Lying in the heart of Arizona’s Navajo Nation, Canyon de Chelly National Monument is one of the Southwest’s great scenic wonders, a labyrinth of spectacular sheer- walled canyons and deep-cut gorges. From the rim overlooks, the smooth, swirling reddish sandstone walls and spires—some dropping as much as a 1,000 feet— cast a magical panorama of shadows drifting across the tiny streams, narrow canyons and broad valley expanses far below. Meditations on Arizona’s mystical Canyon de Chelly, a breathtaking but off-the-beaten-path national monument By Victor Walsh ___________________________________
Native peoples have occupied the canyon bottoms and valleys, leaving a remarkable cultural legacy in the form of pit houses, cliff dwellings and rock art that spans nearly 5,000 years of continu- ous human existence. Encompassing close to 84,000 acres of rugged high-desert country, Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de-SHAY ) is unlike any other Indian locale I’ve visited. It’s not only a place of antiquity, a storehouse of past Indian civilizations, it’s also a place of living people, the Navajo (or Diné), who have lived along the canyons’ floor since the 1700s. To them, it is Tséyi' ( SAY-ih) , “the place deep in the rock,” a physical and spiritual homeland. Standing here with photographer Richard Miller and our guide, Irene Be- centi, in a broad wash skirting Canyon del Muerto (Canyon of the Dead), I feel the staggering presence of this ancient place. The knobby sandstone canyon wall has turned a burnished tawny brown in the clear December light. There are no caravans of tour buses, no vehicles ex- cept ours and no crowds. It is haunted by an impenetrable silence. Canyon de Chelly averages about 1,000 visitors a day during late spring and summer, but during the off-season, according to Irene, the number is fewer than 300, with most visitors driving the rim roads. Access to the canyons is lim-
ited to visitors accompanied by an autho- rized Navajo guide or park ranger. The Ancient Ones The human history of Canyon de Chelly has a living presence that endures not so much in the written record of the Spanish and other colonial powers but in the rock art carved and drawn on canyon walls, in the cliff-side community ruins of the ancient ones and in the oral traditions of their descendants, the Pueblo and Hopi. They reflect a vital, volatile period of human movement, settlement, advance- ments and struggle over resources, land and traditions. The rock art at Kokopelli Cave, our first stop, dates to the period when the ancient Puebloan people lived here. More than a 1,000 years old, it has an intrigu- ing image on it of Kokopelli, the hunch- back flute player, lying on his back. Below his feet a snake slithers across the rock face, while a human figure in a squatting position and a scattering of handprints, some painted bright white, decorate the rock on his right. “Most people interpret Kokopelli to be a fertility God,” says Irene, “but I like to look at him as Johnny Appleseed. In- stead of having a hunchback as part of his body, I think of it as a bag in which he carried beans and corn. When I was little I heard such stories from my people.
“The handprints,” she continues, “represent the healing hand. According to the ancient ones, the hand is the most important part of the body because it signifies touch, a connection to others.” The face of nearby Petroglyph Rock, a huge wind-chiseled sandstone spire, is a veritable library of images pecked into the stone during the Anasazi or Ancestral Puebloan period (A.D. 700–1300). One petroglyph, undoubtedly Navajo because the Anasazi did not have horses, shows two hunters on horseback chasing a deer. Another, to my surprise, reveals an an- thropomorphic figure with squiggly legs that represents a Hopi snake dancer. “The Hopi,” explains Irene, “came back into Canyon de Chelly around 1300. They lived on the mesas while planting corn and peaches in the canyons into the 1500s.” ruins of antiquity As we drive deeper into Canyon del Muerto, the cliff walls steadily rise, turn- ing an auburn brown in the midday light. Perched high on the ledges and in the recesses, the ruins seem nearly invis- ible, camouflaged by the sheer scale and height of the walls. Erected during the late Pueblo period (A.D. 1000–1300) and made entirely of stone masonry, the cliff dwellings were actually compact villages. They represented a major shift in the
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