166 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 188 



Shonto Navahos and local Whites. A White person visits a Navaho 

 camp only upon specific business and without advance notice. While 

 there, he is almost never invited inside the hogan or offered food, and 

 conversation is confined entirely to the matter in hand. This pattern 

 is in marked contrast to that experienced by tourists and other casual 

 White visitors, who often enjoy Navaho hospitality quite readily. 



A similarly institutionalized relationship exists when local Navahos 

 visit the store, school, or monument headquarters. Dealings with 

 Whites are supposed to take place in the store or office buildings, and 

 living quarters are distinctly off limits. Trading-post customers who 

 are compelled to stay overnight do not share the trader's table and are 

 not invited to use the guest quarters; they use the overnight hogan 

 at the back of the premises (see fig. 1) and are given the necessary 

 supplies to prepare their own meals. The national monument also 

 has an overnight hogan for Navaho visitors. Educated Navahos from 

 outside the community who are Government or tribal employees, how- 

 ever, are not subject to the same social distinction: they are always 

 received on the same basis as White visitors. 



Although Shonto's non-Navaho residents are set clearly apart in 

 the social order of the community, they do not in themselves consti- 

 tute any sort of cohesive social unit. Casual visitors are nearly always 

 surprised at the very low degree of social interaction between trading 

 post, school, and national monument headquarters. 



The simplest explanation is that for its White residents Shonto is 

 not a community but a job. Shonto is not "home" to any of them, 

 but simply a place where they work. Their personal ties of kinship, 

 property, or long residence are with other communities away from 

 the reservation .^2 Like most other White people on the reservation, 

 Shonto's traders, teachers, and monument employees rely for their 

 social life chiefly on regular trips to town and occasional vacations at 

 their family homes. Hence, paradoxically, the very isolation of 

 Shonto militates against a close-knit White society. 



The situation results also from purely physical factors. Because 

 of the nature of their jobs it is seldom possible for any of Shonto's 

 White residents to leave their premises for any length of time. There 

 is, moreover, a consistently high turnover in all three jobs. Since 

 World War II, Shonto has had four national monument superintend- 

 ents, four sets of schoolteachers, and at least 11 resident traders (see 

 "Staff," above). 



Shonto's Wliite society is, then, fluid and loose-knit. Social rela- 

 tions between store, school, and monument employees are not by any 

 means structurally inherent, but depend to a very large extent on the 



^ While some traders undoubtedly do consider their stores as their home, Shonto's 

 owner maintains family residences both In Flagstaff and Farmlngton, and regards 

 Shonto strictly as a business property. 



