Adams] SHONTO : ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 63 



sons (not including men with plural wives) are definitely known to 

 have been married more than once. 



Seven of 88 marriages now in force at Shonto are plural. The total 

 number of currently married persons is therefore 183, including 88 

 men and 95 women. In addition, one Shonto man supports two 

 unrelated wives in separate establishments, one of wliich is located 

 nearly 40 miles from Shonto. It is said that his two wives have never 

 seen each other. The practice of having unrelated wives in widely 

 separated households is definitely disapproved by the community, in- 

 cluding the older wife, although in former times it was apparently not 

 uncommon (cf . Kluckhohn and Leighton, 1946, p. 55 ; Eeichard, 1928, 

 p. 60). 



At the present time no Shonto man has more than two wives. Five 

 men have plural wives who are sisters, and two are married to mother- 

 daughter pairs. One of the former five recently attempted to acquire 

 a third sister as a wife, but was forestalled by the Shonto school- 

 teachers, who shipped the prospective bride (age 13) off to boarding 

 school. Shonto men sometimes boast of exercising sexual rights upon 

 unmarried sisters of their wives, an opportunity which is frequently 

 afforded in cases of matrilocal residence. It has been suggested by 

 two informants that this is a common reason for plural marriages; 

 that they are, in effect, "shotgun" propositions resulting from careless 

 exercise of extramarital sexual rights. Certainly, the traditional 

 wealth sanction for plural marriage (cf. Kluckholm and Leighton, 

 1946, p. 55) is lacking at Shonto; the community's polygynous house- 

 holds as a group are not richer but distinctly poorer than the com- 

 munity average (see table 17, p. 112). Informants' suggestions about 

 a certain factor of mvoluntariness may be corroborated by the fact 

 that six of seven plural marriages are matrilocal. 



Seven Shonto men who are currently monogamous or unmarried 

 formerly had plural wives. In all cases the wives were sisters. Two 

 men had three wives, and one claims to have had four. Incidence 

 of plural marriage is probably declining. Nevertheless, three such 

 marriages have been effected within the j)ast 5 years, in spite of a 

 Navaho tribal regulation which has forbidden plural marriages since 

 1948. 



EESIDENCE 



Shonto contrasts sharply with repeated statements by anthropolo- 

 gists (e.g., Eeichard, 1928, pp. 69-70; Kluckhohn and Leighton, 1946, 

 p. 55; Landgraf, 1954, p. 82) concerning the predominance of Navaho 

 matrilocalism. Of the 100 households extant in 1955, 52 were matri- 

 local, 42 were patrilocal, 3 were uncertain, and 3 (at the school) were 

 neolocal. It has already been remarked that 19 of 31 residence groups 

 involving more than one household included both matrilocal and patri- 



