n to feast together
for a week or two on green corn, melons, and peaches.

As a rule, however, each hogan stands by itself, and it is usually
hidden away so effectually that the traveler who is not familiar with
the customs of the people might journey for days and not see half a
dozen of them. The spot chosen for a dwelling place is either some
sheltered nook in a mesa or a southward slope on the edge of a pinon
grove near a good fuel supply and not too far from water. A house is
very seldom built close to a spring--perhaps a survival of the habit
which prevailed when the people were a hunting tribe and kept away from
the water holes in order not to disturb the game which frequented them.

So prevalent is this custom of placing the houses in out-of-the-way
places that the casual traveler receives the impression that the region
over which he has passed is practically uninhabited. He may, perhaps,
meet half a dozen Indians in a day, or he may meet none, and at sunset
when he camps he will probably hear the bark of a dog in the distance,
or he may notice on the mountain side a pillar of smoke like that
arising from his own camp fire. This is all that he will see to indicate
the existence of other life than his own, yet the tribe numbers over
12,000 souls, and it is probable that there was no time during the day
when there were not several pairs of eyes looking at him, and were he
to fire his gun the report would probably be heard by several hundred
persons. Probably this custom of half-concealed habitations is a
survival from the time when the Navaho were warriors and plunderers,
and lived in momentary expectation of reprisals on the part of their
victims.

Although the average Navaho family may be said to be in almost constant
movement, they are not at all nomads, yet the term has frequently been
applied to them. Each family moves back and forth within a certain
circumscribed area, and the smallness of this area is one of the most
remarkable things in Navaho life.

Ninety per cent of the Navaho one meets on the reservation are mounted
and usually riding at a gallop, apparently bent on some important
business at a far-distant point. But a closer acquaintance will develop
the fact that there are many grown men in the tribe who are entirely
ignorant of the country 30 or 40 miles from where they were born. It
is an exceptional Navaho who knows the country well 60 miles about his
birthplace, or the place where he may be li