Adams] SHONTO : ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 69 



Navaho common law (see Van Valkenburgh, 1936, 1937, 1938; Hill, 

 1940 a; Kluckhohn and Leighton, 1946, pp. YO-75) is not much con- 

 cerned with crimes, or public wrongs. In the absence of an organized 

 body politic, nearly all offenses are treated as private wrongs or torts, 

 subject to private retribution according to established procedures. 

 As a general rule, restitution or economic compensation is sought 

 first; failing these, force sanctions may be resorted to, commonly in 

 the form of a severe beating administered by the injured party and/or 

 his relatives. 



Navaho Tribal Law, by contrast, is closely patterned after Anglo- 

 American models, and thus comprehends a variety of both civil and 

 criminal actions. In theory it does not countenance private retribu- 

 tion of any sort in criminal cases, nor the application of force in civil 

 cases. 



The absence of resident police at Shonto, however, results in a wide 

 gap between the theory and practice of Tribal Law. Since the Navaho 

 police are not permitted to make arrests except in the presence either 

 of direct evidence of guilt or a sworn complaint, spontaneous arrests 

 have in practice been confined exclusively to cases of drunken and dis- 

 orderly behavior observed in the course of occasional police visits to 

 the community. For all other actions, police intervention must be 

 deliberately invoked by individual initiative : summoning of the police 

 by telephone and, upon their arrival, swearing a complaint. 



In these circumstances it is not surprising that the majority of 

 Shonto Navahos tend to think of liquor violations as criminal actions 

 but of all other offenses as essentially civil, since in these latter cases 

 the law appears in the role of intermediary rather than initiator. The 

 overall effect of tribal law, in fact, is simply to provide Shonto with 

 an additional set of retributive sanctions which may be invoked at will 

 whenever native sanctions fail to provide satisfaction. Both Tribal 

 Law and Navaho common law are in practice optional and dependent 

 upon individual initiative for their operation. Neither is in any sense 

 conceived as impartial and immutable. To Shonto's people it is the 

 function of law to be partial to injured parties — to offer them retalia- 

 tory weapons. 



Tribal law is seldom readily available, however. Individuals must 

 find their way to the trading post to use the telephone, and perhaps 

 half of the time the call to Tuba City jail goes unanswered. On other 

 occasions no patrolmen are available to make the 55-mile trip to 

 Shonto. Nearer police at Kayenta have no jurisdiction in District 2. 

 If police from Tuba City are summoned, the plaintiff must wait from 

 2 to 3 hours for their arrival, and be on hand to present his complaint. 

 The result is that in nearly all cases, Shonto resorts initially to 

 native legal sanctions. Beatings arising out of supposed theft or non- 

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