Observations on the Yurok—Childhood and World Image: Erik Homburger Erikson. University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology, XXXV, 1943, No. 10.

As in his previous study of the Sioux, Erik Homburger Erikson again succeeds in showing how the conditions of production in a given culture create certain individual character structures through the medium of traditional education. He shows especially how the world image is determined by a projection of body sensations and how the typical body sensations in their turn are determined by the conditions of production and education. The Sioux baby is nursed long and generously enough to acquire a basic feeling of being loved and provided for. In contrast to Sioux training, the Yurok child is weaned early, well before the child is one year old, at a time when his teeth develop and he begins his attempts at locomotion. The mother's attitude toward the baby is well expressed in certain rituals she has to follow during pregnancy and which are intended to prevent the baby from resting 'too comfortably against the mother's spine'. One pronounced character trait of the Yurok is his nostalgia. In their myth the father god created the world by crying. Yurok songs seem to be cries of hunger and helplessness, of desire and longing, intermingled with 'hallucinatory wish fulfilment'—quite different from the martial cries of the Sioux. The Yurok child is taught to choose food carefully, to avoid contamination, to chew slowly and eventually to develop a craving for wealth. The tribal life centers around the life of the salmon, which the Indian sees only at the time of its seasonal run up the river. As far as the Yurok knows, this strange animal never eats; its sexual activity leads to loss of strength and death. It is sent for its yearly run by the father 'beyond the ocean'. By means of a truly wise system, the Yurok manages a miracle: to eat his salmon, and have it the next year, too.