302 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 196 



food and clothing throughout the year. A Middle Class woman 

 spoke of taking clothing and food to a "fullblood" family, when the 

 husband was sick. "We took enough food to last 10 days; it was 

 gone in 3. Everybody in the neighborhood came over and ate on 

 them." Another Middle Class couple, the Elders, aids a large family 

 by providing clothing and part-time work for the wife. Mr. Elder 

 said, "I don't mind helping people out who try; they really deserve 

 help." Comments such as these, which often accompany acts of 

 generousness, are closely related to the importance placed on self- 

 reliance by adherents of the Protestant Ethic. 



Aggression and aggressiveness. — Aggression, as it has been defined, 

 occurs in an idiosyncratic fashion among those Cherokees who are 

 not Conservatives. Some individuals are more outspoken than 

 others; some will "put up with" more than others. This is true of 

 Generalized Indians, Rural Whites, and the Middle Class. One 

 Generalized mother told the writer, "We taught our kids not to fight 

 with others in the school yard. But they picked on ours, so I told 

 my daughter to beat the tar out of them." A Middle Class informant 

 spoke of a rather serious quarrel she had had with her husband over 

 some aspect of their domestic life. Another woman, a Rural White, 

 told me, "My husband just won't fight with me; he walks away. 

 Makes me so darn mad!" I witnessed many cases of bickering among 

 those who comprise the latter three groups in Thomas' continuum. 

 However, only two serious quarrels were observed. But these inci- 

 dents, coupled with accounts given by various informants, suggest 

 that the Generalized Indians and the Rural Whites, along with the 

 Middle Class, do not participate in the system which guides the 

 Conservative's handling of aggression. 



Aggressiveness is also manifested on an individual basis. All of 

 the Cherokees who operate businesses have a minimum of aggressive- 

 ness which permits them to succeed in a commercial milieu. The 

 farmers engaged in more than subsistence type farms also demonstrate 

 this characteristic. Those who work in a white-collar capacity must 

 meet the competitive demands placed upon them in the Civil Service. 

 That this varies from person to person, however, is revealed in the 

 answer one Middle Class informant gave to a question about his 

 career. 



I just don't have that much ambition I guess ... I guess I could have risen in 

 the Indian Service if I had been willing to take transfers to other places, but I 

 just didn't want to leave here . . . I'm just content to stay here and get along. 



Aggressiveness and ambition are part of the value syndrome of 

 self-reliance, discipline, and individualism to which we now turn. 



