ABSTRACT
The event concerns took place during the summer of 1948, an exceptionally dry summer along the coast of southern Sonora, Mexico. This chapter shows how an "unusual" event can be explained as much more than just an historical "accident." It also shows how such an event is structured out of many patterns or recurrences, some of which are intra-cultural and some cross-cultural. The event also concerns a raindance held by a village of Indian peasants who no longer implicitly believed in a causal connection between rain and their traditional raindance. The degree of probability of explanations based on such variables depends in this case on cross-cultural evidence. Three such variables are relevant to event in question: the uncertainty of rainfall in this environment, the position of women, and the degree of specialization. Finally, the probability of this event's occurrence was significantly increased by an unusual and marginal personality.
