land. The Hopi were followed in Canyon de Chelly by the Navajo, who occupied the area in the mid-1700s and whose conflicts with Spanish colonists living along the Rio Grande would bring Spanish soldiers to Canyon de Chelly in the early 1800s. The Navajo, like other southwest- ern Native American tribes, had been in conflict with the Spanish ever since the Spanish began colonizing New Mexico and the area along the Rio Grande. The Navajo conducted raids against Spanish ranches and settle- ments, and this friction eventually brought the Spanish to Canyon de Chelly. On January 17, 1805, Spanish soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Antonio Narbona were sent to the canyon to punish the
Things to Remember When Visiting C
ANYON de Chelly National Monument is currently home to about forty Navajo families. In the interest of their privacy, a permit and an authorized guide are required to tour all but a small portion of the canyon floor. Permits to tour the canyon are available at the Visitor Center at no charge, but must be arranged for prior to arriving. Photographing the residents of the canyon, their homes, or their prop- erty is not allowed without their permission. Pets are not permitted anywhere in the canyon, not even on tours conducted using private four- wheel-drive vehicles. —JS
The “de Chelly” portion of the name is believed to have come from a Spanish corruption of the Navajo word tseyi’, which means “rock canyon” or “in a canyon.” English-speaking people have since changed the Spanish
Carson was charged with removing the Navajo from their native lands starting in 1863.
These rock paintings, located in Canyon de Chelly
National Monument’s Canyon del Muerto, were painted by Navajo artists and depict the Spanish soldiers who killed 115 Navajo in Canyon del Muerto in 1805.
To force the Navajo into submis- sion, Carson destroyed their homes and crops and killed their livestock. These coldly calculated acts had their desired effect, and about eight thou- sand Navajo were subsequently forced to march more than three hundred miles to a reservation on the Texas– New Mexico border. In Navajo history, this journey is known as the Long Walk. It was a particularly terrible experience for the participants, and many of the Navajo did not survive. The US government eventually relented, and in 1868 allowed the survivors of the Long Walk to return to their traditional lands.
Navajo for their raids on Spanish settlements. The soldiers under Narbona attacked and killed 115 Navajo as they sought shelter in a shallow cave located in the cliffs above the canyon floor. Sometime later, Navajo artists memorialized the event in paintings high up on the cliffs in Canyon del Muerto.
Another legacy of the Spanish presence in the Southwest is to be found in Canyon de Chelly’s name.
T H E E L K S M A G A Z I N E
pronunciation to the one by which the area is known today—d’shay. By the 1860s, settlers of European origin were pushing into the West in ever-increasing numbers, dislodging the Native Americans who had previously lived in the land. The Navajo were formidable fighters who fiercely defended their homeland, and eventually, the settlers appealed to the US government for protection. As a result, Colonel Christopher “Kit”
Exploring the Canyons from Above Today, Canyon de Chelly National Monument is located within the Navajo Nation and covers about 84,000 acres. About forty Navajo families still live on the land that constitutes the monument, and some of these modern inhabitants farm fields of corn or grain and tend orchards of various fruit trees. For many years, some Navajo lived in the canyon year round, but today, most of the canyon’s inhabitants are seasonal, using it as their summer abode and retreating to the canyon’s rims during the winter.
The park’s attraction to modern visitors is twofold. First, there is the natural beauty of the towering, sheer sandstone cliffs with their uniform red-orange coloring that contrasts so wonderfully with the blue skies above and the lush green of the trees along the creeks. Second, there is the
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PHOTO: ©HAL BERAL/CORBIS
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