Adams] SHONTO: ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 91 



The vast majority of Shonto's inhabitants fall somewhere between 

 these two extremes in the acculturation continuum. Until recently 

 a majority of acculturative influences have not been constant m the 

 community ; consequently modal patterns are difficult to define. 



In his study of Kamah veterans, Vogt (1951, pp. 90-94) has ob- 

 served that differential patterns of adjustment to white culture are 

 in part conditioned by the family context within which the individual 

 receives his socialization. He noted in particular a significant cor- 

 relation between acceptance of white values and the absence of domi- 

 nant elders from the residence group during the years of encultura- 

 tion. Except in the case of the school group, where its effects are 

 notable, this particular variable is hardly operative at Shonto. All 

 of the community's other residence groups remain under the domi- 

 nance of older and uneducated people. The context of socialization is 

 therefore more or less constant for all individuals. 



The sources of differential acculturation levels must therefore be 

 sought in external influences. At Ramah, Vogt (1951, pp. 94r-98) 

 identified three such influences: boarding school experiences, wage 

 work experiences, and service experiences. Only the first of these has 

 widespread significance at Shonto. Military experience is numerically 

 unimportant, involving only six individuals, two of whom are in the 

 Armed Forces at the present time. Wage work, while experienced by 

 more than half of Shonto's men, is confined to a type of employment 

 which offers contact only with a very limited and largely esoteric 

 segment of the outside world. The social context of railroad work 

 is, in fact, almost entirely Navaho (see "Navaho Economics," below). 

 Railroad workers thus acquire only a tourist's familiarity with the 

 Wliite man's country, and almost none with his culture. 



Shonto's inhabitants become acculturated, in the sense of acquiring 

 Anglo-American values, mostly through school experience. Inevi- 

 tably, there is a very high correlation between acceptance of such 

 values and the ability to speak English — a situation also encountered 

 by Vogt (1951, p. 87) at Ramah. The correlation, besides pointing 

 up the superordinate role of boarding schools in value change, sug- 

 gests also that most Anglo-American values are not understandable 

 in the Navaho linguistic context — that knowledge of English is neces- 

 sary for their acceptance. 



As a key to degrees of acculturation, table 13 rates Shonto's adult 

 inhabitants of both sexes and in various age groups on the basis of 

 their command of the English language. 



The categories of English speakers set up in table 13 can be cor- 

 related in a general way with Vogt's (1951, pp. 88-89) "stages" in 

 value change as observed at Ramah. These were: (1) (minimal 

 White contact), no acculturation; (2) (increased contact), imitative 

 adoption of selected White values; (3) (prolonged contact), inter- 



