360 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 196 



Approximately 12 percent of all marriages involved a mate from 

 outside the Ramah population. These were predominantly arranged 

 marriages. It was 1930 before a Ramah girl went to live on the 

 Navajo Reservation with a boy she had met at school. (This was 

 also the firet instance of a Ramah woman emigrating on marriage.) 

 Since 1940, four women and two men have made seven nonarranged 

 marriages with Navahos they had met at school or while at work 

 away from Ramah. The Laguna Indian who moved into the Ramah 

 area in 1894 as a sheepherder for Spanish-Americans represents the 

 only other case of a nonarranged marriage with "outsiders." 



Men ordinarily move away from Ramah on their marriage to a 

 woman elsewhere. Since 1890, 26 Ramah men have married out 

 (12 to the Two Wells area, 8 to the Thoreau area, 3 to Fort Wingate, 

 and 3 to other parts of the Navaho country) . Five of these marriages 

 are more correctly described as bilocal because the family spent at 

 least a few months a year in the Ramah area. Fourteen of the men 

 returned to Ramah on the dissolution of their marriages elsewhere. 

 Conversely, only five women moved away from Ramah upon marriage; 

 one to the nearby Zuni farming village (Pescado), two to the Thoreau 

 area, and two to the Navajo Reservation. Of these, three returned 

 to Ramah. 



Since 1890, 39 men from outside have married into Ramah (24 

 from the Two Wells area, 8 from Thoreau, 2 from Fort Wingate, 2 

 from Zuni, and 3 from other Navaho regions). Of these, 18 returned 

 to their former homes on the dissolution of their Ramah marriages. 

 Eleven women (six from Two Wells, three from Fort Wingate, and 

 two from Thoreau) settled in Ramah on marriage to men there, 

 though one of these marriages could be called bilocal. It is notable 

 that, in contrast to the figures for the men, only one of these women 

 subsequently moved out of Ramah and she left with her husband 

 and family. 



The fact that marriages both in and out come overwhelmingly from 

 three areas (Two WeUs, Thoreau, and Fort Wingate) reflects three 

 factors; relative proximity, historical association, and the Navaho 

 pattern of exchange of sibhngs between family groups. Actually, 

 proximity is clear cut only in the Two Wells case, though Thoreau 

 by trail is about as close as any Navaho band except Two WeUs. The 

 historical factor arises from the circumstance that a number of the 

 "founders" of the Ramah population were either born in these three 

 areas or had settled in one or more of them for some time before moving 

 to Ramah. Connections with relatives in these regions have been 

 kept up through the years .^^ This, in turn, facilitated the arrange- 



M Ceremonials (e.g., Enemy Way) are an occasion during which relatives from different areas meet and 

 potential spouses can look each other over. 



