A Comparative Study of Navajo Mortuary Practices

The present-day Navajo Tribe is descended from a nucleus of Southern Athabaskans who absorbed a large number of immigrants from diverse sources and exhibits, as a result, a cultural hybrid vigor that has long attracted special interest in its culture, history, and changing conditions. Most of the immigrants were refugees from Pueblo tribes, some fleeing Spanish rule and others factional disputes that the pressures of EuroAmerican contact engendered within their natal societies. That these immigrants came from several pueblos speaking various languages was sufficient to ensure that the original nucleus should survive as the linguistic and political entity. The cultural and biological impacts were more lasting. What we regard today as Navajo culture is a blending of elements (traits) and complexes from many sources. The great diversity of customs associated with death in Navajo culture makes tempting an effort to discern the sources of the various traits in order to understand better the dynamics of culture change which might have led to this diversity. Attitudes toward the dead have been found to be unusually important in Navajo thought. Thus it is probable that a better understanding of their development might also provide insights into other aspects of culture change in the past. The methods used in this study are those of standard comparative ethnology. Navajo culture is the standard against which the other cultures are contrasted, using Navajo culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What was then considered traditional Navajo is thought to represent fairly the culture of the tribe during the last century or so of the tribe's existence as a sovereign entity or what may be loosely termed aboriginal, although certainly not precontact. Comparison is made with the New Mexico Puebloans, thus excluding the Hopis, as

Geography · Linguistics · Navajo · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology

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