254 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BnlL 175 



SENILITY 



The Mohave seem to have no conception of mental decline in old 

 age, though they are ready enough to complain of the deterioration 

 of their physical powers with advancing age. The idea of a func- 

 tional decline in old age is so alien to them that, according to reliable 

 informants, it is generally believed that formerly men remained potent 

 and women sexually active mitil death (Devereux, 1950 a). This 

 lack of a conception of senile decline is not wholly due to the fact that 

 formerly the Mohave did not live long enough to become senile, since, 

 as late as the 1950's, I knew of no Mohave who showed signs of senility, 

 though there may have been some formerly (Cases 33, 34, 35, and 38). 



It is not even possible to suggest that in primitive society only 

 persons who are not likely to become senile ever reach old age, since 

 among the Indochinese Sedang Moi even my intellectually still very 

 alert old informant, Mbra:o, complained that, with advancing age, 

 he lost his "mana" (called pan) as well as his "ear" (= intelligence 

 and judgment). In supi^ort of this statement he cited the fact that 

 he now occasionally beat his good wife, whereas previously he had 

 never chastised her. Thus, both the apparent absence of prolonged 

 senile deterioration and the absence of the idea of senility among the 

 Mohave can only be recorded, but remains miexplained, unless we as- 

 sume that many of the psychoses in elderly persons (e.g.. Case 34) 

 cited elsewhere in this work, were instances of (terminal) senile psy- 

 chosis. Even if this view is accepted, the absence of the conception 

 of psychic senility remains unexplained. 



Be that as it may, the only undesirable psychological change the 

 Mohave associate with aging is the tendency of singers of "semi- 

 shamanistic" song cycles (Kroeber, 1925 a) to become shamans, and 

 the proneness of aging shamans to turn into witches. These undesir- 

 able trends are, however, limited to certain small classes of individ- 

 uals; according to the Mohave most people become more responsible 

 and serious minded as they become older, and therefore become socially 

 more useful than ever before. In brief, the social image of the stupid, 

 crazy, or "evil" old person is an exception in Mohave society ; the pi'e- 

 dominant social image of the aged is that of a socially useful and re- 

 sponsible old person. Tentatively speaking, the lack of a cultural 

 concept of senile deterioration, insanity, or evilness may, perhaps, be 

 due to the fact that, on the whole, Mohave parents treat their children 

 kindly and display a great deal of reasonableness and patience toward 

 their early efforts to grow up (Devereux, 1950 f ) and even to experi- 

 ment sexually (Devereux, 1951 d), so that the image of a stupid, ty- 

 rannical, unreasonable (Devereux, 1955 b), and envious "older genera- 



