Among the Winds and Mummies

AMONG THE Winds and Mummies Ancient Graves Deep In the Caves of Canyon de Chelley

CANYON de Chelly and its famous tributary, Canyon del Muerto, rise in the Chuska Mountains that form in part the northeastern boundary of Arizona. The Canyons cleave through red and yellow and grey sandstone that towers in sheer cliffs and pinnacles and domes hundreds of feet above narrow sandy floors. The twin gorges, characterized by "cliff-dwellings like mud-daubers nests, and foot holes cut in solid rock, leading mysteriously upward," are on the Navajo Indian Reservation and are included in the Canyon de Chelly National Monument. The area, comprising 83,840 acres, was created a national monument by President Herbert Hoover, April 1, 1931, consent having been given by the Navajos at their tribal council at Wingate, New Mexico July 8, 1930.

Canyon de Chelly has been called the birthplace of the Navajo nation. Here they sought shelter from invading Spaniards. Here they remained and founded their arrogant culture. Today the canyons are occupied by Navajo families who tend small peach orchards and cornpatches in the shelter of the painted cliffs.

Canyon del Muerto came appropriately by its grim name. Once the Navajo placed their women and children and aged people high up in a mountain cave for protection from raiding Spaniards. As Spanish soldiers marched below, an old Navajo woman called down, taunting them. The soldiers climbed the cliffs to a point whence they could pour bullets into the cave. All the refugees within the cave were killed. The triumphant soldiers christened the region Canyon del Muerto; the spot where the slaughter took place was named Massacre Cave. For decades the Navajo had a superstitious fear of the Canyon of Death, and avoided it.

The Canyons have been called a happy hunting ground for archeologists. During approximately 200 years (roughly 100 BC to 100 AD) the ancients living there occupied caves, first for shelter, later for protection against marauders. On the floors of these caves are piled relics of generation upon generation, the earliest relics at the bottom, so that the student, digging, may read backward, stage by stage, the story ofa succession of native cultures. Guarded by overhanging cliffs, protected from decay by dry Arizona air, are found ruined houses, graves, mortuary offerings and refuse middens; veritable galleries of pictograph carved on cliff rocks; subterranean ceremonial chambers; turquoise pendants with intricate mosaic designs. Remains of these people provide the earliest glimpses of tribes just emerg-

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ing from nomadism. Their remains are covered by the relics of four or five succeeding cultures, all of which had passed away before the coming of the first white men to this region. Living for the most part in the open but using caves for storing their meager cornharvests and for burying their dead. The Basket Makers were semi-nomadic, farmed in a haphazard fashion, and hunted and fought with light, stone tipped lances hurled with short wooden spear throwers. Remains of these first farmers are found in graves, accompanied by the finely woven baskets that characterized their era. These were so similar to the Basket

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