LANGUAGE.
19. The language of the Navaho undoubtedly belongs in the main to the Athapascan family. Hubert Howe Bancroft, in his “Native Races of the Pacific States” (vol. iii. p. 583),[292] tells us that the Athapascans or “Tinneh” are “a people whose diffusion is only equalled by that of the Aryan or Semitic nations of the Old World. The dialects of the Tinneh language are by no means confined within the limits of the hyperborean division. Stretching from the northern interior of Alaska down into Sonora and Chihuahua, we have here a linguistic line of more than four thousand miles in length, extending diagonally over forty-two degrees of latitude, like a great tree whose trunk is the Rocky Mountain range, whose roots encompass the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, and whose branches touch the borders of Hudson Bay and of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.” But the Origin Legend declares it is a mixed language ([par. 395]), and it is but reasonable to suppose that such a composite race cannot possess a very pure language. The various accessions to the tribe from other stocks have probably added many words of alien origin. What these additions are is not now known, and will not be known until all the languages of the Southwest have been thoroughly studied.
Fig. 10. Conical lodge with storm-door (from photograph by James Mooney).
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.
