Navajo Homes
"When a winter hogan is to be built the site is usually chosen in a secluded or sheltered spot; the choice always being such as will permit the door to…
From: Unknown To: 1903 C.E.
Location: Navajo Nation, New Mexico
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From The Navajo and His Blanket by Uriah Hollister, 1903
The Navajo is not a dweller in tents, wigwams or tepees, as we know these forms of habitations. Long use of a word often leads to the belief that the word was coined because it so fitly described the object. We think a wigwam is named just right to describe that kind of a structure; long association of the word with the object having been the means of such perfect reconciliation.
The Navajo house is a "hogan," and, although the name is a comparatively new word, it seems to fit. The original Navajo word is "qugan," early converted into the popular name hogan, by which his home is known wherever the Navajo Indian is known. An expression made by a friend of mine when he first saw a Navajo home "Well, it is a hogan, sure enough," illustrates the fitness of the name, which is applied to the two distinct forms, the winter and the summer hogan. From a little distance the winter hogan looks like a rough conical mound of earth, with an opening into darkness.
The Navajo hogan (Figure 12), at Putnam Springs, New Mexico, is typical of the winter habitation. The photograph was taken during a time of drought, when the structure was deserted; which accounts for the absence of a blanket from the doorway. This is an old hogan, showing many repairs by additions of branches of trees to secure the earth covering, and of the gnarled cedar trunks supporting the door-frame. Unsightly and unshapely as it may appear, it is built according to rule; a rule so rigid as to be almost a religious ceremony, and requiring every detail to be strictly carried out.
When a winter hogan is to be built the site is usually chosen in a secluded or sheltered spot; the choice always being such as will permit the door to face the east. The ground is leveled, and then a circle is drawn of the desired size; there being no general rule as to the diameter or height of a hogan. From about a foot inside this circle the ground is dug out to a depth of twelve or eighteen inches, and the bottom of this basin-like excavation is the floor of the hogan, to reach which a downward step or two must be taken; the foot or so of undisturbed soil left around it, and concentric with the circle, forming a circular seat or bench that encompasses the depressed floor. When this floor is smoothed and stamped until it is level and hard, the foundation is considered complete.
Usually the builder of such a home calls to his assistance a number of his friends, and the building is completed in one day. Men are first sent out for the principal five timbers or poles. Each of three of these must be forked at one end, and of such shape as to firmly interlock when placed in position; the other two, sticks for the doorway, should be straight poles; all being trimmed and the bark taken off as a rough finish. The forked poles are laid on the ground, the forked ends together, and with the butts so arranged that each is outside the circle; one at the north, one at the west, and one at the south. The two straight poles are then laid with their butts to the east, and with the tops just inside the forks of the other three, and far enough apart to leave the desired space for the doorway.
The timbers or poles used are usually from eight to twelve inches in diameter and from ten to twelve feet long. In rearing the framework of the edifice, the three forked timbers are raised upright and then leaned toward the center until the forks lock. The poles for the doorway are placed at the same ground distance from the center as the others, and leaning inward and converging until their tops rest on each side of the apex; say, one foot apart at the top, and spreading to about four feet apart at the base, leaving an opening from the outer circle of the base to the center of the house. Two posts with forked tops are then planting upright between the door-poles at their base, standing about five feet high, and across these a lintel is placed in their forks; this arrangement forming the doorway, proper, over which a blanket is usually hung.
The space between the top of this vertical door frame and the leaning door-poles behind it, is levelly roofed over until it comes in contact with the two converging door-poles, and at the inward end of this bit of flat roof an opening is left through which smoke may escape. The sides of the structure are now filled in with smaller poles, the butts resting on the circle, with their tops reaching to the apex.
After these poles are placed as closely together as possible, cedar boughs are woven in. and if convenient, the whole is covered with pine or cedar bark. The entire edifice is then further covered with earth to a depth of from four to eight inches, and the house is complete. A hogan from sixteen to eighteen feet in diameter averages about eight feet in interior height above the center of the floor.
Colonel Cecil A. Deane writes me as follows concerning some hogans of peculiar form observed by him:
“The hogans I refer to I have seen only at one place, and I think they have never been described in government reports nor by any writer. On the little-traveled road leading in a southwest erly direction from the great ruins on the Charco to Gallup, N. M., about ten miles northeast of the Continental Divide, and thirty miles northeast of Gallup, we find a group of eight hogans at a place called Tigue (pronounced Togay).
The peculiar location of these hogans is worthy of notice. At some remote period of time, a lake, comprising perhaps 2,000 acres, covered the present site of the hogans. Either because of the breaking of its retaining boundary, or because of evaporation, or both, the lake became dry, leaving a perfectly level surface even now wholly devoid of vegetation. Near the east margin of the lake bed are numerous springs, a few of which discharge tepid water. Around each spring is found a circular deposit of dark sedimentary matter of perhaps three or four feet in height, which has been left by the overflowing waters, none of which is fit for use. Right in the midst of these miniature geysers, we find a large spring of clear, cold water, which is enclosed with walls of stone brought from the adjacent bluffs, and near it are the eight hogans I have referred to.
