Central Places on the Navajo Reservation: A Special Case

Elliot G. McInttbe University of California, Riverside Central Places on the Navajo Reservation A Special Case Central-place theory is based on the assumption that "some ordering principles govern the distribution" of places providing goods and services for a surrounding tributary area.1 The emphasis on the service function of central places is necessary, since other economic functions do not usually follow the same principles. Hence, there is a closer correspondence between actual conditions and those predicted on the basis of the model when it is applied to areas whose places provide mainly service functions.The Navajo Reservation of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah is such an area, and its central places have been examined with this in mind. Students of central place studies in the United States have developed a hierarchy of central places. Often the terms farmstead, hamlet, village, town, city, regional capital, and metropolis are given to designate the various levels of this hierarchy. At each level, certain central place functions are provided. Each higher order place performs all those functions found in the levels beneath it as well as certain additional functions. The assumption has been that higher order central places are larger and more populous than lower order central places. This can be seen in names given to the various levels of the hierarchy. They actually reflect increase in population; functional connotations to these terms are relatively recent. Central place studies have in general reinforced this characterization. Greater population can usually be taken as an index of higher order in the central place hierarchy. An examination of central places on the Navajo Reservation shows that residential population of a place is of almost no importance in assessing its level in the hierarchy. Most central places on the Navajo Reservation, regardless of order, have few or no residents. 1 Brian J. L. Berry, and Allen Pred. Central Place Studies: A Bibliography of Theory and Application. Philadelphia: Regional Science Research Institute, Bibliography Series No. 1. 1961, p. 3. 92ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS That is, the place performs no residential function in addition to its central place functions. One could almost describe such locations as pure central places. The Navajo Reservation comprises approximately 25,000 square miles or an area about the size of West Virginia. The population is about 100,000, of whom the overwhelming majority are Navajo Indians. The small non-Navajo population consists of white employees of die Bureau of Indian Affairs, other government agencies, oil companies, and the Navajo tribe, in addition to the traders and their families The Navajos are an Athabascan group who entered the Southwest during the late prehistoric period, probably sometime between A.D. 1300 and 1500.2 Initially a hunting and gathering group, diey soon acquired domestic plants and the rudiments of cultivation from their Pueblo neighbors. The introduction of sheep and horses by die Spanish reshaped the Navajo culture and economy so that some farming was done, but the primary economic activities became sheep herding and raiding. Bodi activities fitted readily into the Navajo's mobile existence. The setdement pattern of scattered clusters of dwellings with wide spacing between the houses of each cluster persists to the present time in spite of massive influences on the Navajos from the dominant Anglo, and largely urban, culture of the rest of the country. Under these initial conditions of scattered setdement and a simple self-sufficient economy, central places were not well defined. Large groups gathered only for ceremonial functions which might be held almost anywhere. Goods not produced locally were obtained either by raiding, or later, from the Indian Agencies. The administrative activities of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Agencies are the only central place functions on the Navajo Reservation which developed prior to the last seventy or eighty years. The Agencies were followed by trading posts around which central places usually developed. In 1943 there were about 150 trading posts on or near the Reservation devoted to the Navajo trade.3 By the mid-1950's the number had increased to about 200." 2 James J. Hester, Early Navajo Migrations and Acculturation in the Southwest. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico. Papers in Anthropology No. 6. 1962. p...