Lindy's Luck

CHARLES LINDBERGH PLAYED A LITTLE-KNOWN ROLE IN SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY

The archaeologists sat quietly around their campfire near Antelope House Ruin in Canyon del Muerto one lonely afternoon in the summer of 1929, a hard day's drive on bad roads from the nearest townalone but for the ghosts of an ancient past. * Or so they thought. * They might not have been surprised if ancient ghosts had rustled out of the ruins. But they were flat amazed when the most famous couple in America suddenly appeared around a bend in the canyon, a young man with a lanky build and a petite woman with dark locks and a shy smile. Charles and Anne Lindbergh had married under a glare of publicity a month earlier, but now stood before the startled group of scientists in one of the most remote corners of the Southwest.

Charles was the first to break the silence. “How are you fixed for grub?” he asked casually.

Two years earlier, the shy airmail pilot from Minnesota had made the first successful flight across the Atlantic Ocean in his custom-built monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. An instant hero, he received a ticker-tape parade in New York City, became Time magazine's first “Man of the Year” and toured the country promoting air travel. The introverted loner had become the embodiment of America's fascination with aviation. Fans and reporters besieged him wherever he went, businesses begged him for endorsements and promoters hounded him with offers. Pained by his celebrity status, Lindbergh fled crowds and interviews. His historic flight had shrunk the world, and now it was closing in around him.

But fame had benefits, too, including a job as technical adviser for the Transcontinental Air Transport (T.A.T.) Co., which was to offer the nation's first coast-to-coast air service. Lindbergh helped identify the route and supervised the construction of airports, including those in the Southwest at Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in Winslow and Kingman in Arizona. Fame also introduced him to Anne Morrow, the daughter of the American ambassador to Mexico. Mousy and shy, with a love of poetry and reading, Morrow understood Lindbergh's fragile inner world. She also learned to share his disdain for the press, who reported their every public appearance and bribed household staff for details. Even after their marriage in May 1929, reporters and photographers spied on them during their honeymoon cruise along the New England coast. “They found us again this morning,” wrote Anne from aboard their ship, “-that terrifying drone of a plane hunting you, and boats.” Flying an open-cockpit biplane, the newlyweds reached Albuquerque on July 5 and then discreetly veered northwest over the Navajo Indian Reservation to take photographs of the ruins in Chaco Canyon and Canyon de Chelly. The following day, they flew over the Grand Canyon before continuing to California. Excited by her first view of the Southwest, Anne wrote her mother from Winslow about flying over “desolate country but very thrilling, over deserted canyons where the river was dried up and we saw the ruins of old Indian cities along the river bed.” She was also fascinated by the traditional Navajo dwellings, or hogans, which she described as “funny little stone houses (like igloos) with a hole in the top for smoke.” The couple's arrival in Los Angeles put them back in the spotlight. Surrounded by movie stars and business leaders, they smiled and waved for the cameras while longing for the freedom and solitude of the skies.

After meeting in Los Angeles with officials from the Carnegie Institution, they agreed to visit archaeologist Dr. Alfred Kidder's Pecos field camp near Santa Fe, New Mexico. They left on July 21 and stopped in Winslow to photograph nearby Meteor Crater before heading to northern Arizona's Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto. For several hours, they traced the chasms from the air, marveling at the beauty of the canyons, photographing the ruins and buzzing the field camp of Kidder's friend and associate, Earl Morris. Charles would lean out of the cockpit to take pictures while Anne practiced her developing skills as a pilot. Along one wall of Canyon de Chelly, they spotted a cluster of rooms hidden in a large alcove just below the upper rim, difficult to detect from the ground. They carefully photographed its Location: Canyon de Chelly National Monument is near the town of Chinle in the heart of the Navajo Indian Reservation.

when you go

Getting There: From Flagstaff, take Interstate 40 east 135 miles to Chambers near the New Mexico border. At Chambers, take U.S. Route 191 north 38 miles to Ganado. From Ganado, take State Route 264 west for 6 miles and then drive north again on U.S. 191 for 30 miles to the Chinle turnoff at Navajo Route 7.

