procure the means of subsistence. It is this
tendency which is especially destructive of the old house-building
ideas, and which will eventually cause a complete change in the houses
of the people. Recently the tendency has been emphasized by the
construction, under governmental supervision, of a number of small
irrigating ditches in the mountain districts. The result of these works
must be eventually to collect the Navaho into small communities, and
practically to destroy the present pastoral life and replace it with
new and, perhaps, improved conditions.

But many of the arts of the Navaho, and especially their house building,
grew out of and conformed to the old methods of life. It is hardly to be
supposed that they will continue under the new conditions, and, in fact,
pronounced variations are already apparent. Up to ten years ago there
was so little change that it might be said that there was none; since
then the difference can be seen by everyone. Should the price of wool
rise in the near future the change that has been suggested might be
checked, but it has received such an impetus that the Navaho will always
henceforth pay much more attention to horticulture than they have in the
past, and this means necessarily a modification in the present methods
of house building. The average Navaho farm, and almost every adult male
now has a small garden patch, comprises less than half an acre, while
two acres is considered a large area to be worked by one family at one
time.

One result of this industrial development of the people is an increased
permanency of dwellings. As the flocks of sheep and goats diminish and
their care becomes less important, greater attention is paid to the
selection of sites for homes, and they are often located now with
reference to a permanent occupancy and with regard to the convenience of
the fields, which in some cases furnish the main source of subsistence
of the family. As a collateral result of these conditions and tendencies
an effort is now sometimes made to build houses on the American plan;
that is, to imitate the houses of the whites. Such houses are a wide
departure from the original ideas of house structures of the Navaho.
They are rectangular in plan, sometimes with a board roof, and
occasionally comprise several rooms. When the local conditions favor it
they are constructed of stone, regular walls of masonry; but perhaps the
greater number of those now in existence are in the m