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 rectangular in shape, as also are
all of those built of stone masonry in the valley regions.

There is a peculiar custom of the Navaho which should be mentioned, as
it has had an important influence on the house-building practices of the
tribe, and has done much to prevent the erection of permanent abodes.
This is the idea of the _tcĭ´ndi_ hogán. When a person dies within a
house the rafters are pulled down over the remains and the place is