24 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 188 



Throughout my earlier association with Shonto Trading Post, I 

 believe that my one personal eccentricity in the eyes of the Navaho 

 community was my lack of a wife. Jokingly, and perhaps seriously 

 as well, this was attributed to avarice — it was not, at any rate, con- 

 sidered normal. In 1956, after my marriage, I found my acceptance 

 in many situations to be considerably improved. 



My White neighbors at Shonto School and at Betatakin (see map 3) 

 were close personal friends, with both of whom my wife and I had 

 frequent and reciprocal visiting relationships. Relations with these 

 individuals were purely personal. My relations with my fellow trad- 

 ers, on the other hand, were somewhat more complex and compart- 

 mentalized. I have been employed as trader at Shonto three times, 

 have filled in on several occasions at Inscription House, and have also 

 been offered the trader's job at Oljeto, Cow Springs, and Coppermine. 

 I take this as signifying that from a purely professional point of 

 view, my behavior has been well up to trader standards. On the other 

 hand, my education and my academic orientations, both of which are 

 undoubtedly manifest in my speech, are such as to prevent my being 

 fully accepted personally. (Aside from our common social and en- 

 viromental situation, the two interests which I principally shared with 

 my employer were politics and baseball, and throughout 3 years our 

 casual conversation was largely confined to them — although in both 

 cases our individual persuasions were somewhat at variance.) 



Among my trader associates, I never attempted to play down or to 

 belittle my college associations, although I recognized that they were 

 a mark of differentiation between them and myself. On the contrary, 

 I found that my status as a "college kid" allowed me considerable lee- 

 way in pursuing interests which would not otherwise have been ap- 

 propriate. At the same time, it has undoubtedly stood in the way of 

 full acceptance by traders as "their kind of people." 



My purpose in undertaking the Shonto study, and in setting down 

 my obsei*vations and conclusions hereinafter, has been to draw down 

 upon the trader neither approval nor disapproval, but only the atten- 

 tion which I believe to be his due. It is my earnest hope that nothing 

 I have said will be interpreted as an expose, or as implying censure 

 of the trader. It is necessary for me to reiterate that I also have 

 engaged in credit saturation, delaying checks, tampering with the 

 mail, misrepresenting the outside world, and all the other devious 

 devices by which the trader maintains his position in the community 

 (see pp. 267-297). If I had not done these things I would not have 

 been a trader — and this study could never have been made. 



