342 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



Tims, it seems quite certain that even tliougli simple reality factors — 

 sucli as the lack of practical alternatives — compel the Mohave to deny 

 that twins are rivals for the maternal breast, they implicitly, albeit in 

 a displaced form, recognize the existence of this rivalry, by insisting 

 that twins are especially susceptible to slights, to unequal or non- 

 preferential treatment, and also to a "marital discord" type of quarrel 

 with the other twin. 



Sometimes even a child who had no twin had to endure the trauma 

 of being given a rival for the maternal breast, for example, when its 

 mother had to nurse also a small orphaned relative. Although Wal- 

 lace (1948) rightly stresses that this was the normal and accepted pro- 

 cedure, my informants — who were somewhat older than his — were 

 quite emphatic in saying that the average Mohave woman was some- 

 what reluctant to wet-nurse another child, because she w^as afraid that 

 her own child might react to the intruder's presence with hi:wa 

 hira :uk (heart angry or mean, where the word hira :uk is derived from 

 hwara:uk= anger) (pt. 3, p. 115). Hence, they sometimes sub- 

 jected the orphan's grandmother to a galactopoietic treatment, whose 

 efficacy in the case of A. W.'s mother was medically attested in 1933 

 by the late M. A. I. Nettle, M. D. (Devereux, 1947 a). Finally, 

 there seems to be no case on record in which a pregnant, but still lactat- 

 ing, woman agreed to nurse an orphan, in addition to her own child. 



The one puzzling feature of the practice of nursing an orphan simul- 

 taneously w^itli one's own child is the tendency to give one's own child 

 the right breast, and the foster child the left breast. The point to be 

 considered here is that, in Mohave parlance, the left side is the maternal 

 side,^^ while the right side is the paternal side. One explanation may 

 be that the woman's own child is given the right breast because it 

 belongs to its father's gens. This hypothesis is, however, not entirely 

 satisfactory, since it could just as well be argued that the woman's 

 right breast represents the kin of her father, to whose gens she, but 

 not her child, belongs. The chief argument in support of this second 

 interpretation is that the child necessarily receives milk from its 

 mother — and, by extension, from its mother's gens — rather than from 

 its father, who "nurses" the child only in the uterus (Devereux, 1937 d, 

 1949 c) .^-^ There certainly exists no absolutely convincing interpreta- 

 tion of this fact, which is cited only because of its rather puzzling 

 features. 



»2Thus, according to Mc^Mehols (1044), when a Mohave refers to the death of hia inter- 

 locutor's mother or maternal kin, he tactfully says that there is grief on the "left side." 



^ Compare in the contest the fact that if a Sedang IMoi marriage Is matrilocal, the 

 husband must make a gift to the girl's mother, to "huy her milk" (to be given by her 

 daughter) for his potential children. If the marriage is patrilocal, the bride "buys the 

 milk" of her new mother-in-law, so as to be able to nurse her future babies (Devereux, 

 MS., 1933-34). 



