uwanami, the water spirits whose houses are the cumulus clouds. War chiefs become Lightnings, most potent of rain spirits. When Giwire died, the Shikani-Kurena shaman of Laguna, a thunderstorm was raging. “The Shiwanna, the storm spirits, have taken him,” said his glad people.² Similarly at Cochiti if it rain after a death people will say of the deceased, “He is already a Shiwanna; he brings us rain.”³ At Taos “those who always believe,” the upright and good chiefs, men who perish in the mountains, * and suicides become Lightnings or Cloud beings.

A special class of deceased rain-makers are the enemy dead who through scalp ceremonial are taken into the tribe and by prayer converted into rain-makers (Zuni). “Though in his life the enemy [Navaho] was a worthless lot, now through the Corn priests’ [Rain chiefs’] rain prayers and seed prayers, he has become a rain person.”⁴

But the dead at large may be associated with the Cloud beings. The Hopi say in haranguing the dead, “You are no longer a Hopi, you are Cloud. When you get yonder you will tell the chiefs to hasten the rain clouds hither.”⁵

[#33] Pueblo: Elsie Clews Parsons, Pueblo Indian Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1939, pg. 171.

They have a belief that a woman who lives much beyond the period of bearing children will turn into a U-nu-pits, or witch, and will be doomed to live in a snake skin. It is believed better to die than to meet with such a fate. This is not only the general sentiment prevailing among the people, but great pains are taken to inculcate this belief, and it is quite common for old women to commit suicide, which they do by voluntary starving. I once saw three old women around a fire in a deserted camp. The other members had left sometime before and these had remained behind for the purpose of dying by starvation. When I rode up to the camp they paid no attention to me but sat gazing into the fire for some time and then each one supporting herself by a staff rose to her feet and they joined in a dance which was a shuffling movement, circling around the fire. This dance was accompanied by a chant as follows:…..

…Alas, alas, alas
Alas, alas, alas
Here long enough have I walked the earth
Here long enough have I walked the earth
Enough, enough
Let me die, let me die.

I did not know what it meant at the time, yet it made a deep impression upon my mind, for the song itself and the circumstances, and whole manner of the women was wild and weird in the extreme. When they had chanted for perhaps half and hour in this way they sat down again, mumbling something which I could not understand, and gazing in the fire. They rose again and danced, and again sat down. At last I rode on, and coming a few days afterwards to where the tribe was encamped, I made inquiry and learned that these women had remained behind for the purpose of dying by starvation and that it was considered by the rest of the tribe as being very meritorious.

[#32] Ute: “Postmenopausal Women,” from J. W. Powell, Anthropology of the Numa. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971, pp. 61A, 61B.

There is a current belief among the Hopi that boys have more tractable dispositions and better tempers than girls. When a boy has a fight with someone he “doesn’t mean it” and soon gets over his anger, but when a girl quarrels she nurses her resentment for a long time afterwards. In fact, it is said that an angry girl may, out of self pity or to spite her parents, decide to die. In such an event she turns her face to the west and refuses to heed the good advice of parents, uncles or medicine men. After a time, even fear and late repentance are of no avail and, despite all efforts to save her, the girl withers away and dies. This type of wilful suicide is called qövisti and is carefully distinguished from other self inflicted deaths. Instances of girls dying qövisti are freely cited.

Not all girls are said to be endowed with the capacity to become qövisti and some readily admit that they have tried it and failed, while others are pointed out as having latent tendencies in that direction. The symptoms are moodiness, sullen silence, and stubbornness. Men are by nature incapable of going qövisti as they want to live as long as possible. A native theorist told me that girls were subject to this phenomenon, because they put too high a value on themselves. As prospective mothers on whom the perpetuation of the clan depends, they become so vain (qwivi) that they disregard the instructions of their brothers and maternal uncles. Men and women alike are ever ready to admit the temperamental differences between the sexes, and a young woman once told me naïvely that one of the men in the village was “as mean as a girl.”

[#9] Hopi: “Girls Going Qövisti,” from Mischa Titiev, Old Oraibi: A study of the Hopi Indians of the Third Mesa, 1944 (field dates 1932-1944).   New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1971, 1972.