Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 131 



gens may transmit membership in the Mohave Hipa: gens to his 

 children/'^ it is not known whether a Yuma father of the Wahas gens 

 will transmit to his child membership in the Mohave Vaha :th gens, 

 because of the similarity of names, or whether he will transmit to it 

 membership in Syuly gens, because of the identity of the emblem (or 

 "totemic reference"). As regards non-Yuman men, be they Indians 

 or racially alien persons, they cannot transmit to their children mem- 

 bership in a non-Mohave gens, even if, in the father's tribe, gentile 

 affiliation is transmitted in the male line. Originally this rule did not 

 admit of exceptions; in more recent times it became more flexible, 

 however. Thus, the daughter of an Italian father and Mohave mother, 

 whose family name on the Agency register is that of her Italian 

 father, is, by courtesy, sometimes called Mali, and was even considered 

 sufficiently Mohave to have her nervous breakdown attributed to the 

 foreign illness (Case 31), perhaps because she was raised entirely 

 among the Mohave. She was certainly not believed to have the for- 

 eign illness because she was a halfbreed, since halfbreeds are appar- 

 ently not believed to be — if one may use so daring a metaphor — 

 "allergic to themselves." Also, as specific descriptions of the foreign 

 sickness show, halfbreeds are considered racially alien, and therefore 

 capable of causing fullblood Mohave Indians to contract the foreign 

 illness. By contrast, even a decade or two earlier, the Mohave were 

 less accommodating in this respect. Thus, when Hama : Utce :, who 

 was of mixed blood, more or less considered herself to be — through 

 her mother — a member of the Kunyii:th gens,^^ her claim does not 

 appear to have been challenged by anyone, but neither was it ever 

 formally accepted. In brief, the child of an alien father usually has 

 no gens, and, if a female, does not wear a gentile name. Such persons 

 either have a "funny name" ^^ or else are known by the "English" 



"Glfford (1918) published a talmlation of gentile equivalences among the Yuman tribes, 

 which, while probably correct, has certain puzzling features, in that identically named 

 gentes mostly do not have the same "totomlc references" In all Yuman tribes. This may 

 indicate nothing more than an obsolescence of the totemic function of the referents . . . 

 but may also indicate that these referents were not true totems even in early times. In 

 fact, they may simply be relatively recently adopted emblems, this being suggested also by 

 the fact that some gentes have several unrelated referents in one and the same tribe. 

 Thus, the Mohave Nyoltc gens has five referents : Sun, fire, deer, eagle, and humahnana 

 beetle. While "sun" and "fire" may be interrelated, the relationship between these two and 

 the other three is probably nil, and furthermore, the last three likewise do not seem to be 

 related to each other. The problem is too complex to be discussed in this context. Suffice 

 it to say that whereas it may be possible to establish, even at this late date, a gentile 

 equivalence system in terms of the capacity of an alien (though Yuman) father to transmit 

 his gentile affiliation to his half-Mohave child, it is almost certain that emblem equiva- 

 lences are no longer susceptible of being established, and that the question of whether the 

 Yumans ever had real totems will remain permanently in abeyance. 



"The word "Ipa :" means both person and lineage. The question "Kute slmu :ly Ipa:?" 

 (= what gens people) means actually: "To what gens do your people belong?" — but, 

 because of the double meaning of ipa: (= person and also social group, lineage, family), 

 it can also be translated as "You are a person of what gens?" 



^ This is far from unique. The Mohave revel in weird, self -chosen names, such aa 

 "Drygoods' anus" (Devereux, 1951 c). 



