Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 319 



a Mohave, necessarily represented something dangerous, or at least 

 objectionable. 



The idea that they, themselves, might represent the "dangerous" 

 outer world to anyone would certainly have bewildered them, since 

 they thought of themselves as being the kind of people everyone 

 should be, and as living where everyone should live. This is clearly 

 shown by the fact that, even though the Mohave shared all my joys, 

 concerns, and griefs and frequently asked for news about my parents 

 and sister, it never occurred to them that my family might be worried 

 over my being with what they — being Europeans — believed to be 

 "wild Indians." Similarly, it never struck them that I might be 

 homesick for my home town, or for Paris where I had studied. They 

 could understand and sympathize with my being lonely for the girl 

 I was in love with (pt. 3, pp. 91-106) , but the idea that anyone could be 

 homesick while living among his Mohave friends simply did not occur 

 to tliem.*'^ 



The preceding data indicate that, despite the expansion of their 

 geographical horizons, and despite their awareness that their country 

 is but a tiny dot on the map, the Mohave simply took cognizance of 

 objective realities without modifying in the least their emotional con- 

 viction that the Mohave are the only real "home folk" and their 

 country the only real "home base." Hence, despite their dislike of, 

 and contempt for, whites, I never once heard a Mohave say either 

 directly or indirectly : "What are the whites doing here ? Wliy don't 

 they go home?" — as though they took it for granted that everyone 

 should gravitate to the Colorado River Eeservation.^*^ 



Our next task is to discuss the Mohave Indian's psychocultural adap- 

 tation to the stresses of acculturation, with special reference to suicide. 



Adaptation to culture change. — One of the primitives' traditional 

 "escapes" from many acculturation difRculties is, of course, a nativ- 

 istic-revivalistic cult epidemic. No such cult arose among the Mohave, 

 nor did outside cults of this nature ever gain a foothold among them 

 (Kroeber, 1925 a), for a number of reasons: 



(1) Since the Mohave are not ritualistic or liturgically oriented 

 (Devereux, 1957 b), a new cult would not have solved their problems. 



(2) Many of these cults hold out the promise that the dead would 

 return. Such a notion would have repelled the Mohave, who do their 



"^ In fairness to my Mohave friends' perceptiveness, I feel obliged to add that I never 

 did feel homesick while living among them, thovigh I often enough feel homesick for the 

 Mohave country when I am elsewhere. 



68 The Mohave felt somewhat differently when, during the last war, a Japanese relocation 

 camp was established on the reservation. Though genuinely committed to helping the 

 whites to win the war, they pitied the Japanese Americans who had been forcibly uprooted 

 and had not come to Arizona of their own free will. As regards the landless IIopl, 

 transplanted en masse to the Mohave Reservation, the Mohave were resentful partly 

 because this invasion jeopardized their own right to the land and partly because they felt 

 that the Hopi too had not really wanted to come. (U.S. Senate, 1955). Moreover, they 

 Intensely disliked the Hop! ethnic character and spoke scathingly of their callous cruelly 

 to animals (Devereux, 1948 g). 



