Fig. 240—Low earth-covered shelter
Plate LXXXVII shows a structure that might easily be mistaken for a summer shelter, but which is a special type. It is a regular hogán, so far as the frame and timber work go, but it is covered only with cedar boughs. The illustration shows a part of the covering removed. This structure was a “medicine hut,” put up for the performance of certain ceremonies over a woman who was ill. There are no traces of any fire in the interior, perhaps for the reason that the women’s ceremony is always performed in the day time. Aside from its lack of covering, it is a typical hogán, and the illustration conveys a good impression of the construction always followed. This kind of hut is called an ĭnçá qoġán.
Plate LXXXVII.
ĬNÇÁ-QOGÁN OR MEDICINE HUT
Rude and primitive as these structures seem, a certain amount of knowledge and experience is necessary to build them. This has been discovered at various times by whites who have attempted to build hogáns and failed. An instance occurred not long ago where a trader, finding it necessary to build some kind of a travelers’ house, where Indians who came in to trade late in the evening or on Sunday could spend the night, decided to build a regular hogán. He employed several Navaho to do the work under his own supervision. The result was a failure, for, either on account of too much slope to the sides or for other reasons, the hogán does not remain in good order, and constant work on it is necessary to maintain it in a habitable condition.
[SWEAT HOUSES]
All over the reservation there are hundreds of little structures which are miniature models, as it were, of the hogáns, but they lack the projecting doorway. These little huts, scarcely as high as a man’s hip, look like children’s playhouses, but they occupy an important place both in the elaborate religious ceremonies and in the daily life of the Navaho. They are the sweat houses, called in the Navaho language çó‘tce, a term probably derived from qáço‘tsil, “sweat” and ĭnçĭníl‘tce, the manner in which fire is prepared for heating the stones placed in it when it is used. The structure is designed to hold only one person at a time, and he must crawl in and squat on his heels with his knees drawn up to his chin.
In the construction of these little huts a frame is made of three boughs with forked ends, and these have the same names as the corresponding timbers in a hogán. They are placed, as in the hogán, with the lower ends spread apart like a low tripod. Two straight sticks leaned against the apex form a narrow entrance, which, as in the hogán, invariably faces the east. Numerous other sticks and boughs inclose the frame, and enough bark and earth are laid on to make the structure practically air-tight when the entrance is closed.