To the end that the spirit may begin aright its journey to the afterworld, the body is taken out of the hogán through an opening specially made in the wall on the northern side, for the doorway always faces the east. The immediate relatives of the deceased avoid looking at the corpse if possible. Friends of the family or distant relations usually take charge of the burial. A couple of men dig a grave on a hillside and carry the body there wrapped in blankets. No monument is erected to mark the spot. Before the body is taken out, the hogán is vacated and all necessary utensils are carried away. The two men who bury the remains of the former occupant carefully obliterate with a cedar bough all footprints that the relations of the deceased may have made in the hogán, in order to conceal from the departed spirit the direction in which they went should it return to do them harm. The premises are completely abandoned and the house often burned. Never will a Navaho occupy a _tsí̆ndi hogán_, and when travelling at night he will take a roundabout trail in order to avoid one. Formerly horses were killed at the grave. So recently as 1906 a horse was sacrificed within sight of a Catholic mission on the reservation, that its spirit might accompany that of a dead woman to the afterworld. This horse was the property of the woman, and her husband, fearing to retain it, yet not daring to kill it himself, called upon another to do so. HISTORY Although raiders and plunderers since known to history, the Navaho cannot be designated a warring tribe, for however courageous they may be, their lack of political integrity has ever been an obstacle to military organization. They never have had a tribal chief, properly so called, while their many leading men could never command more than a small following. Manuelito, who was acclaimed head-chief in 1855 at the conference with Governor Meriwether for the purpose of negotiating a treaty, probably had a greater following than any other Navaho in historic times, but he could never have relied on a majority of the warriors of his widely scattered tribe. Although divided into many bands, like the Apache, the Navaho, unlike them, were not engaged in ceaseless depredation, their sporadic raids having been conducted by small parties quite independent of any organized tribal movement. They preferred rather to follow a pastoral life. With their large population, had they possessed the Apache’s insatiable desire for war and a political organization that permitted concerted action, the subjugation of the Southwest would have been far more difficult than it proved to be.