Adams] SHONTO : ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 285 



THE KAVAHO TBIBB 



Of all the forces and institutions of the modem world, none, in 

 the eyes of traders, poses a greater threat to traditional Navaho life 

 and Navaho- White relations than the tribal organization of the Nava- 

 hos themselves. Consequently, no agency is more consistently or 

 vehemently disparaged. The Navaho Tribal Council and its func- 

 tionaries are regarded with considerable justification as the strongest 

 organized force behind Navaho culture change today, and the most 

 avowedly assimilationist of all contact agencies. 



Shonto's trader attempts in various ways to provoke suspicion and 

 distrust of the tribal government. In particular he aims to transfer 

 Navaho hostility toward "government" in general (see "Social and 

 Political Authority," pp. 65-68) , specifically to the tribal government. 

 The tribal council and particularly its leaders are represented to be 

 unscrupulous, dishonest, and half-educated individuals who are 

 preying on their own people for their own ends. Individual tribal 

 councilmen from Shonto, Inscription House, and Kayenta, who be- 

 cause of various profiteering activities are liighly unpopular in the 

 commmiity, are held up as examples of the caliber and intentions of 

 the tribal organization. 



Most of all, the onus of stock reduction is used to condemn the tribal 

 organization. The fact that tribal authorities have assumed the bur- 

 den of enforcing not only range capacities but also liquor prohibition 

 is advanced as suggesting that tribal leaders are not really interested 

 in the desires of their own people, but are simply working on behalf 

 of reactionary and hostile elements in "government" for selfish and 

 purely personal rewards. 



If "Washindoon" (see "Social and Political Authority," pp. 65-68) 

 is the universal Navaho scapegoat (cf. "History of Contacts," pp. 237- 

 244 ; also Spicer, 1952, p. 203) , it is equally true that Window Eock has 

 become the trader's scapegoat on the same terms.^^ As Navahos blame 

 the Federal Government indiscriminately for most of their woes, so 

 the trader finds Window Eock a handy excuse for many conditions the 

 cause of which he knows quite well to lie elsewhere. Thus he regrets 

 that he must decline to loan cash to Navaho applicants because Win- 



^ The two cases are not dissimilar in many respects. Tlie threatened tribal expropria- 

 tion of traders' properties in the early 1950's had the same sort of symbolic impact as 

 did stock reduction on the Navaho a decade earlier, and has left much of the same sort 

 of bitterness. Just as today It is difficult for Navahos to talk to a White man for any 

 length of time without coming around to the subject of stock reduction, so it is still 

 difficult for traders to keep from alluding to the "tribal takeover" at every opportunity. 

 In this respect the trader at Shonto feels that he and the Navahos are even, although 

 each absolves the other of specific responsibility on the grounds of dissociation from the 

 respective governments. 



