248 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 188 



real contact with or effect on the Navaho population outside of a 

 small number of households which depend on it for employment (see 

 •'Local Wage Work" pp. 127-129) . 



There remain some eight "Wliite mstitutions which are regular and 

 important points of culture contact for Shonto's Navahos of today, 

 and whose function and influence must be examined in detail. In 

 the community proper are the trading post, school, tribal councilman, 

 and missionary. At the Tuba City subagency 55 miles away are the 

 tribal court (and jail) and the large Indian hospital. Finally, beyond 

 the reservation, are the town of Flagstaff and the Santa Fe Railway. 



Off-reservation boarding schools are deliberately omitted from the 

 list of important points of contact. Their future significance may 

 very well be greater than that of all other contact institutions com- 

 bined, but at the present time the whole program is so new that 

 its effects cannot be measured. Shonto school, however, is included 

 on the strength of its frequent direct contact with adults in the com- 

 munity, and hence potential influence on their behavior. 



POINTS OF CONTACT 



As noted at the beginning of the present discussion, it is neces- 

 sary to examine the structure and function of contact institutions 

 not only in their cross-cultural roles, but equally in their intracultural 

 orientations and, at the level of contact, their relations with one 

 another. It is impossible for any individual or institution to 

 be familiar with, and therefore capable of transmitting, more than 

 a fraction of any modern national cultural system such as that of 

 the United States (cf. Summer Seminar on Acculturation, 1954, pp. 

 980-981; also Steward, 1955, pp. 64-77). In a contact situation such 

 as Shonto, therefore, intracultural orientations set the most immediate 

 limitation on the potential cross-cultural influence of any contact 

 institution. 



INTBACTJLTUBAL ORIENTATIONS 



In spite of distinctive local manifestations, the Anglo-American 

 culture which surrounds and impinges upon modern Navaho life is 

 truly a national culture and part of a national synthesis (see "The 

 Modem Picture," pp. 244-245 ; also Steward, 1955, pp. 64-77) . That is, 

 the external influences to which Shonto is subject — religious, edu- 

 cational, medical, and so on — would be essentially similar were the 

 community located in California, Colorado, or Connecticut. (A 

 single exception may be made in the case of the livestock-agricul- 

 tural complex, which is genuinely subcultural and integrated at a 

 regional level. See chart J.) As a result, Shonto's contact insti- 

 tutions must be regarded as local aspects of national institu- 

 tions, according to Steward's (1955, pp. 67-69) model of analysis. 



