Navaho Houses, Part 2 | Page 7

so effectually that the traveler who is not familiar with the
customs of the people might journey for days and not see half a dozen
of them. The spot chosen for a dwelling place is either some sheltered
nook in a mesa or a southward slope on the edge of a piñon grove near
a good fuel supply and not too far from water. A house is very seldom
built close to a spring--perhaps a survival of the habit which prevailed
when the people were a hunting tribe and kept away from the water
holes in order not to disturb the game which frequented them.
So prevalent is this custom of placing the houses in out-of-the-way
places that the casual traveler receives the impression that the region
over which he has passed is practically uninhabited. He may, perhaps,
meet half a dozen Indians in a day, or he may meet none, and at sunset
when he camps he will probably hear the bark of a dog in the distance,
or he may notice on the mountain side a pillar of smoke like that arising
from his own camp fire. This is all that he will see to indicate the
existence of other life than his own, yet the tribe numbers over 12,000
souls, and it is probable that there was no time during the day when
there were not several pairs of eyes looking at him, and were he to fire
his gun the report would probably be heard by several hundred persons.
Probably this custom of half-concealed habitations is a survival from
the time when the Navaho were warriors and plunderers, and lived in
momentary expectation of reprisals on the part of their victims.

Although the average Navaho family may be said to be in almost
constant movement, they are not at all nomads, yet the term has
frequently been applied to them. Each family moves back and forth
within a certain circumscribed area, and the smallness of this area is
one of the most remarkable things in Navaho life.
Ninety per cent of the Navaho one meets on the reservation are
mounted and usually riding at a gallop, apparently bent on some
important business at a far-distant point. But a closer acquaintance will
develop the fact that there are many grown men in the tribe who are
entirely ignorant of the country 30 or 40 miles from where they were
born. It is an exceptional Navaho who knows the country well 60 miles
about his birthplace, or the place where he may be living, usually the
same thing. It is doubtful whether there are more than a few dozens of
Navaho living west of the mountains who know anything of the
country to the east, and vice versa. This ignorance of what we may term
the immediate vicinity of a place is experienced by every traveler who
has occasion to make a long journey over the reservation and employs a
guide. But he discovers it only by personal experience, for the guide
will seldom admit his ignorance and travels on, depending on meeting
other Indians living in that vicinity who will give him the required local
knowledge. This peculiar trait illustrates the extremely restricted area
within which each "nomad" family lives.
Now and then one may meet a family moving, for such movements are
quite common. Usually each family has at least two locations--not
definite places, but regions--and they move from one to the other as the
necessity arises. In such cases they take everything with them,
including flocks of sheep and goats and herds of ponies and cattle, if
they possess any. The qasçí[ng], as the head of the family is called,
drives the ponies and cattle, the former a degenerate lot of little beasts
not much larger than an ass, but capable of carrying a man in an
emergency 100 miles in a day. He carries his arms, for the coyotes
trouble the sheep at night, two or three blankets, and a buckskin on his
saddle, but nothing more. It is his special duty to keep the ponies
moving and in the trail. Following him comes a flock of sheep and
goats, bleating and nibbling at the bushes and grass as they slowly trot

along, urged by the dust-begrimed squaw and her children. Several of
the more tractable ponies carry packs of household effects stuffed into
buckskin and cotton bags or wrapped in blankets, a little corn for food,
the rude blanket loom of the woman, baskets, and wicker bottles, and
perhaps a scion of the house, too young to walk, perched on top of all.
Such a caravan is always accompanied by several dogs--curs of
unknown breed, but invaluable aids to the women and children in
herding the flocks.
Under the Navaho system descent is in the