Adams] SHONTO: ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 255 



in particular that throughout the northwestern Navaho Reservation 

 they tend to be looked down on hy other Whites as "do-gooders." 

 It is readily observable from charts J and K that Shonto's mission- 

 ary has few relationships of any kind with the other contact insti- 

 tutions in and around the community, except to the extent that he 

 is utilized by Navahos themselves as a source of rides to the hospital. 

 The isolation of Shonto's missionary from the overall communi- 

 cation network, a common phenomenon in this part of the Navaho 

 Country (a similar situation was found by the writer to obtain at 

 Kayenta in 1950), undoubtedly harks back ultimately to his lack of 

 local orientations (see "Intracultural Orientations," pp. 248-253) . As 

 an outsider he has little common background of experience and values 

 with other local Whites; he is likely to be somewhat unfamiliar with 

 local White institutions as well as with those of Navaho society. It 

 is believed to some extent by both traders and government officials that 

 a missionary has nothing to lose, and perhaps something to gain, by 

 siding with Navahos as against other Whites in all cross-cultural 

 relations, and there is sometimes suspicion that he will do so. "I 

 don't mind having a missionary around. They're bad for business, 

 though," expressed the feeling of an experienced trader in a com- 

 munity west of Shonto. Missionaries for their part recognize that 

 their success is likely to depend on their dissociating themselves from 

 any other White institution, which may be a focus of hostility and a 

 source of coercion. The Shonto missionary dissociated himself ini- 

 tially from both the store and the school by selecting a residence site 

 across the canyon from them. Throughout his residence in the com- 

 munity he seldom if ever visited the school, and set foot in the trading 

 post only to pick up his mail. Despite his own unf amiliarity with 

 the Navaho language he never employed the store as a channel of 

 communication with Navahos as did most other White institutions 

 (cf. chart K). The result, at Shonto, is an almost total lack of com- 

 munication between missionaries and other contact institutions. Lack 

 of expressed approval from the trader and the schoolteachers was 

 probably a contributing factor to the failure of the efforts of Shonto's 

 missionary (see "Religion and Ritual," pp. 70-74) . 



Off-reservation contact institutions are, of course, not specifically 

 chartered to deal with Navahos, and are functionally independent of 

 them to a very large extent. This is particularly true with regard 

 to the town of Flagstaff, which has made very little effort to entice 

 Navaho trade — by comparison to Gallup, for example, where markets 

 and other retail stores offer a variety of premiums to Navaho cus- 

 tomers, and advertise for several hours daily via Navaho-language 

 broadcasts ; and where there are in-town trading posts which will buy 

 for cash anything the Navaho owns. Flagstaff is thus independent also 

 of the reservation communication network. There is, of course, out- 



