Adams] 



SHONTO: ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 



57 



Of 12 households containing no children, 8 are those of young cou- 

 ples married within the past 2 years. Three others are situated in 

 residence groups where they are attended by young children from 

 nearby households most of the time. Several older people are pro- 

 vided with children in their households by outright adoption of grand- 

 children, either paternal or maternal. Two Shonto couples who 

 never had children currently have adopted grandnephews and nieces 

 living with them, in default of grandcliildren. A couple of inform- 

 ants have stated that grandparents may assert a definite claim upon 

 the services of the fourth or any subsequent cliild of either a son or a 

 daughter, if they have no remaining children of their own. 



Shonto households, in sum, show a strong tendency toward a simple 

 nuclear norm which is maintained by remarriage and adoption when 

 it is not maintained by nature. Plural marriages, when included 

 within a single household, are included within the norm. Only 12 

 households actually deviate from it, by virtue of lacking either chil- 

 dren, existing or potential, or an adult male or female member. It 

 is significant that no less than 10 of these are dependent upon public 

 welfare assistance. 



RESIDENCE GROUPS 



Shonto's 100 households cluster in 38 clearly defined territorial 

 units, called residence groups in the present study and corresponding 

 to the "extended family" of Kluckhohn and Leighton (1946, pp. 56- 

 58; see also Landgraf, 1954, p. 83 and Vogt, 1951, p. 16). Territorial 

 distribution of both households and residence groups is shown in map 

 3. A residence group comprises one or more closely related households 

 living in close proximity (witliin "shouting distance" according to 

 Kluckhohn and Leighton) and sharing certain basic resources in com- 

 mon, as detailed in "Economic Structure and Function," pp. 97-109. 



Residence groups at Shonto include from one to six households each, 

 as shown in table 6. 



Table 6. — Frequency distribution of Shonto residence groups according to 

 numJ)er o/ memier households 



Mean: 2.63 Median: 2.63 Mode: 3 



Of the seven single households which comprise residence groups 

 unto themselves, five are those of very large wealthy families having 

 children of marriageable age. Three have, in fact, been recently 

 established by moving the household a couple of miles from the resi- 

 dence group to which it formerly belonged. The presumption is that 



