hogan

n.
A one-room Navajo structure traditionally built with the entrance facing east, used as a dwelling or for ceremonial purposes. Early hogans were made of earth-covered poles, with later models often built of logs, stones, and other materials.

[Navajo hooghan.]

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from Navajo or Dine
This word originated in United States

Like a church for Christians or a mosque for Muslims, the hogan of the Navajo is a sacred building for religious ceremonies. Like Noah's Ark or the Ark of the Covenant, it is built to exact specifications that come from a sacred text. In the case of the Navajo, that text is the Blessing Way, a chant recited in a ceremony of that name. It gives exact specifications of the hogan built for First Man and First Woman at the beginning of our world, when they and many others emerged from the underworld. From then to the present day, to get the spiritual benefit of the hogan, Navajo have followed the directions of the Blessing Way.

A hogan is round like the sun and faces east to catch the rays of the rising sun. Two stones are buried at the entrance to support the doorway. Then the framework is built, with straight male logs and fork-tipped female logs joined together to symbolize the strong partnership between husband and wife. A hogan is said to be male if it has a pointed roof and female if it is covered with adobe to make a round roof. There is a fireplace with a chimney in the center, and designated places for sacred objects throughout the hogan.

Unlike a church, however, a hogan can also serve as a home, and until this century it was the usual Navajo dwelling. This is indicated by the word itself: hogan means "home" or "the home place" in Navajo. A more spacious style of hogan, making use of railroad ties laid horizontally, was introduced late in the nineteenth century. Nowadays Navajo are likely to live in conventional houses with a nearby hogan for ceremonies.

Navajo (or Dine, as its speakers prefer to call it) is a vigorously living language spoken by about 150,000 people in northern Arizona and New Mexico and southern Utah. It belongs to the Athapaskan branch of the Na-Dene language family and is closely related to Apache. Hogan is the one word of Navajo that is widely known in English, attested since 1871, but until recently the hogan's religious significance was little understood by bilagáana (non-Indians).

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The traditional single-family dwelling of the Navajo Indians of the American Southwest; typically has a framework constructed of logs, poles, branches, and sticks that is covered with a layer of bark and then a thick layer of mud or sod. A smoke hole, centered at the top of the structure, provides light and carries off fumes and smoke from an open firepit located directly below; there are no windows.

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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a Navajo lodge covered with earth; traditionally built with the entrance facing east

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Ben Hogan	ben hogan
Hogan Shoe	hogan olympia