Although the average Navaho family may be said to be in almost constant
movement, they are not at all nomads, yet the term has frequently been
applied to them. Each family moves back and forth within a certain
circumscribed area, and the smallness of this area is one of the most
remarkable things in Navaho life.

Ninety per cent of the Navaho one meets on the reservation are mounted
and usually riding at a gallop, apparently bent on some important
business at a far-distant point. But a closer acquaintance will develop
the fact that there are many grown men in the tribe who are entirely
ignorant of the country 30 or 40 miles from where they were born. It
is an exceptional Navaho who knows the country well 60 miles about his
birthplace, or the place where he may be living, usually the same thing.
It is doubtful whether there are more than a few dozens of Navaho living
west of the mountains who know anything of the country to the east, and
vice versa. This ignorance of what we may term the immediate vicinity of
a place is experienced by every traveler who has occasion to make a
long journey over the reservation and employs a guide. But he discovers
it only by personal experience, for the guide will seldom admit his
ignorance and travels on, depending on meeting other Indians living
in that vicinity who will give him the required local knowledge. This
peculiar trait illustrates the extremely restricted area within which
each “nomad” family lives.

Now and then one may meet a family moving, for such movements are quite
common. Usually each family has at least two locations--not definite
places, but regions--and they move from one to the other as the
necessity arises. In such cases they take everything with them,
including flocks of sheep and goats and herds of ponies and cattle, if
they possess any. The _qasçíŋ_, as the head of the family is called,