106 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 188 



of fleeces to sell in its own name. Similarly, in the fall, households 

 which have supported the group through their railroad earnings are 

 given a number of lambs to sell in their own name. When all other 

 resources fail, an entire residence group may even live on one member's 

 relief check for brief periods. Similar compensation is made in due 

 time to these individuals. One index of such regular interdependence 

 is the fact that 81 Shonto households had some income from lamb and 

 wool sales in 1955, although only 55 officially own livestock (cf . tables 

 17 and 19). 



The overall structure of residence groups is in many respects anal- 

 ogous, at a higher level or organization, to that of households. There 

 is a consistent, if not formalized, division of labor along age lines (but 

 none, of course, by sex), in which one member is dominant and the 

 others subsidiary. Since most Shonto residence groups are no more 

 than households extended by the marriage of grown children, it is 

 hardly surprising that the relations which unite the member house- 

 holds are not much different from those which formerly united them 

 when they were members of the same household. The overall economic 

 function of the residence group may perhaps be summed up by saying 

 that each member household has a duty to produce what it can, and 

 each has a right to consume what it needs. This relationship is ex- 

 pressed schematically in table 15. 



Households have been mentioned as Shonto's minimum subsistence 

 units. Their organization is in many ways analogous to that of resi- 

 dence groups, but is more formal and rigid in every respect. This 

 applies especially to the division of labor, which at the household level 

 is made on the basis of both age and sex, and is formalized to the 

 degree of almost total differentiation (cf. Kluckhohn and Leighton, 

 1946, pp. 50-51) . Fundamentally, it is the duty of the male spouse to 

 provide support for the entire household. He alone is responsible for 

 the production of capital income ; the economic roles of wife and chil- 

 dren are confined to the subsistence level, and in any case are essen- 

 tially ancillary. (For a detailed study of household economic function 

 see Roberts, 1951, pp. 28-37.) 



As a result of rigid division of labor, economic interdependence 

 within households is an a priori matter instead of a situational and 

 discontinuous matter as in the case of residence groups. Households 

 are Shonto's basic units of consumption for nearly all cash income, as 

 residence groups are for home produce (see Kluckhohn and Leighton, 

 1946, pp. 54-55; Landgraf, 1954, pp. 82-83). The household has a 

 collective prima facie claim upon all income earned by the male 

 spouse. 



Households, like residence groups, also exert situational secondary 

 claims. In time of need any income earned by any member of the 

 group is certain to be claimed collectively by the group. This applies 