Hours: Visitors center is open daily, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.

Additional Information: (928) 674-5500; www.nps.gov/cach.

location before continuing east toward Kidder's camp at Pecos. Over the next several days, Kidder directed the Lindberghs in flights across northern New Mexico to photograph known sites and explore new areas. They treasured the simplicity of camp life and the Navajo artwork they saw in Santa Fe. But passersby began to wonder about the strange airplane, and eventually reporters learned of their presence. The world was closing in again. It was time to move on.

So Charles and Anne decided to make one last flight to drop prints of their Canyon de Chelly photographs of the unknown ruins into Morris' camp from the air. As they prepared to drop their package late on July 27, Charles spotted a cliff-edge landing site. He set down and they followed a rough foot trail to the canyon bottom. Unfortunately, Earl and Ann Morris had left two days earlier to meet visitors in Farmington. But their assistants, Oscar and Omer Tatum, and a young student named Edward "Bud" Weyer Jr., quickly welcomed the famous strangers into camp.

Earlier that summer, the archaeologists had stocked up on cheap tabloid newspapers to use as wrapping paper when packaging artifacts. As a result, the glaring headlines of "Anne and Lindy Married" covered the camp. Noting their guests' embarrassment, Bud and Omer quickly hid the papers while Oscar helped set up their bedrolls. After dinner, they all studied Lindbergh's aerial photographs and talked archaeology late into the night. Charles and Anne were entranced by the beauty, grandeur and quiet solitude of the canyons. Here they were no longer celebrities. For perhaps the first time since their marriage, they could truly relax. "I didn't know it was possible really to get away from things," Anne observed wistfully. That night a storm rolled in, filling the sky with lightning and coating the cliffs with sheets of rainwater as the archaeologists and their visitors slept beneath the cover of a large alcove.

In the morning, Bud and Omer joined Charles and Anne in a search for the mysterious rim-top ruin the Lindberghs had spotted from the air during their earlier flights. They climbed out of the canyon and set out for Canyon de Chelly, but the outing proved longer and rougher than expected as they pushed through dense underbrush, scrambled across gullies and checked their location against the photographs. They soon ran out of water and were forced to drink from potholes in the rocks. Shortly before noon, they finally located the ruin in the northern face of Canyon de Chelly, hidden in a wide indentation below the rim. Here the ancestral Puebloans had walled off a number of small alcoves to create a collection of cozy rooms. After exploring their discovery and eating a brief lunch, the group returned to camp.

Throughout the long hike, Anne impressed everyone by keeping pace with her long-legged husband without complaining or asking to rest. Upon their return, however, she removed her boots to reveal silver-dollar-sized blisters on both feet. After a short rest, the Lindberghs began their long journey home.

"How are the rice and curry holding out?" asked Oscar after their famous guests had departed. "We want to be ready to receive the King of Siam, case he comes riding up the canyon on the back of an elephant."

In a little over a week, the Lindberghs had observed dozens of archaeological sites, discovered several new ones and created an unprecedented photographic catalog of the ancient Southwest. The project had successfully demonstrated the value of aviation in archaeology, and the published reports by the Carnegie Institution probably helped influence Congress and President Hoover to establish Canyon de Chelly National Monument in 1931. Moreover, the Lindberghs had briefly regained a sense of freedom. Charles and Anne remained friends with the Kidders for many years, and would reportedly slip into Winslow from time to time to escape the public eye and remember the adventures of their youth.

When he died in 1974, Charles Lindbergh requested that his funeral ceremony include words from a Navajo prayer. Like the archaeologists, he had come to Canyon de Chelly to hunt secrets, but like the Navajos, found instead respite and refuge. AH Historian Erik Berg of Phoenix has a special interest in the role of science and technology in the American Southwest. He published a detailed account of the Lindberghs' archaeology adventures in the spring 2004 issue of the Journal of Arizona History.