232 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 175 



have, obliged to make his way in the white man's world, i.e., in a competitive 

 and materialistic system that is completely uncongenial to the real Mohave. 

 {B) Identification with, and imitatimi of, the mother: 



(1) Positive identification (character traits). — John identified himself with 

 his mother by incorporating into his personality makeup some of his mother's 

 most characteristic traits : 



(a) He became a goal-directed and practical person, capable of considerable 

 initiative even before reaching puberty and combined this practicality with 

 honesty, reliability, warmth, outgoingness, real generosity, and efiicient 

 helpfulness. 



(&) Although his formal education was limited to that which was available 

 on the Reservation and in the nearby small town, because of his mother's 

 respect for education he integrated his schooling with the rest of his personality 

 more effectively than most Mohave Indians of his generation. Thus, to take 

 an example almost at random, whereas even those young Mohave, who speak 

 English better than Mohave, handle the English language as though it were 

 a perfectly learned foreign tongue, and the Mohave language as though it were 

 their half-forgotten mother tongue, John, who also spoke good Mohave, spoke 

 English like a native American, and spoke Mohave as though it were the second 

 language of a bilingual person.*^ 



(c) Though not as temperamental as his mother, he resembled her a great 

 deal in his reluctance to receive thanks or rewards for his helpfulness. He 

 therefore often did extremely kind things in a somewhat gruff manner, as if 

 to ward off the beneficiary's thanks or tokens of appreciation. 



(d) During a certain period of his childhood all adults in the home had to 

 work for a living, so that John was obliged to perform a number of house- 

 hold chores ordinarily performed only by women."* Although John resented 

 these onerous tasks and viewed them as part and parcel of the adults' desertion 

 (see section on temper tantrums), he was able to perform them without 

 thereby impairing his masculinity, since most of the housework was actually 

 done by the mother who, functionally at least, was the "masculine" member of 

 the household. This may explain why, despite his obvious masculinity, John 

 later on developed a genuine liking for at least one type of housework. 



(2) Identification with the "enemy" (temper tantrums). — Between the ap- 

 proximate ages of five and nine or six and ten John had marked temper tantrums, 

 in the course of which he was highly aggressive and destructive. Although 

 some older member of the tribe viewed his tantrums as manifestations of bud- 

 ding shamanistic powers, John's destructiveness was so great that even some 

 of those who believed that he would become a shaman and who were strongly 

 opposed to American ways of punishing children (Devereux, 1950 h) felt that 

 his bouts of destructiveness called for energetic countermeasures. Hence, even 

 though the tolerant father figure sometimes interceded on his behalf with the 

 mother and showed a great deal of good-humored patience, John was sometimes 

 given corporal punishment by his affectionate but quick-tempered mother. John's 

 temper tantrums had at least five significant aspects : 



(a) Getting attention. — John's tantrums occurred almost entirely during the 



«3 Tills type of bilingualism Is psychologically quite complex, and was quite common 

 before World War I in the ethnically mixed Austro-Huiigarian Empire. The primary 

 tongue is the one in which affective, strongly charged words — such as "mother," "country," 

 "love," "hate," etc. — seem most "real" and most "evocative." 



" Only three types of Mohave men perform housework : Tribal lieroes who, like the 

 Knights Hospitaler, took care of ailing families (K. M. Stewart, 1947 c), middle-aged men 

 married to very young girls (Devereux, 1951 f), and male transvestltes (Devereux, 1937 b). 



