MINDELEFY] TENDENCY TOWARD AGRICULTURE 503 
to their domestic duties and, with the aid of the children, took care 
of the sheep and goats, which, according to long-established custom, 
belonged exclusively to them. Agriculture was practically unknown. 
But with the removal of the duty on wool a new era opened for the 
Navaho. The price of wool fell to about one-half of the former figure, 
and a flock of sheep no longer furnished the means for procuring the 
articles which had grown to be necessities. The people were gradually 
but surely forced to horticulture to procure the means of subsistence. 
It is this tendency which is especially destructive of the old house- 
building ideas, and which will eventually cause a complete change in 
the houses of the people. Recently the tendency has been emphasized 
by the construction, under governmental supervision, of a number of 
small irrigating ditches in the mountain districts. The result of these 
works must be eventually to collect the Navaho into small communities, 
and practically to destroy the present pastoral life and replace it with 
new and, perhaps, improved conditions. 
But many of the arts of the Navaho, and especially their house 
building, grew out of and conformed to the old methods of life. It is 
hardly to be supposed that they will continue under the new condi- 
ditions, and, in fact, pronounced variations are already apparent. Up 
to ten years ago there was so little change that it might be said that 
there was none; since then the difference can be seen by everyone. 
Should the price of wool rise in the near future the change that has 
been suggested might be checked, but it has received such an impetus 
that the Navaho will always henceforth pay much more attention to 
horticulture than they have in the past, and this means necessarily a 
modification in the present methods of house building. The average 
Navaho farm, and almost every adult male now has a small garden 
patch, comprises less than half an acre, while two acres is cousidered 
a large area to be worked by one family at one time. 
One result of this industrial development of the people is an 
increased permanency of dwellings. As the flocks of sheep and goats 
diminish and their care becomes less important, greater attention is 
paid to the selection of sites for homes, and they are often located now 
with reference to a permanent occupancy and with regard to the con- 
venience of the fields, which in some cases furnish the main source of 
subsistence of the family. Asa collateral result of these conditions 
and tendencies an effort is now sometimes made to build houses on the 
American plan; that is, to imitate the houses of the whites. Such 
houses are a wide departure from the original ideas of house struce- 
tures of the Navaho. They are rectangular in plan, sometimes with a 
board roof, and occasionally comprise several rooms. When the local 
conditions favor it they are constructed of stone, regular walls of 
masonry; but perhaps the greater number of those now in existence 
are in the mountain districts, and were built of logs, often hewn square 
before being laid in place. Plate LXxxxvu1 shows astone house belong- 
