486 NAVAHO HOUSES (ETH. ANN. 17 
courtesy, asit were. Ever since we have known them, now some three 
hundred years, they have been hunters, warriors, and robbers. When 
hunting, war, and robbery ceased to supply them with the necessaries 
of life they naturally became a pastoral people, for the flocks and the 
pasture lands were already at hand. It is only within the last few 
years that they have shown indication of developing into an agricul- 
tural people. With their previous habits only temporary habitations 
were possible, and when they became a pastoral people the same 
habitations served their purpose better than any other. The hogdéns of 
ten or fifteen years ago, and to a certain extent the hogans of today, are 
p'actically the same as they were three hundred years ago. There has 
been no reason for a change and consequently no change has been made. 
On the other hand, the Hopi came into the country with a comp.ra- 
tively elaborate system of house structures, previously developed else- 
where. They are an undersized, puny race, content with what they 
have and asking only to be left alone. They are in no sense warriors, 
although there is no doubt that they have fought bitterly among them- 
selves within historic times. Following the Spanishinvasion they also 
received sheep and goats, but their previous habits prevented them 
from becoming a pastoral people like the Navaho, and their main reli- 
ance for food is, and always was, on horticultural products. Living, 
as they did, in fixed habitations and in communities, the pastoral life 
was impossible to them, and their marked timidity would prevent the 
abandonment of their communal villages. 
Under modern conditions these two methods of life, strongly opposed 
to each other, although practiced in the same region and under the 
same physical conditions, are drawing a little closer together. Under 
the strong protecting arm of the Government the Hopi are losing a 
little of their timidity and are gradually abandoning their villages on 
the mesa summits and building individual houses in the valleys below. 
Incidentally they are increasing their flocks and herds. On the other 
hand, under the stress of modern conditions, the Navaho are surely, 
although very slowly, turning to agriculture, and apparently show some 
disposition to form small communities. Their flocks of sheep and goats 
have decreased materially in the last few years, a decrease due largely to 
the removal of the duty on wool and the consequent low price they 
obtained from the traders for this staple article of their trade. 
In both cases the result, so far as the house structures are concerned, 
is the same. The houses of the people, the homes ‘we have always 
had,” as they put it, are rapidly disappearing, and the examples left 
today are more or less influenced by ideas derived from the whites. 
Among the Navaho such contact has been very slight, but it has been 
sufficient to introduce new methods of construction and in fact new 
structures, and it is doubtful whether the process and the ritual later 
described could be found in their entirety today. Many of the modern 
houses of the Navaho in the mountainous and timbered regions are 
built of logs, sometimes hewn. These houses are nearly always rec- 
