HOUSES.
20. The habitations of the Navahoes are usually of a very simple character. The most common form consists of a conical frame, made by setting up a number of sticks at an angle of about forty-five degrees. An opening is left on one side of the cone to answer as a doorway. The frame is covered with weeds, bark, or grass, and earth, except at the apex, where the smoke from the fire in the centre of the floor is allowed to escape. In the doorway an old blanket hangs, like a curtain, in place of a door. But the opening of the door is not a simple hiatus, as many descriptions would lead one to suppose. A cross-piece, forming a lintel, connects the jambs at a convenient height, and the triangular space between the lintel and the smoke-hole is filled in as shown in [fig. 10]. A picture in Schoolcraft’s extensive work[327] (vol. iii. plate 17) is intended to represent a Navaho lodge; but it appears to have been drawn by Captain Eastman from an imperfect description. In this picture the doorway is shown as extended up and continuous with the smoke-hole.
21. Some lodges are made of logs in a polygonal form, as shown in [fig. 11]. Again they are occasionally built partly of stone, as shown in [fig. 12]. In cold weather a small storm-door or portico is often erected in front of the door ([fig. 10]), and an outer and an inner curtain may be hung to more effectually keep out the wind.
Fig. 11. Hut of logs.
22. Shelters.—Contiguous to the hut, the Navaho usually constructs a rude shelter of branches. Here, in fair weather, the family often cook and spend most of the day. Here, too, the women erect their looms and weave or set out their metates and grind corn, and some even choose to sleep here. Such a “corral” is shown in [fig. 12].
Fig. 12. Hut built partly of stone.
23. Summer Houses.—In summer they often occupy structures more simple than even the hut described above. [Fig. 13] represents a couple of summer houses in the Zuñi Mountains. A structure of this kind is built in a few hours. A couple of forked sticks are set upright in the ground; slanting poles are laid against this in the direction of the prevailing winds, so as to form a windbreak, half wall and half roof, and this is covered with grass, weeds, and earth. The ends may be similarly enclosed, or may be merely covered in with evergreen branches. One side of the house is completely open. In [fig. 13] a loom is shown set up for work in one of these rude structures, the aboriginal appearance of which is somewhat marred by having a piece of old canvas lying on top.
24. Medicine-lodges.—The medicine-lodges, when erected in regions where long poles may be cut, are usually built in the form of the ordinary hogáns (huts), though of much greater size ([fig. 14]). When these large lodges are constructed at low altitudes, where only stunted trees grow, they are built on a rude frame with walls and roof separate, somewhat on the same plan as the lodges formerly used by the Arickarees, Mandans, and other tribes on the Missouri, and seeming a connecting link between the Navaho hogán and the Mandan earth-lodge.[184]
Fig. 13. Summer houses.
Fig. 14. Medicine-lodge.
25. Sweat-houses.—The sweat-house or sudatory is a diminutive form of the ordinary hogán or hut as described in [par. 20], except that it has no smoke-hole (for fire is never kindled in it), neither has it a storm-door. It is sometimes sunk partly underground and is always thickly covered with earth. Stones are heated in a fire outside and carried, with an extemporized tongs of sticks, into the sudatory. [Fig. 15] poorly represents one of these structures. When ceremonially used, the frame is constructed of different materials for different ceremonies, and the house is sometimes decorated with dry-paintings.[82]
Fig. 15. Sudatory.
26. Modern Houses.—During the past ten years, a few of the more progressive Navahoes have built themselves rectangular stone houses, with flat roofs, glazed windows, wooden doors, and regular chimneys, such as their neighbors, the Mexicans and Pueblo Indians, build. They have had before them, for centuries, examples of such houses, and they are an imitative and docile people. The reason they have not copied at an earlier date is probably a superstitious reason. They believe a house haunted or accursed in which a human being dies.[91] They abandon it, never enter it again, and usually destroy it. With such a superstition prevailing, they hesitate to build permanent dwellings. Perhaps of late years the superstition is becoming weakened, or they have found some mystic way of averting the supposed evil.