Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 299 



ideal type. At the same time the Mohave also sees himself as a 

 warm and generous person, although he feels that he is unable to 

 show this side of his personality to whites, who are cold, unethical 

 and graspingly acquisitive. 



Now, whereas the self-image of the Mohave as a warmly generous 

 person fully dovetails with the findings of anthropologists (Kroeber 

 1925 a ; Devereux, 1939 b) , his self-image as a stoical and aloof person 

 is at variance with the views of those who studied him. It is tenta- 

 tively suggested that this part of the Mohave Indian's self-image has 

 two sources : 



(a) One source of this part of the Mohave's self-image is Wild West 

 literature, to which he is much addicted. It includes not only trash, 

 but sometimes also such works as Stanley Vestal's biography of Sitting 

 Bull (1932), which was seen in a Mohave home only a few months 

 after its publication. A further source of this self-unage may be 

 Hollywood Wild West films, the lay American's image of the stoical 

 Indians being likewise almost entirely derived from his stereotype of 

 the Plains Indian, though we know of course that, e.g., the Crow 

 (Lowie, 1935) were much addicted to humorous horseplay. 



(&) A second source of this part of the Mohave Indian's self-image 

 may well be his familiarity with such emotionally rather stolid groups 

 as the Chemehuevi Indians, even though they have relatively little 

 respect for that tribe. Indeed, the Mohave is quite prone to char- 

 acterize both himself and "the Indian in general" in almost identical 

 terms, and to contrast this composite image with his stereotype of 

 whites. Hence, the incorporation of observable Chemehuevi, etc., 

 traits into the Mohave self-image is not at all surprising. Moreover, 

 the evolving of such a composite self-image could even have been 

 predicted on the basis of the suggestion (Devereux, 1951 a) that, 

 as a result of acculturation, the formerly important minutiae of 

 tribal differences tend to be obliterated by the increased functional 

 importance of what I termed the "area! basic personality," which, too, 

 may eventually be superseded — at least as regards its functional im- 

 portance — by a more generalized "American Indian basic personality." 

 Needless to say, should this latter type of personality pattern, or self- 

 [ image, ever come into being, it will be largely made up of traits wherein 

 f all Indians do differ, and/or seek to differ, and/or are forced to differ, 

 i from whites. In other words, should this personality type ever come 

 I into being, it will inevitably be the product not of a creative synthesis 

 ii of various Indian areal character types, but of what may be termed 

 \ "antagonistic acculturation" (Devereux and Loeb, 1943 a). Perhaps 

 [ the strongest argument supporting this prediction is the current 

 evolving of an Afro-Asian block of nations, made up of culturally 

 disparate and sometimes historically antagonistic groups, whose 



492655—61 ^20 



