214 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 188 



sations can occasionally be overheard in which the Navaho speaks 

 English and the trader replies in "Navaho," as he calls it. 



At least 90 percent of all commerce in Shonto Trading Post is con- 

 ducted in Trader Navaho, largely from necessity but also through the 

 trader's preference. English is largely reserved for Wliite customers, 

 for a few Navahos who occasionally insist on it, and for situations in 

 which clear understanding is essential. 



Although traders vary considerably in their command of Trader 

 Navaho (i.e., in the size of the Navaho vocabulary they control), few 

 if any of them are sufficiently proficient to be able to understand true 

 Navaho speech except in the most general way. It is important to 

 note in this regard that the average trader seldom understands much 

 of the conversations going on around him in the store — he understands 

 fully only what is especially addressed to him in the jargon of trade. 

 The level of effective verbal communication between trader and 

 Navaho is therefore generally low, and is largely confined to conven- 

 tional trading situations. For communication of a more abstract 

 nature the trader, like other Wliite people, is forced to fall back on 

 an interpreter. 



COMMUNITY SERVICES 



In situations of culture contact, it has been noted that individuals 

 and institutions ". . . may adopt a complex but limited number of 

 roles" which ". . . may be conceptualized as constellations of behavior 

 that are appropriate to particular situations." (Summer Seminar 

 on Acculturation, 1954, p. 981.) This observation is perhaps nowhere 

 better justified than in reference to the modern Navaho trading post. 



The primary functions of Shonto Trading Post, which are more or 

 less inherent in its character as a retail business concern, were de- 

 scribed in earlier pages (pp. 184-214). Insofar as they are aimed at 

 the common objectives of maximum sales and minimum competition, 

 such functions are little different in principle from those of many 

 another retail enterprise. In the modern Navaho community, how- 

 ever, they constitute only a small part of the total complex of functions 

 performed by the store. Wittingly or unwittingly, every trading 

 post has a much larger part to play in its community than simply that 

 of mercantile agency ; it is also the hub of community life and a basic 

 channel of cross-cultural communication. Its special and sometimes 

 unique activities as such will be described in the present section. 



A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY 



Anthropologists on the whole have used the term "role" rather indis- 

 criminately and at various levels of abstraction in their analyses of 

 interpersonal and interinstitutional relations. Kalph Linton (1936, 

 p. 114) noted long ago that the term could be applied either in a spe- 



