PARTICIPATION IN CEREMONIALS IN A NAVAHO COMMUNITY

Abstract

N general, descriptions of the ceremonial behaviors of non-literate socie-I ties have tended to be restricted to accounts of observed ceremonies and descriptions of the formal ceremonial patterns with little attention to either the extent of participation or the aflects of participants. I propose to treat the first of these somewhat neglected questions from data gathered among the four hundred odd Navaho in the region between Ramah and Atarque, New Mexico.' To what extent the trend of these data would be paralleled if material was gathered on similar questions among other Navaho groups is an interesting question and would, in my opinion, merit investigation. There is also the query: Would figures gathered in this society a generation or more ago have shown a comparable intensity of ceremonial activity. I doubt it. This inference cannot be proved, of course, but it is perhaps worth recording my feeling that the present almost hysterical frequency of cere-monials is related to the fact that only recently has this Navaho group felt the full impact of our culture. The treatment will center on the following questions: What ceremonials are known? How many ceremonial practitioners are there? What ceremoni-als have been held during a specific period of time? What ceremonials have sample individuals held during their lifetimes? What proportion of family income is devoted to ceremonial activity? I n addition, various supplemen-tary information will be incorporated with a view to filling out a highly concrete picture of the extension and diversity of " religious " behavior and knowledge. While the central aim will be to describe as concretely as possible cere-monial participation in this society, the discussion relates very readily to two connected problems of some general interest. I n anthropological litera-ture one continually reads such statements as the following: " The Navaho are a very religious people, " or, more specifically, " The Navaho spend a great deal of their time in ceremonials. " It would seem to me interesting and perhaps useful to examine such statements as these on the basis of fairly full information about this particular group of Navaho during a particular period of time. The results of the examination may perhaps also throw some light on an even more general problem in which anthropologists are much interested a t present. The author of a general text on anthropology pub-The two seasons' field work which supplied the data for this paper were supported by grants from the Division of Anthropology of Harvard University. The paper has had the benefit of helpful criticism from Dr Leland C. Wyman and Mr Harry Tschopik, Jr. 359 360 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 40, 1938 lished recently states: " Every culture tends to have certain preferred modes of feeling and reacting.'' Now our problem may be phrased as follows: T o what extent does an inductive analysis of the behaviors of the individuals making up a particular Navaho group support the generalization that a preferred Navaho mode of reacting is ceremonial? Comparably complete data for time and energy devoted to other activities are lacking, but I think that the data which follow give a t least some crude measure of the amount of time and energy which goes-directly or indirectly-into ceremonial activities. A very large number of ceremonials are (or in the recent past have been) carried out by the Navaho. The members of this group have participated in a much smaller number. Three varieties of ceremonial participation are open to them. First, they may attend or take active part in ceremonials given in other Navaho communities. This opportunity is relatively little exercised a t present, although in years past individuals went rather fre-quently as far as the Navaho Reservation proper to attend such nine-day ceremonials as Mountain Top Way and Night Way. But during the past summer forty-one individuals (mostly young men) are known to have spent a total of ninety-three days attending four different performances of Enemy Way. During the preceding winter a party of nine individuals were present for the final day and night of a Night Way carried out north of Gallup. The ceremonial practitioners of this peripheral community are not in great demand outside, but two of the singers and three of the diagnosticians officiate from time to time in the three nearest Navaho societies. Data over a two year period indicate that each singer carries out about one five-night ceremonial a year among the Danoff and Two Wells Navaho and about one every second year among the Alamo-Puerticito Navaho. Each of the three diagnosticians apparently do motion-in-the-hand from two to five times yearly for Navaho from these outside groups. Second, these Navaho may attend or assist in ceremonials given for members of their own community by singers from outside. (The ceremonial is almost invariably given a t the home of the patient.) During the six months from March fifteenth to September fifteenth of this past year nine singers (mainly from the nearest Navaho groups) spent sixty-two days in conducting twenty ceremoniah2 Outside singers are seldom imported to * Within the last fifteen years singers have been brought from rather distant points on the