Canyon de Chelly - November 6

 Canyon de Chelly (Tseyi dee’nanise’ attaas’ei) pronounced d’shay, is a 84,000 acre National Historic Monument within the Navajo Nation that is jointly managed by the Park Service and the Navajo. We spent a couple of days here during which we took a 4-hour jeep tour with a Navajo guide through parts of the main canyon and an adjacent canyon, Canyon Del Muerto. We also took a 2 ½ mile hike ourselves almost 600 feet down into the canyon to the remains of an Ancestral Puebloan village, called White House Ruins. This hike is the only activity within the Canyon accessible without a Navajo guide.

The Canyon has been continuously inhabited for 5,000 years and is a special place historically and spiritually for the Navajo. Our activities there exposed us to the beauty of the Canyon, which was particularly evident on our descent into the canyon on our hike. On the hike and jeep tour we also observed many remnants of Ancestral Puebloan (750-1300) cliff dwellings/communities; White House Ruins was particularly striking.  It is a two-level structure, part on the valley floor and another part above it in an alcove, that once housed 50-100 people. Only part is there today; the rest eroded or washed away in heavy rains.  There and elsewhere we also saw many examples of petroglyphs, created by multiple generations of Canyon residents.  At the Antelope House Ruin we were treated to a visit with one of the merchants there, a noted Indian flute player and maker named Travis Terry who filled the canyon with his wonderful playing of a walnut triple flute (highspirits.com).

Our guide, Richard, told us about the Navajo residents in the Canyon from the 1600s or so, after the Ancestral Puebloans vacated it around 1300 for unknown reasons (possibly drought).  We saw many Navajo homesteads on the Canyon floor, mostly now inhabited only in the warmer months.  The Navajo did not tend to form villages, unlike the Hopi and other Pueblo people. They lived in hogans and some still do. These are round structures traditionally made of adobe and wood beams with the door always facing east. In the old days Navajo farmers were known for their corn fields, sheep raising and peach orchards. By the 1800s, the Spanish, other tribes and then the bilagaana (white people) waged war on the Navajo.  At this point the Canyon became a fortified refuge for the Navajo resistance, which did not last long as the U.S. cavalry in particular waged a ferocious series of campaigns against them. The calvary destroyed the homes, orchards, crops and sheep imprisoning thousands of the Navajo, forcing them on the 450 mile  'Long Walk' to Bosque Redondo, near Fort Sumner in New Mexico where they were exiled for 4 years. 

Coincidentally the Times had a sweet story Wednesday on an ultramarathon that winds through and up the canyon - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/sports/navajo-ultramarathon-canyon-de-chelly.html


Travis Terry, Navajo Flute player and maker
Antelope House Ruins in background


Trail to White House Ruins
White House Ruins


Canyon de Chelly Petroglyphs

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