Canyon de Chelly National Monument.........

Canyon de Chelly National Monument NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

“GOOD MORNING,” called the Park Ranger at Canyon de Chelly National Monument as the dusty car from Pennsylvania pulled up to the Headquarters building. “Will you people register with us?” “Yes, we will be glad to,” replied the driver and evident head of the family group. “Did you people camp some place on the reservation?” “No, we had a cabin on Highway 66 and made an early start from Chambers. We cooked breakfast near Ganado.” “How did you find the road?” asked the Ranger.

“It was much better than we expected from the reports that have filtered out to us the past few months. We certainly started in on those eighty-two miles with more than a few misgivings. However, we were prepared for anything as we brought along as much impedimenta as we used for a trip twenty years ago.” “You were wise,” agreed the ranger, “because the roads over the Navajo reservation are of the same standard as we found throughout the west two decades ago. It reminds one quite forcibly of the progress made by our highway department in such a short time.

The Mummy Cave in Canyon del Muerto, one of several hundred interesting sights in Canyon de Chelly National Monument. This tremendous area is noted both for its remnants of a pre-historic culture and the beauty and magnificence of its surroundings.

Custodian

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE The Navajo, primitive people in a primitive locale add to the color of Canyon de Chelly National Monument. These people come into the canyons during summer to till their fields and watch their flocks.

JOSEF MUENCH A Navajo flock with two Navajo boys in attendance. The sheep stand out against the deep red cliffs.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE The vista of Canyon de Chelly from the White House overlook is one of sweeping beauty and color. The canyon walls break off from the plateau in plunges of dizzy steepness.

NORMAN G. WALLACE Indian petroglyphs in Canyon del Muerto show Spanish soldiers on the march. What distant scribes recorded this historical notation?

with 300 feet of vertical cliff is a little too jarring on our noise-knotted nerves. "Now while you people are trying to get back your slightly wobbly sense of perspective I'll try to tell you a little about the geology of Canyon de Chelly. The massive formation has been named by the geologists the de Chelly sandstone. It is of the same age as the Coconino sandstone you encounter in Oak Creek and Grand canyons, further to the west. However, it differs in mineral content and grain size, so it has been given a different name. Notice across the canyon the lines in the rock that slope toward our feet. Those are called cross bedding lines and show us after an examination of the individual sand grains that the entire deposit was laid down in the form of dunes, just as these dunes that you can see over here to the southwest are being formed today. So here at this point we can see two geological phenomena, one in the making and another after several million years.

"Now that we have adjusted ourselves to our height we can, with some equanimity look down over the precipice and we see a typical canyon farm with fields of alfalfa, corn, melons, and beans and, of course, the ever present peach orchard.

"When the first Navajos entered Canyon de Chelly we don't know, but it must have been about three hundred years ago. Several clues that the archaeologists have observed here in the canyon, point fairly conclusively to the fact that these little farms supported quite a population of Hopi Indians late in the sixteenth century. Perhaps, it was they who planted the first peach orchards and reclaimed the long abandoned Anazazi fields. Several hints which bear out this idea appear in the early Navajo legends. Then too, the date is further qualified by the presence of peach trees, which are not indigenous to the New World but were introduced by the Spanish.

"This plot of land below us is being worked by a young Navajo named Kee Teller. He has had more than his share of hard luck this spring as a result of the high water. A row of cottonwood trees along the outer edge of his pasture was carried away by the high water as well as part of his pasture. It almost washed away his hogan and did force him to rebuild it on higher ground. This incident will serve to demonstrate what an unprecedented amount of precipitation we have had during the past winter. His corn fields, which are back closer to the cliff, have not yet dried out enough to permit planting. Let us hope that he will be repaid by an unusually large yield at harvest time. His peach orchard, and all others located on the south side of the canyon, will not produce this year because of a late frost. Those on the north side of the canyons were past the bloom far enough and were not damaged."

"Standing at this point it is possible for us to see the mouth of Canyon del Muerto a little over a mile to the east. That is another place name that needs explaining. Late in the year of 1805 a troop of Mexican Cavalry penetrated the canyon to a point about sixteen miles above the mouth looking for a band of Navajos that had just carried out a raid on the Zunis. The Navajos had been warned of their ap-(Continued on Page Thirty-Seven)"