Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 259 



By contrast, the f ullblood defective, wliose paternity was not in dis- 

 pute, Avas, at least in principle, ^dewed as a bona fide link in tribal 

 continuity, i.e., as a recognized member of the ingroup, who could not 

 be killed without violating a major value of Mohave culture. Hence, 

 no matter how hiuniliating his existence may have been for his 

 parents, and no matter how difficult it may have been to raise him, 

 he was cared for to the best of his parents' ability, presumably, and 

 in part at least, because his parents felt that they had to make up 

 for the harm they have done to their child.*^ 



In brief, defective children are not consciously rejected by their 

 parents, because Mohave society defines them as representatives of 

 the tribe's future quite as much as normal cliildren. 



The present chapter need not include a discussion of such organic 

 conditions as speech defect (pt. 5, pp. 248-251) or feeblemindedness 

 (pt. 5, pp. 251-253) since these aihnents have already been dealt with 

 in earlier chapters. The same is true of various "psychosomatic ill- 

 nesses" in infants, which have important psychic components (pt. 3, 

 p. 115 ; pt. T, pp. 329-356). The only "organic" defect to be discussed 

 in this section concerns the deleterious aftereffects of a certain type of 

 "sedation" administered to fretful children suffering from insomnia. 



If a cliild — usually because of illness — fussed too much, it was put 

 to sleep by dipping a twig of arrow weed into black paint mixed 

 with the charred and powdered eyes of a certain small bird that goes 

 to sleep at sunset, and by painting its eyelids, just above the lashes, 

 with this paste. This method of putting a child to sleep was said 

 to be infallible, but, when used to excess (?) could cause a lifelong 

 somnolence. 



N. C.s statement (1932). — When my son was a baby, he used to sleep all day 

 long and cry all night. At last, in order to get some peace, I used this method to 

 make him sleep. This treatment had such lasting effects that, even though he 

 is now already 27 years old, he still wants to sleep all the time and is quite lazy. 

 The fact that N.C. blamed only herself for her sou's sleepiness and laziness is 

 typically Mohave (Devereux, 1948 c). 



The fact that the Mohave use only sympathetic magic to cause 

 fretful children to sleep, and do not resort to the administration of 

 datura, which they believe to be a sedative and hypnotic, is fully com- 

 patible with the nonpharmacological orientation of Mohave medicine. 



A variety of other defects of children, which the Mohave themselves 

 consider to be unrelated to "craziness" (yamomk) , and which probably 

 come within the scope of neurology rather than of psychiatry, were 

 discussed in another publication (Devereux 1948 b) and therefore 

 need not be discussed in the present work. 



•*The parents of Occidental defectives often "love" them passionately and make great 

 sacrifices for them, In order to alleviate their own guUt feelings over their children's 

 condition, for which they (often erroneously), blame themselves (Devereux, 1956 a). 



