' house, where Indians who
came in to trade late in the evening or on Sunday could spend the night,
decided to build a regular hogan. 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 hogan
does not remain in good order, and constant work on it is necessary to
maintain it in a habitable condition.

[Illustration: Fig. 239--Shelter with partly closed front]

SWEAT HOUSES

All over the reservation there are hundreds of little structures which
are miniature models, as it were, of the hogans, 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
_co'tce_, a term probably derived from _qaco'tsil_, "sweat" and
_[)i]nc[)i]nil'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 hogan. They are placed, as in the hogan, 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 hogan, 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.

When the place is to be used a fire is made close beside it, and in
this fire numerous stones are heated. The patient to be treated is
then stripped, placed inside the little hut, and given copious drafts
sometimes of warm or hot water. The nearly red-hot stones are rolled in
beside him and the entrance is closed with several blankets, forming in
fact a hot-air bath. In a short time the air in the interior rises to a
high temperature and the subject sweats profusely. When he is released
he rubs himself dry with sand, or if he be ill and weak he is rubbed
dry by his friends. This ceremony has a very important place in the
medicine-man's therapeutics, for devils as well as diseases ar