510 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 175 



Intoxicated persons are seldom if ever abused. The serial rape of 

 intoxicated women is to be construed not as a conscious aggressive act 

 but simply as a form of the sexual "humor" (Devereux, 1950 a) to 

 which the Mohave are addicted. The retaliatory aggression of two 

 women who, while intoxicated, had their pubic hair burned off by two 

 drunken men, was likewise more or less in the nature of a practical 

 joke ( Case 139) . I know of no instance in which an intoxicated person 

 was intentionally and cold-bloodedly manhandled or robbed. Inci- 

 dent b of Case 139 cannot be construed as theft, since the highly 

 acculturated halfbreed, Kohovan Kura :u (kicks-up-dirt fast) merely 

 took advantage of his knowledge of American mores to obtain for 

 himself Hivsu : Tupo :ma's job. 



Summing up, the Mohave attitude toward inebriates is rooted in 

 their basic creed that every human being deserves respect and that no 

 person is to be denied a chance to regain the esteem of his fellow men, 

 regardless of how drunken and dissolute that individual may have 

 been in the past. 



II. THE SUBJECTIVE-PSYCHOLOGICAL ROLE OF ALCOHOL 



1. THE SEXUAL UTILIZATION OF ALCOHOL 



Drinking in connection with sex activities must be sharply differ- 

 entiated from the hospitality pattern. Whenever an unattached or 

 adventurous man, attending a gathering or a dance, has some alcohol 

 in his possession, it is more or less taken for granted that he will share 

 his drinks with the woman with whom he wishes to have sexual rela- 

 tions, or with a group of men and women who happen to be footloose 

 and fancy free. A woman who accepts several drinks from a man 

 thereby implicitly indicates her consent to the probable sexual conse- 

 quences of this transaction. ( Cf . pt. 2, pp. 81-83.) 



An overt or tacit invitation to join in an alcoholic spree must be 

 differentiated, however, from a systematic and underhanded attempt 

 to intoxicate a woman in order to seduce her. I know of only one 

 instance in which an unscrupulous man deliberately plied with drink 

 a woman whose reputation and behavior did not justify the assumption 

 that she would consider these drinks as a tacit invitation to sexual 

 intercourse (Devereux, 1950 a). 



The invitation to go on a spree must, furthermore, not be confused 

 with offers of liquor tendered as advance payment for sexual favors. 

 Only one of the women whom an informant called promiscuous 

 (kamalo :y) was known to require alcohol as a payment for her favors. 

 Other women who were known to make themselves accessible after 

 becoming intoxicated, were simply held to be less discriminating in 

 the choice of lovers when drunk than when sober (Devereux, 1948 f ; 

 1950a). 



