Johnston] NAVAHO POPULATION 185 



cies, have been frustrated by the heavy costs of such matching pro- 

 cedures, as well as the vagaries of Navaho nomenclature.^^ 



A detailed outline of the procedures which might be employed in 

 this second approach does not fall within the province of the present 

 study. One implication of this approach, however, is the desirability 

 of establishing among the administrative services of the Navaho a 

 single, permanent, data-collecting agency with the authority to design, 

 coordinate, and execute all data collection programs for the Navaho. 

 Such an agency would also be charged with the responsibility of main- 

 taining the records so obtained and utilizing modern techniques for the 

 recollection and duplication of stored information so as to meet the 

 different needs of the respective agencies,-^ 



The collection of reliable information, however, cannot be accom- 

 plished merely by the establishment of a central agency or by the pur- 

 chase of elaborate data-processing machinery. The critical problem 

 with all efforts at data collection will always be that of locating the 

 respondent, identifying him so that he will not be confused with other 

 respondents, and obtaining from him the required information. In 

 an area the size of the Navajo Reservation, the only feasible solution 

 to this problem would appear to involve the establishment and main- 

 tenance of a number of field offices from which a small staff could 

 operate in a well-defined area surrounding their particular office.^^ 

 The primary task of these field teams would be to establish and main- 

 tain a population register for their local area, and to carry out the 

 necessary field surveys as dictated by the data needs of the several 

 administrative services.^" 



Available techniques of area sampling offer interesting possibilities 

 in this connection. For example, periodic surveys, conducted on an 

 area sample basis, could be designed to incorporate a recanvas of se- 

 lected areas at stated intervals. As an illustration: If a number of 

 randomly selected areas were recanvassed at 15-month intervals, the 

 accumulated data would provide a description of the residence and 



-' Anthropologists working among the Ramah Navaho, for example, uncovered several 

 instances of Individual Navahos who appeared on as many as eight separate administrative 

 records under different names. This problem is of course familiar to all experienced 

 workers in this area, but its impact upon the statistics cannot as yet be assessed. 



^ A 2-year study of the Papago Indian population has recently been completed by Drs. 

 William H. Kelly, Robert A. Hackenberg, and other members of the staff of the Bureau of 

 Ethnic Research, University of Arizona. Preliminary results of this study, aimed at 

 developing appropriate technitjues for the establishment of a population register for the 

 Papago and other similar Indian populations, together with a more recent report for the 

 Navaho population, contain a wealth of useful suggestions. See Kelly and Hackenberg, 

 1957, and Kelly, 1964. 



^ It is unrealistic to perpetuate the convenient fiction that a Navaho is going to under- 

 take a round trip of 100, 200, or 300 miles merely to inform a clerk at Window Rock that 

 he has decided to build himself a new hogan somewhere else. 



3" The use of a single, standardized schedule and of modern machinery for the duplication 

 of records would permit the accomplishment of both of these objectives in the same 

 operation. 



