Adams] SHONTO: ROLE OF NAVAHO TRADER 291 



ican institutions has "retrogressed" so as to meet them half way. 

 Shonto Trading Post is today an anachronistic enterprise which is 

 specially adapted to an anachronistic socio-economic system (see 

 "The Consumer Market," pp. 169-170) . 



"Anachronism" in the case of the trading post is an expression 

 of the fact that in adapting itself so thoroughly to the conditions of 

 Navaho life, the store over the years has become increasingly isolated 

 from and out of step with the American sociocultural system (see, 

 e.g., "Finance," pp. 171-172; also Sanders et al., 1953, p. 234). The 

 trading post of today could not compete for White trade or even for a 

 considerable amount of Navaho trade in an open and unprotected 

 consumer market (cf. Kluckhohn and Leighton, 1946, p. 39). What- 

 ever its cultural origins, it is true today that Shonto Trading Post 

 as a functioning institution is in closer harmony with the conditions 

 of Navaho life, and better integrated into it, than with the conditions 

 of modern American life even in the Southwest. To an extent not 

 approached by other contact agencies, it has become a necessary insti- 

 tution of community life at Shonto (see "Cross-Cultural Kelations," 

 pp. 256-263). 



"Anachronistic" as applied to the economy of Shonto community 

 expresses the fact that Navaho productive enterprise, although 

 expanding under the stimulus of White contact, has in many respects 

 arrived only at a "colonial" stage of development (cf. "Market Char- 

 acteristics," p. 169). The anachronistic adjustment of store and 

 community economy therefore represents a halfway meeting ground 

 between two sociocultural systems in the fields of economics and 

 commerce. 



Regardless of its historical and cultural origins, the unique and now 

 outdated relationship between store and community is a function of 

 the isolation and lack of economic and social development of the 

 Shonto region (see "Physical Setting," pp. 31-36) and is perpetuated 

 thereby. In the long run it is environmental limitation which retards 

 a closer adaptation of both to the norms and continuing trends of 

 modern American life. The Shonto area itself is too barren of pro- 

 ductive resources (unless uranium or oil should be discovered) to 

 support anything more than the present limited agricultural and 

 livestock industry, pieced out with a necessarily restricted number of 

 wage opportunities. It is also too far from more favored regions 

 to permit regular commuting to high-paid jobs. The only possible 

 compromise between increased income and continued residence in the 

 comimunity is the type of seasonal commuting which is now manifest 

 in connection with railroad work (see "Railroad Work," pp. 129-133) . 

 In its present degree of economic development, therefore, the Shonto 

 region condemns its permanent inhabitants to the type of seasonal, 



