No.^T^r' ^^^' '^^^ RAMAH NAVAHO KLUCKHOHN 339 



record of another Ramah Navaho being sent to school in 1894. 

 The first concerted effort to send children to school, however, appears 

 to have been in 1905 when 10 children were taken to the Albuquerque 

 Indian School. They remained from 1 to 4 years without acquiring 

 much English, though two of the men did attain a modest com- 

 petence in English later in life as a result of sustained experience 

 with Anglos. None of these acquired English as an effective means 

 of communication. It was 1917 before a young Ramah Navaho 

 returned to the area with sufl&cient knowledge of English to be able 

 to act as interpreter in even rudimentary fashion. 



Of the population over 20 in 1940, 28 men and 19 women had 

 attended school (either Government or mission). Of these, however, 

 only 36 had attended school for 4 years or more and 11 for 8 years or 

 more. Of Ramah Navahos alive in 1950, 36 men and 28 women had 

 attended school; although a number of them for only a year or less. 

 Of these, 17 men and 13 women had had from 4 to 8 years of schooling; 

 7 men and 9 women had 8 years or more. But it is easy to mis- 

 interpret the consequences of these figures. Several points must 

 be borne in mind. Eight years at school does not mean that the 

 individual had graduated from the eighth grade even in an Indian 

 school. The command of English (oral and written) of a high school 

 graduate is ordiaarily not equal to that of an eighth grade graduate 

 in the United States generally. And in 1950 there were only two 

 high school graduates among the Ramah Navaho — none in 1940. 

 Moreover, it is hard for those who have not observed these phenomena 

 directly to understand how much English a Navaho who has little 

 occasion to use the language can forget in, say, 10 years. This is 

 particularly true of women living at some distance from the village 

 of Ramah. Some of these who had 8 years of school cannot today 

 manage a few simple sentences in Enghsh. This factor is counter- 

 balanced to a slight extent by those (almost entirely men) who had 

 little schooling but who have picked up some command of English 

 by association with Anglos on jobs. 



In 1940, four men (all except one in their early twenties) and one 

 woman (bom away from Ramah) could translate from English to 

 Navaho and from Navaho to English if communication was kept 

 quite simple and concrete. "Hard words" in either language stumped 

 them. Of the remainder of the "schooled" Navahos, many had 

 largely forgotten the EngHsh they had known on leaving school. 

 Elementary conversation was possible with 10 men and 3 women, in 

 addition to the 5 mentioned above. By 1950, thanks both to in- 

 creased enrollment in schools and to World War II experiences, the 

 nimaber of men over 18 years of age who could speak "basic English" 



