Page:Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society V.djvu/35

Rh Fig. 15 poorly represents one of these structures. When ceremonially used, the frame is constructed of different materials for different ceremonies, and the house is sometimes decorated with dry-paintings.82 26. Moderm Houses. — During the past ten years, a few of the more progressive Navahoes have built themselves rectangular stone houses, with flat roofs, glazed windows, wooden doors, and regular chimneys, such as their neighbors, the Mexicans and Pueblo Indians, build. They have had before them, for centuries, examples of such houses, and they are an imitative and docile people. The reason they have not copied at an earlier date is probably a superstitious reason.



They believe a house haunted or accursed in which a human being dies. They abandon it, never enter it again, and usually destroy it. With such a superstition prevailing, they hesitate to build permanent dwellings. Perhaps of late years the superstition is becoming weakened, or they have found some mystic way of averting the supposed evil.