300 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



collective — and purely syncretistic — self-image is almost exclusively 

 a product of their collective antagonism to whites. 



In brief, the Mohave Indians' self-image appears to be derived, at 

 least in part, from Wild West literature and films, and, perhaps, also 

 from their contacts with more stolid Indian groups, such as the 

 Chemehuevi. Be that as it may, the behavior of the suicide is ap- 

 praised both in terms of this standard of stoical strength of character 

 and of the standard of generosity. The suicide is defined as weak, 

 overly emotional, and selfish, i.e., as a person who does not live up to 

 an ideal standard of conduct. 



(2) Lay charactejnzations of the Mohave, by whites living near the 

 reservation, do not directly contribute to our understanding of Mohave 

 suicide and may therefore be disposed of in a few words. Due partly 

 to cultural and language barriers and due also to the quiet and stolid 

 deportment of the Mohave when visiting the town of Parker, the local 

 whites consider the Mohave, as a group, a rather stolid people. On 

 the other hand the individual Mohave who is personally known to a 

 white and individual Mohave Indians who participate in some spec- 

 tacular and scandalous occurrence which becomes known to whites, are 

 described as unstable and emotional. The whites' tendency to view 

 the Mohave as primarily stolid people agrees with Roheim's (1932) 

 finding that the whites of Yuma call the culturally and tempera- 

 mentally kindred Yuma Indians "the Indian Sphinx." In the Mohave 

 as well as in the Yuma case this layman's view of their temperament 

 simply shows that Western whites are successfully deceived by the 

 Indians' f agade of stolidity, which is due partly to a deliberate attempt 

 to have as little to do with whites as possible, and partly to the seeming 

 inability of most Mohave to communicate affectively in English.^^ 



(3) Professional characterizations of Mohave ethnic personality 

 (Kroeber, 1925 a; Devereux, 1939 b), which are implicitly supported 

 by all anthropological publications on the Mohave, consistently stress 

 the warm and mercurial temperament of the Mohave, his adaptability, 

 his proneness to extremes and also his determination, which some- 

 times verges on stubbornness. It is interesting to note, however, that 

 even though Kroeber strongly underscored the tremendous preoccu- 

 pation of the Mohave Indians with autistic processes, such as dreams 

 and their cultural counterparts, he does not refer to this aspect of their 

 personality in his characterization of their disposition — perhaps be- 

 cause this side of their makeup is hard to reconcile with their generally 

 extroverted temperament. Yet, it would appear (Devereux, 1939 b) 

 that these seemingly divergent trends are actually highly comple- 

 mentary. Indeed, the Mohave is too firmly rooted in reality to have 



*' Compare in this context the fact that a delinquent boy (Case 76), who spoke pood 

 English, tended to answer embarrassing English questions in the negative, but gave affirma- 

 tive answers when these questions were repeated in Mohave. 



