Western Apache Clan and Phratry Organization

Abstract

N AVAHO and Western Apache clan systems have long presented a puzzling picture, especially when set against the relatively clear-cut systems of other groups in the Southwest having clans. With regard to the Navaho, statements about matrilineal linked clans and a possible phratry organization are generally used to characterize their higher system of social organization, but no detailed analysis has yet been made of the way in which Navaho linked clans and phratries function or functioned. Lack of historical data and/or conflicting statements from informants are usually given as reasons for this. There seems to be a general feeling that there is at present no higher system which organizes Navaho life beyond the family and clan, or that what system there may have been in the past has been irretrievably lost as the population and area of occupation have expanded. The enforced emigration to Fort Sumner in 1865 is often given as the precipitating event for the breakdown of such an old system, but a usable analysis of the pre-Long Walk Navaho clan organization has yet to be made. On the other hand, Goodwin collected some precise information on the clan organization of the Western Apache which lends itself readily to analysis. Goodwin died before he was able to complete his analysis of the system, and the section on clans in The Social Organization of the Western Apache (1942) and his earlier article on clan characteristics and functions (1937) represent but a developmental stage in his thinking. The raw data which he published in the appendices to the volume on social organization, however, make it possible to work out both a complete picture of the way in which each clan was structured and also the larger framework into which these clans fitted. The following remarks are based on a re-analysis of Goodwin's data and on ten months' field work among the Western Apache.* Supplementarily, there is the assumption, based upon comparative research, that Navaho and Western Apache clans are related, both having had the same historical origin. Navaho and Western Apache social organizations are closely related, as both culture and language demonstrate. Therefore, a presentation of the salient features of the Western Apache clan system should suggest directions for research into Navaho clan organization. The Western Apache, Navaho, Jicarilla, Mescalero, Chiricahua, Lipan, and Kiowa Apache are groups of speakers of Southern Athapaskan which today represent the end of a long process of tribal segmentation and coalescence that has been going on since the first Athapaskans entered the Southwest. Each group represents adaptation to a different ecological and cultural environment. The Kiowa Apache, forming a band of Kiowa and operating as