Adams] SHONTO : ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 15 



of any kind. Even my position as health investigator for the Bu- 

 reau of Ethnic Research was not revealed to the community. I was 

 and am convinced that in an micompartmentalized folk society (cf. 

 Eedfield, 1947) such as Shonto, any outright change of role, unless 

 consecrated by some sort of crisis rite, is impossible, and that any 

 attempt on my part to alter my relations with the conmaimity would 

 have been met with confusion and suspicion such as to impede my 

 further investigations. I was not, in any case, primarily interested 

 either in health statistics per se nor in the sort of etlmographic 

 data normally gathered by anthropologists, but in the special economic 

 data which is accessible only and specially to traders, and which 

 therefore flowed to me more or less automatically as long as I did 

 not compromise my accepted status. 



The compartmentalization normal to American life made it possible 

 for me to change status somewhat more freely in my relations with 

 my White neighbors. Even here I did not find it advisable to reveal 

 or to discuss the true nature of my study. Fortunately for me, none 

 of my associates took it very seriously, since I did not give the im- 

 pression in public of working at it very assiduously, and in other 

 ways strove to make light of it. On the other hand, I felt free to 

 take advantage of my temporary status as a health investigator to 

 do a certain amount of formal interviewing of my Wliite neighbors 

 which would have hardly been possible for me as trader. Although 

 I already had ample information on Navaho incomes through the chan- 

 nels of information which are structurally inherent in trading (see 

 especially pp. 184r-214), I was able to corroborate and amplify it 

 through direct interviews with the Shonto schoolteachers, the superin- 

 tendent at Navajo National Monument, and the chief of the Nava- 

 Hopi Unit of the State Department of Public Welfare. I also used 

 the interview technique to obtain genealogical data from the teachers, 

 and medical histories from officials at the Tuba City Hospital. During 

 the earlier phases of the health survey, I also interviewed a number 

 of traders in other parts of the Navaho Eeservation, and obtained 

 valuable comparative material data. Throughout this work, as well 

 as at Shonto, my wife rendered invaluable service and conducted 

 numerous additional interviews, particularly with women. 



INFORMANTS 



Inasmuch as the study of Shonto was conducted largely by ob- 

 servation rather than by inquiry, it is true in a sense that all of the 

 community's 568 Navaho inhabitants have been my informants. A 

 few individuals, however, have also contributed heavily through verbal 

 response to my numerous queries as well as by giving all kinds 

 of unsolicited information, and these must be reckoned my principal 



