Canyon de Chelly is in the middle of the Navajo Nation, which covers all 4 states of the Four Corners area (more on that later). There are many stories about the Anasazi (also called Ancient Puebloans), Hopi, and Navajo here. We stayed at Thunderbird Lodge near Chinle, AZ, which is on the Navajo Reservation. Our Navajo tour driver said the Anasazi are "the ones who came before"; in other words, before the Navajo were there. The Hopi people trace their lineage to the Ancient Puebloans, and again there is speculation as to why the Anasazi left: poor harvests; lack of crop rotation; floods; drought? The Hopis moved to the mesas west of Canyon de Chelly (around 1300 AD) and Navajos moved in after the Anasazi left.
What looks like a swastika in the upper left of this picture is a Navajo whirling log symbol, a legend that was used in healing rituals. The Navajo stopped using that symbol when the Nazis co-opted the swastika in 1935.
They used pictographs (painted walls) and petroglyphs (carvings on rock) to tell stories. On the left side, that is a kokopelli playing the flute. Entertainment.
The story below is fascinating. This petroglyph tells about 2 hunters and a dog (in the lower right corner) chasing a deer. The Navajo know the deer is getting tired because its mouth is open. The Indians won't spear it to kill it, but rather run it until the deer stops from exhaustion. Then they perform a ceremony of thanks and put pollen in its nostrils to asphyxiate it, so they can use every part of the animal and not waste anything.
Our guide told us that the Hopi did the petroglyph in the center of this picture and the Navajo (who did more painting) did the deer on each side of the circles.
More ruins in Canyon de Chelly.
The Navajo still use the trails from the canyon floor up to the rim. This ladder is in place to help them get up to the next level...today!
This is the only area you can reach without a Navajo guide. Called the White House Ruin, Ancestral Puebloans built and occupied this place about 1000 yeas ago. The hike is about 2 1/2 miles round trip. With our guide, we were able to see White House Ruin from both below and above.
The White House is covered in a white plaster that was applied after the buildings were completed. Perhaps a more important person lived there? Perhaps that's where the elders met? Don't know. But when they left, the tribe simply vanished. This is the view from above, where the trail starts into the canyon. Remarkable engineering and building.
I'm sure you've seen pictures of Spider Rock (below) with rock climbers on it. This is an 800 foot monolith in the center of the canyon.
This fin just stands alone against the wind and water.
Inside the eyes below are more ruins.
When the rest of this cleaves off, there will be a very loud noise and a mess at the bottom. Can you see the little chunks that have already broken off? I wonder how long that will take?
This is called Massacre Cave, on the north rim of Canyon de Chelly. In the early 1800s, the Spaniards drove the Navajos deep into the Canyon, where the Indians hid. When they were discovered taking shelter on this ledge, the Spaniards fired from the rim (basically where I'm standing) and killed all the people taking refuge on the ledge.
Hope you'll have an opportunity to get to Canyon de Chelly sometime. It is worthy of your trip. What is not worthy is the 4 Corners Monument. What a disappointment. We had been there on our family vacation in 1969 and it is so very different. I realize that was 48 years ago and things have changed. However, today the Navajo charge $5 a head just to get in. And then it's like a flea market / bazaar around the monument. Such a unique place to be so commercialized. I felt like Jesus should come in and clean out it out, like he did the money changers in the Temple. Went about 2 hours out of the way and got hit with a ridiculous admission charge. I had second and third thoughts, but we did it anyway. However, I would not recommend this location to families. Not worth it when there are so many other unique places to see in the area - Canyon de Chelly; Monument Valley; Grand Canyon (both North and South Rims); Zion, Bryce Canyon; Grand Staircase-Escalante; Cedar Breaks; Glen Canyon and Lake Powell; Capital Reef; Canyonlands; Arches. And those are the ones just off the top of my head. Some final pictures of this vast landscape, driving in northern Arizona. And no charge.
Sorry for the long blog; thanks for staying with this one. Hope your weekend is a good one.
Susan and Jordan, you are making me so homesick! These are the very places I camped with my family when I was a kid. We stood very near where you took some of your Canyon de Chelly pictures once during a dry thunderstorm, laughing at each other's hair standing on end, blissfully ignorant of the terrible danger we were in of being struck by lighting ourselves! Your Antelope Canyon pics are absolutely stunning--Arizona Highways, eat your heart out!
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