Vista after Red Rock Vista opened up as the canyon welcomed us into its depths; sunlit trees sparkled against shadowed sandstone walls that reached ever higher as we proceeded, reaching 1,000 feet at the far end. Long tunnels of interlocking cottonwood branches, shivery shade. Phantasmagorical rock formations, surely derived from some living form, crafted by a sculptor from myth time. A ledge with the tiny upside-down clay nests of cliff swallows. Ancient petroglyphs—hands, spirals (Anasazi semaphore?), along with Navajo renderings of antelopes and Spaniards on horses. Beckoning caves carved from bare walls. The black stripes called desert varnish, which scientists only recently discovered to be the result of live bacteria eating manganese and iron. Gnarled junipers growing impossibly from minuscule cracks in the walls and ledges. Huge slabs of rock, mute sentinels, having once fallen from above thanks to water sneaking into a fissure and freezing there, expanding, over and over and over through the aeons until ... boom! The truck plunges along a sandy track far into the shade of an overhang under 600 feet of rock and you’re thinking, “Is now the time?” Will some slab of rock choose this moment to go ... boom? At one spot, Dave slows down, leans out the window, and points to a curious set of tracks in the sand. “A young black bear,” he says, explaining that the Ancient Ones moved up into the rock walls to avoid predators, the regular flooding of the rivers that run through here, and raiding Ute from the north.
The quicksand in the river bottom, he says, is worse over near Spider Rock. Legendarily, entire trucks have sunk into the quicksand, to puzzle archaeologists a millennium or so from now. Spider Rock, an 800-foot pinnacle near the middle of Canyon de Chelly, is the home of Spider Woman, a major deity in the Southwest who spun the world into existence for the nearby Hopi and taught the Navajo to spin. She also is said to take miscreant youths to the top of her pinnacle for punishment, though I suspect they get only a grandmotherly sort of scolding. To arrive at the Spider Rock overlook before dawn and watch the sunlight strike the top and slowly descend, the world in silence, is to sense that this canyon is not unlike a Nepalese temple, where the sacred and the secular comfortably coexist.
This refuge has seen plenty of troubles. In 1805, a Spaniard named Narbona arrived with soldiers to put an end to Navajo raiding (which began as efforts to take back their own people whom the Spanish had carried off into slavery). Some 115 Navajo were killed near Massacre Cave, mostly warriors but some women and children, according to contemporary Spanish accounts. The Navajo say the warriors were off somewhere else except for ten men—the rest, they say, were women and children and the elderly.
By 1863, the Americans were in charge of the raiding. General James H. Carleton sent local hero Kit Carson at the head of 700 volunteers to round up all the Navajo, finally breaking their spirit by destroying the fields, homes, livestock, and orchards in this, their last and safest place. A few escaped into Utah, but most surrendered and were sent on foot to a prison camp in eastern New Mexico to be “civilized.” Some 8,000 Navajo from around the region underwent the Long Walk. A congressional peace commission was formed in 1867 to look into conditions at the camp. Negotiations with Native American leaders followed, leading to the signing of the Treaty of 1868 and the return of more than 3 million acres. By then, how ever, thousands had died of disease and despair. The survivors returned home. In Canyon de Chelly they rebuilt their hogans, planted new orchards, and started life anew. The Navajo emerged from this experience as a unified group rather than the loosely affiliated bands they had been before, and they were eventually to become the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation-based tribe in the United States, with some 250,000 people.
About 50 Navajo families are lucky enough to live in the canyon, a lodestar for people from around the world who want a glimpse of Indian country, some Anasazi outposts, and a breathtaking piece of the natural creation.
I keep coming back to this canyon, drawn by its beauty, of course, and by the quiet. I avoid the Massacre Cave overlook (it just seems so sad) and revel in little things, such as the glittering silica in some of the rocks that dances in the early-morning sun like miniature stars. And I also come for what strikes me as a timeless peace, where the past and the present seem one, the eternal rocks imperceptibly taking on new shapes, people doing the same simple things for countless generations. The ravens, playing their ancient game along the rimrock.
Making Reservations
Where to Stay
The classic Thunderbird Lodge (800-679-2473) is on the site of a 19th-century trading post. The Park Service maintains a free campground next door. The rooms at the Holiday Inn (800-465-4329)—half a mile from the canyon entrance on Route 7—are new, but the offices, gift shop, and restaurant are in the original buildings, once the site of the first trading post on the reservation. The Best Western (800-327-0354), about three miles from the canyon entrance, has an indoor pool.
Tours can be arranged in advance or on the spot at these motels and at the Park Service’s visitor center (928-674-5500).
Where to Eat
People don’t come to Canyon de Chelly for the food. Thunderbird Lodge has a cafeteria (928-674-5841) where you simply have to surrender to sturdy 1950s fare (lots of thick gravy, 11 kinds of Jell-O). You’ll find the best Navajo-style food (such as mutton stew and fry bread) at flea markets that pop up in the town of Chinle, or at the Best Western’s Junction Restaurant (928-674-8443), where daring non-Indians try a Navajo taco and the Navajo seem to prefer pizza. And then there’s Garcia’s Restaurant (928-674-5000), in the Holiday Inn, where they take a stab at southwestern cookery such as trout dusted with blue cornmeal.
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