70 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 188 



payment of debt occur four or five times a year, and generally go un- 

 challenged in the community. Only in prolonged or severe cases is the 

 law at Tuba City likely to be invoked. 



Occasionally the differential nature of tribal law and of Navaho 

 common law has worked to produce a legal stalemate. A guilty party 

 who refuses to make restitution, when threatened with a beating ac- 

 cording to accepted tradition, may retaliate by threatening to invoke 

 the police on his behalf. Such a threat may or may not be sufficient 

 to forestall the beating; in the past it has been effective in a few cases. 

 Within the writer's cognizance one case of manslaughter, one of at- 

 tempted murder, one of assault and battery, and several thefts have 

 come to legal impasses more or less of the nature of the case given 

 above, and have gone unpunished except in the sanctions of public 

 opinion. In the cases of theft these have not been particularly effec- 

 tive, but the one man who conmiitted manslaughter (by administering 

 a severe beating to his pregnant wife) aroused such general animosity 

 that he was forced to remove himself entirely from his mother's 

 residence group and make his abode in the interior of Black Mesa. 



RELIGION AND RITUAL 



Shonto's religious life stands almost alone among the complex cross- 

 currents of modem Navaho life in being hardly altered by Anglo- 

 American influence. In intensity and form the community's religion 

 hews closely to those traditional patterns which have been studied and 

 described in elaborate detail by a host of anthropologists (see espe- 

 cially Keichard, 1950; Kluckhohn and Wyman, 1940; Kluckliohn, 

 1938 ; Kluckhohn and Leighton, 1946, pp. 121-181) . 



No data on ceremonial participation comparable to that collected 

 by Kluckholin (1938) at Kamah has been assembled for Shonto. 

 Kluckhohn estimates that Ramah men spend from one-fourth to one- 

 third of their waking hours in overt ritual activity, and women from 

 one-fifth to one-sixth of their hours (Kluckhohn, 1938, p. 364) . The 

 estimate is in all probability valid for Shonto today. 



Major ritual occasions of the year are the great "public" ceremonies, 

 involving participation or at least attendance by members of nearly 

 every household in the community. In nearly all cases these take 

 the form of 3-day Enemy Way rituals (see Haile, 1938 a, b; McAl- 

 lester, 1954) during the spring, summer and fall; and 5- (rarely 9-) 

 day Night Way ceremonies (see Matthews, 1902) during the winter. 

 In colloquial English the two rituals are invariably termed "squaw 

 dances" and "yeibicheis" by both Navahos and Anglos. 



At least five Enemy Ways and one Night Way were performed 

 wholly or partially within Shonto community in 1955. Probably 

 twice as many more took place in neighboring communities and were 



