ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to describe the wider social, cultural, and physical environment in which Navajo infants develop. The Navajo, who refer to themselves in the Navajo language as Dine ("The People"), and in English as members of the Navajo Nation, are an Athabascan-speaking people who entered the United States from northern Canada about 500 to 600 years ago. The Navajo entered the Southwest with an economy and social organization that had already long been based on hunting and gathering. There was no political or economic organization above the level of rather loosely organized bands, but there was a common language and an extensive clan system which cross-cut membership in the scattered bands. Cottonwood Springs is a small and widely dispersed community of about 1000 people in the northwestern part of the Navajo Nation. The nature of the camp determines the social universe of the Navajo child more than any other social structural variable.
