340 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 196 



had risen to 28 and of women to 9. On the other hand, the number 

 of possible interpreters had increased by only two men and one woman. 

 Acquaintance with the Zuni and Spanish languages is limited to a 

 small number of individuals and m no case approaches fluency. One 

 must take with extreme caution the glib statements of local residents 

 (from all five gi'oups) that such-and-such a Navaho "speaks good 

 Zmii" (or Spanish). A Navaho who has a Zuni vocabulary of 50 (or 

 even 25) words impresses a Spanish-American or Anglo — or another 

 Navaho — ^who knows no Zuni beyond, possibly, a phrase of greeting 

 and another word or tv/o. Careful observation, testing, and inquiry 

 have established the following facts. Of two Ramah Navaho men 

 and three women who had numerous Zuni half-brothers and sisters, 

 one man had a Zuni vocabulary of perhaps as many as 500 words, 

 the other man knew considerably less, and the women knew no more 

 than a few kinship terms and phrases about the weather, food, and 

 crops. Of three Navaho women married to men from Zuni, two 

 could speak "kitchen Zmii" and the other spoke with her husband 

 and his relatives entu-ely in English, although recognizing something 

 of the order of 300 Zuni words and uttering, on occasion, possibly as 

 many as 100. No other Ramah Navaho has in recent times, at least, 

 had a Zuni vocabulary of 100 words, and only two or three men would 

 reach that level. In all, not more than 20 Ramah Navahos know 

 more than, at most, 10 words of Zuni. 



In contrast, many adult Navaho men, and some women, have a 

 20- or 30-word Spanish vocabulary. This is because they have so 

 often had the experience of working for or with Spanish-Americans. 

 About 15 Navaho men (as of 1950) could carry on an elementary 

 conversation concerning trade, locations, livestock, and daily events. 

 Two or three of the older men had acquired this knowledge during 

 the 19th century when Spanish was the lingua franca of the area. An 

 additional eight or nine had herded for Spanish-Americans long enough 

 to learn basic Spanish. Most of these live in the southern portion 

 of the Ramah Navaho area, but a few have worked for Tinaja and 

 San Rafael families. Only a very few Navahos born after 1920 

 have more than a tmy stock of Spanish words and phrases. 



One must, of course, make the inquny in reverse. How many 

 Zunis, Anglos, and Spanish-Americans have been able to speak Nav- 

 aho? For centuries Pueblo Indians have learned Navaho, rather 

 than the reverse, and Zuni is no exception. A number of Zuni men 

 can speak Navaho easily and colloquially, but, apart from two cases 

 of intermarriage, these have had only transitory relationships w^ith 

 Ramah Navaho. One of the early Mormon missionaries who lived 

 into this century spoke fluent Navaho. A Navaho, raised as a Mexi- 

 can at Tinaja, continued to speak his language of birth. These cases, 



