90 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 188 



Shonto community buries its own dead with customary Navaho 

 dispatch (see Keichard, 1928, pp. 141-143 ; Leighton and Kluckliohn, 

 1948, pp. 91-93) and without White interference. Although the trader 

 was once called upon regularly to build coffins and inter the dead, 

 this practice has not been followed in recent years. As of the present 

 time the community has not turned to other White sources for aid. 

 No medical examinations have ever been held or death certificates 

 issued for Shonto's dead. 



Fear of death and avoidance of the dead remain universal, show- 

 ing no abatement as a result of American teacliings. In line with 

 Navaho practice everywhere, whenever possible, dying persons are 

 carried outside the hogan, to forestall the necessity of abandonment. 

 Nevertheless, the community is dotted with remains of abandoned 

 hogans, whose history and dangers are known to everyone, from 

 nonagenarians to young children. 



ACCULTURATIGN' 



The foregoing pages have been occupied with an attempt to define 

 the modal patterns of adjustment which have taken place between the 

 native traditions of Shonto and the impinging Anglo-American in- 

 fluences to which the community is subject. Cross-cultural adjust- 

 ment, however, is in the last analysis an individual matter. While the 

 influence of Navaho tradition at the present time remains more or 

 less constant for all of Shonto's inhabitants, contacts with and ad- 

 justments to Anglo-American culture vary enormously from indi- 

 vidual to individual. 



At one extreme are a handful of elders of both sexes who had never 

 seen a White person until adolescence or early maturity, and who have 

 to this day never been beyond Tuba City or Kayenta. Their experi- 

 ence with non-Navaho influence hardly extends beyond those ele- 

 ments of material culture, politics, law, medicine, and the like which 

 have been mentioned as forming a constant part of the Shonto fabric. 

 These people have no firsthand experience with the outside world, 

 and only a very limited sense of its effect upon themselves. They de- 

 rive their knowledge of it from the numerous tales told by their 

 younger neighbors which have become an accepted part of the folklore 

 of the community. 



At the opposite pole are a few younger people who, in addition to 

 prolonged boarding-school attendance, have lived for periods of years 

 outside the reservation. These individuals speak English fluently, 

 read not only upon necessity but to some extent for pleasure, and 

 have at least a limited sense of participation in a larger social fabric 

 than the purely Navaho one. 



