130 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 196 



it was [to be held] and he said that was good and that he would be there 2 days 

 early, so to have everything ready then. Then he put the $50 in his pocket. 

 I went home after that and told ndeh guhyaneh what he said. They were glad 

 he said yes and would sing. 



SELECTION OF NA IHL ESN 



Ndeh guhyaneh also choose a woman to be the pubescent girl's 

 'sponsor' or na ihl esn. The most important criterion for a na ihl esn 

 is that she belong to a clan which is not related to the girl's clan or 

 to the girl's father's clan, or to any clan to which these are related. 

 In order to understand this proscription, one must know something 

 of the relationships between clans. 



A clan is made up of persons who consider themselves related to 

 each other through the maternal Une but who are unable to trace the 

 specific genealogical ties involved in these relationships. In the same 

 way, every clan has assumed matrilineal relationships with certain 

 other clans. Together, these related clans comprise what Goodwin 

 (1942) calls a "clan set." Restating the above proscription in these 

 terms, a na ihl esn must come from a clan which is not related to any 

 clan in the girl's clan set or to any clan in the girl's father's clan set 

 (fig. 1). The sociological importance of this limitation will become 

 apparent later on, but for the time being it is instructive to see how 

 it applies in terms of actual Western Apache clans. 



On August 20, 1961, na ih es was held for W.G. whose clan is iya 

 aiye {'iya ai people').^*' /?/a aiye is related to t ua gaidn ('white water 

 people'), t udil xili ('black water people'), t e na dolja ge {'t e na dolja ge 

 people'), tset e an ('rock-jutting-into-water people'), nd nde zn ('tall 

 people'), ducdo e ('fly-infested-soup people'), tc ilda ditl uge ('bushes- 

 sloping-up-growing-thickly people'), iyahadjin ('mesquites-extending- 

 out-darkly people'), ?ia da bilna ditin ('mescal-with-road-across people') 

 and sai e digaidn (line-of -white-sand-joining people'). Thus, na ihl 

 esn could not belong to any of these clans, because all of them are 

 members of the girl's clan set. Similarly, na ihl esn could not be 

 related to any of the clans which made up W.G.'s father's clan set, 

 which included na wadesgijn ('between-two-hills people'), t i sle dnt i 

 nd ('cottonwoods joining people'), tc ilndi yena dn aiye ('walnut trees 

 people'), k aintci dn ('reddened willows people'), t e go tsudn ('yellow- 

 streak-running-out-from-the-water people'), t i sk adn ('cottonwood 

 standing people'), sag na [meaning unclear], h k aye [meaning unclear], 

 na gon an ('bridge across people'), k isde stci na ditin ('trail-through- 

 horizontally-red-alders people'), gad o ahn ('juniper-standing-alone 

 people'), tea tci dn ('red-rock-strata people'). Thus, including all the 

 clans in these 2 clan sets, there were 26 clans from which na ihl esn 



w Clan names are here written In accordance with Goodwin's (1942) orthographic system. 



