The Navajo Homestead: Situation and Site

Abstract

The Navajo Homestead: Situation and Site Stephen C. Jett* Spread over some 16 million acres (c. 6.5 million ha) of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah is a cultural landscape quite distinct from that of the nation's dominant Anglo-American culture. It is a landscape created by the more than 150,000 Navajo, the nation's most numerous Indian tribe. Several centuries ago, the ancestral Navajo migrated to the Southwest from what is now western Canada, bringing with them settlement patterns characteristic of Northern Hunters.1 Despite the eventual adoption of an economy based on subsistence sheepherding and farming, the Navajo have retained, in modified form, their northern habits of settlement. These include a dispersed population, qualified by small agglomerations representing economically cooperating extended families ("homestead groups").2 Villages and towns have never characterized Navajo settlement.1 Single-individual and nuclear-family residences, as well as larger homestead-group agglomerations, form homesteads (popularly , "camps") consisting of one or more dwellings and, usually, * Dr. Jett is a Professor of Geography at the University of California, Davis. Field and archival work for this project was supported by intramural research grants of that institution. Aid was received from many individuals and libraries, but particular thanks are due David M. Brugge and Virginia Evelyn Spencer. My Navajo informant was Chauncey Neboyia, of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. 1 Homer Aschmann, "Athapaskan Expansion in the Southwest," Yearbook, Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Vol. 32 (1970), pp. 79-97. 2 Stephen C. Jett, "Origins of Navajo Settlement Patterns," Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 68 (1978), pp. 351-362. ;i Elliot G. Mclntire, "Central Place Studies on the Navajo Reservation: A Special Case," Yearbook, Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Vol. 29 (1967), pp. 91-96. 101 102ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS corrals and other structures. Typically, each homestead group maintains permanent dwellings at two or more camps, which are occupied in response to changing seasonal availabilities of, and requirements for, farmland, pasturage, firewood, and stock water—or, today, wage-work opportunities, schools and shopping, and the like. Homestead Morphology In the broadest sense, a Navajo homestead may consist of anything from a simple log-and-brush summer shade (ramada) or tent, to a grouping of 20 or more hogans (traditional circular or polygonal dwellings), houses, and shades, one or more corrals, and often, other structures such as privies, beehive ovens, animal shelters, root cellars , sudatories, and the like.4 A camp may be the permanent homesite or temporary camp of an individual, a nuclear family, or a man and his plural wives and their children; or, it may comprise the several dwellings and other structures belonging to members of a homestead group which, in addition to the aforementioned relatives, may include grandparents, siblings and their spouses and children, and occasionally other persons. Sometimes, too, loose clusters of dwellings of adjacent homestead groups may be fairly close to each other, forming what appears to be a single large camp or small hamlet . There is, therefore, no "typical" Navajo homestead, although a 4 "Camp" is often used but seldom defined. Richards defined it as being a household's or extended family's residence cluster, geographically or socially isolated from neighboring clusters; Cara E. Richards, "Modem Residence Patterns Among The Navajo," El Palacio, Vol. 70 (1963), p. 26. For detailed descriptions and bibliography of dwelling types and homesteads, see Cosmos Mindeleff, "Navajo Houses," Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report 17 (1898), pp. 475-517; Virginia Evelyn Spencer, "The Geography of Navajo Dwelling Types with Special Reference to Black Creek Valley, Arizona-New Mexico," unpublished M.A. thesis, Department of Geography, University of California, Davis, 1969; Virginia E. Spencer and Stephen C. Jett, "Navajo Dwellings of Rural Black Creek Valley, Arizona-New Mexico," Plateau, Vol. 43 (1971), pp. 159-175; Stephen C. Jett and Virginia Evelyn Spencer, Navajo Architecture: Forms, History, and Distributions (Tucson, University of Arizona Press), in press; John Leslie Landgraf, Land-Use in the Ramah Navajo Area, Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology Papers, Vol. 42, No. 1 (1954), pp. 47-51; Edwin N. Wilmsen, "The House of the Navajo," Landscape, Vol. 10 (1960), pp. 15-19. YEARBOOK · VOLUME 42 · 1980103 couple of hogans (or, today...