268 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



discreet and friendly, information obtained from the boy who had been involved 

 with her, and from other sources, made it seem unlikely that the expenditure 

 of so much time during a relatively brief field trip would have been justified by 

 the results. 



General background material, especially on cultural attitudes, case material 

 on turbulent budding shamans (Devereux, 1937 c), which provide a basis for the 

 evaluation of the three case histories presented in this chapter, and a few minor 

 data on the three boys in question, were obtained over a period of years from 

 various reliable informants. 



The most important fact to be borne in mind while reading the following case 

 material is that only two of these children were considered delinquent by 

 the adult Mohave themselves and that neither of these two was thought to be a 

 budding shaman, in the sense in which my young interpreter was believed to be a 

 future medicine man, whose turbulence w^as attributed to the gradual unfolding 

 of his magical powers. The fact that, in the end, this boy did not become a 

 shaman but developed, at least for a while, certain other behavior problems may 

 be due to the fact that he and his family were so exceptionally acculturatod that 

 this obsolescent, culturally provided, "type solution" was no longer available to 

 him, because it was incompatible with his degree of acculturation and 

 sophistication. 



Before presenting the actual case material it is also desirable to justifly 

 briefly the frankness wherewith sexual questions were tackled. Such a direct 

 approach may well have frightened and confused an occidental boy, who is 

 expected and accustomed to gratify the occidental adult's culturally deter- 

 mined need to deny the existence of infantile sexuality, by pretending that he 

 has no sexual impulses. By contrast, the Mohave take infantile sexuality for 

 granted and freel.y discuss sex with, or in the presence of, children. Of course, 

 these boys, like other Mohave children, knew from experience that the white 

 group's attitudes differed in this respect from those of the Mohave. However, 

 by approaching this topic in the calmly casual Mohave manner — as exemplified 

 for instance by the interpreter's own, spontaneous interventions — it was possible 

 not only to obtain significant, and indeed indispensable, data, but also to pro- 

 mote a better rapport than would have been possible had the interviewer con- 

 formed to the occidental pattern, by failing to take overt cognizance of his 

 prepubescent subjects' socially recognized masculinity. A general justification 

 of the technique of tackling frontally that which is not tabooed and repressed 

 in the patient's society, even if it is tabooed and repressed in the therapist's 

 society, was presented elsewhere (Devereux, 1951 a, 1953 b). This justifica- 

 tion is applicable in every respect also to fieldwork techniques, as exemplified 

 by the following case material, which was investigated with careful attention to 

 what are not potentially explosive topics in Mohave culture and in Mohave 

 personality dynamics. 



CASE 76 (Informants: Nepe:he and E. S., and, on some details, Tcatc.) 



Nepe:he (no meaning), of the Melyikha : gens, was about 10 or 11 years old 

 in 1938. By modern standards he was considered to be primarily a Mohave, 

 being the son of a Mohave father, Mepuk Sulyi :tc (knee pierce) of the Melyikha: 

 gens, who is the brother of C. M. Sr."' the stepfather of Hamteya :u (Case 77). 



Mepuk Sulyi :tc married, at the approximate age of 24 or 25, H. F., a full- 

 blood Chemehuevi Indian woman approximately 20 years old, who did not re- 



°' These men are Tcatc's "nephews," since her grandfather and the grandfather of these 

 men were brothers. 