They are circular in form, each about fifteen feet in diameter and eight feet at their greatest height. The walls are made of rough-dressed cedar or pinon logs, laid horizontally, having half-locking mortices at either end, and of such length as results in a nearly vertical wall to a height of about four feet, when their length is gradually reduced till the apex is reached, where an opening is left for the escape of smoke from the fire which burns in the center of the hogan. The doorway is, as in all instances, on the east side, which is closed by a blanket suspended from a horizontal lintel.
The space between the logs is filled with small blocks of wood, and clay mortar, and the exterior surface is plastered with that material. No part of the floor is sunk below the general level, as I have observed in hogans of other types, and the obtuse angle formed where the walls meet the floor is used as a place of storage for the cooking utensils, blankets, etc., usually found in a Navajo home. When I visited these hogans in the spring of 1900, all were occupied, but I was informed through my interpreter, that the greatest number of their owners were more or less distant with their flocks of sheep or goats. As I was informed that this spring, which supplies water for the occupants of these hogans, is the only spring of living water within a radius of about fifty miles, we may reasonably infer that the permanency of the water is the cause of the permanent character of the hogans."
A Navajo summer hogan is a structure altogether different from the winter home, and may be almost anything (Figure 11) that can be considered a shelter. A circle of pine or cedar boughs, either planted in the earth or piled up three or four feet high, is one form. In this an opening is left in one side, the one most convenient, and without regard to points of the compass which are so important in the case of the winter hogan. In the center of this a fire is built, blankets are thrown over projecting branches for shade and cover, and in the enclosure the household labors and other duties are carried on. The family eat and sleep, the squaw sets up her loom, and weaving and other work go on just as regularly and as industriously as in the more pretentious home.
The house just described is the Navajos rudest or simplest form of construction. There are degrees of betterment according to the length of time the shelter is expected to be used, or to the facilities or material at hand for construction. An excavation in a hillside, covered and sided with poles and brush, but with the entire front left open, is another form. Rough walls of stone, two or three feet high, arranged in a semi-circle and covered with any handy material is still another. A perpendicular wall of rock is sometimes utilized as a support for a "lean-to" constructed against it.
A rather picturesque summer hogan is the one shown in Figure 3, which is from a photograph by Goodman, of Bluff, Utah. It is simply a frame of small trees, with the front entirely open; the roof and three sides being lightly covered with branches of cottonwood and willow trees with the leaves left on them.
So the forms vary as conditions of occupation, location and materials vary, or as the industry or ingenuity of the builders differ. Occasionally a rich Navajo will build a hogan of logs or of rough stones laid up without mortar, and covered with timbers and earth; and he may also be ambitious enough to add a window, but if he does so it is never opened.
This form of winter hogan is shown in Figure 13. The picture clearly exhibits the method of construction, and also the forms of "Hostine" (Mr.) Joe, and the old medicine man who owns the outfit; the former on the left, and the latter on the right. So great a departure from the usual type of winter hogan is very modern, and is prompted by a desire to imitate the white man.
It will be noted that Navajo habitations are not, as a rule, of a very permanent character. A home that may be built and dedicated to use in a day, is not of great value, and may, for good reason, be abandoned at any time. For this, ill luck, sickness, or death may be sufficient cause, and therefore we find many deserted hogans that are in fairly good condition for occupation. As a strong superstition forbids further use of a hogan in which a person has died, often it is then destroyed; as no one of the tribe can be persuaded to enter it, much less live in it.
Of late years, if the owner of a hogan considers it of more than ordinary value, or is too lazy to construct a new one, he sees to it that the sick person is carried out, so that if he dies, he must die out of doors, and thus save the good reputation of the house.
Another quite common structure, and well distributed over the entire area of Navajo territory, is the "sweat-house." This is a miniature hogan, capable of accommodating only one person, who is required to take a lying or sitting position in it. It is freely used by the sick, and often by the well; and is one of the medicine man’s "strong cards" for the cure of disease, and for the casting out of evil spirits. After stones have been heated and placed inside, the patient crawls in, the opening is closed, and he is soon in a profuse perspiration. When he has cooked long enough, he is taken out and rubbed dry with dry sand. The results as described by the Navajos are much the same as those from our more elaborate Turkish baths.
In Figure 6 is shown a sweathouse covered with a Navajo blanket to retain the heat better; the remains of the fire in which the stones were heated appearing in the foreground. A patient was inside undergoing the sweating ordeal when the photograph was taken; and to obtain the privilege of taking it Mr. Matteson was required to negotiate satisfactorily for a buckskin the attendant Indians desired to sell.
When a Navajo hogan has been completed, it must be dedicated by a ritual ceremony. The woman first clears the house of all rubbish accumulated in building, whereupon the husband builds a fire directly under the smoke hole. He then rubs the timbers with white corn meal, and also strews some of it in a circle around the fire, while repeating in slow, measured tones, the ritual of dedication. All the neighbors are then invited in and the ceremonial songs are sung, by which evil spirits are frightened away, and happiness, health and good luck invoked for the occupants.
As their hogans are not as a general rule built in the open, but concealed among the pines and cedars, or in the canons, no definite idea can be obtained of the population of the country by merely passing through it. In recent years the common Sibley tent has been used in summer to some extent, as it is less work to take it down, move and set it up again, than to build even the simplest summer hogan.
Hollister, Uriah S. The Navajo and His Blanket. United States Colortype, 1903.
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