discovered at various times by whites who have attempted to build hogáns
and failed. An instance occurred not long ago where a trader, finding it
necessary to build some kind of a travelers’ house, where Indians who
came in to trade late in the evening or on Sunday could spend the night,
decided to build a regular hogán. 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 hogán
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 hogáns, 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
_çó‘tce_, a term probably derived from _qáço‘tsil_, “sweat” and
_ĭnçĭníl‘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 hogán. They are placed, as in the hogán, with the lower