Monday, August 25, 2008, Canyon De Chelly

At 8 this morning, we ate breakfast at the Thunderbird Cafeteria (review). (Reviews of Thunderbird Lodge) Kathy had French toast, undercooked hash browns and juice. Chris ate two sausage patties, corned beef hash, chipped beef gravy on two biscuits and a bottle of milk. On the walls was a nice selection of Navajo rugs for sale. Chris thought the patterns were not genuine Navajo patterns. On the walls of a back dining room near the restroom was an assortment of Indian quivers with arrows for sale. They looked less fake to Chris' keen, untrained eye.

We purchased a tour of Canyon De Chelly from a store next to the cafeteria. Right before 9 am, we climbed into the back of a six-wheeled army-type truck for a tour of Canyon De Chelly. Tourists are not allowed in the canyon without guides. Without guides tourists can only view the canyon from overlooks on the canyon rim.


Our Navajo guide and driver, Ray, I believe, described the tour's itinerary. Indians laugh and joke more than Anglos. A lot of their humor is teasing. In Ray's warning about losing stuff he claimed lots of Navajo are getting rich finding stuff fallen out of guide trucks. After this speech and every speech, Ray got into the truck cab and drove us to the next spot. We could not talk with him during the trip.

Canyon De Chelly is a box canyon. It is not created by a river running through it. Rather when it rains water from the higher ground pours into the canyon, carrying rock down the wash and out the mouth of the canyon toward the town of Chinle, which means “place where the water flows out."

Ray entered the canyon driving up a wide wash of deep sand. He had to use four-wheel drive through the whole tour. Ray did not drive “down” into the canyon. Instead, the canyon rose up around us. The walls are 1,000 feet high at the canyon's end.

In the old days the canyon floor was covered in sand right up to the canyon walls. There were no trees. Now the canyon floor is lined with cottonwoods, Russian olive and tamarisk trees, meadows, and farmland with the wash running down the middle. (The Russian olive is not native to the canyon. The Navajo are cutting out the Russian olive to raise the ground water level. Like what the Africans are doing in their dry areas.)

As we moved deeper in the canyon, the canyon became wider, the trees, meadows and farmland started filling the canyon floor and the wash became narrower, wiggling back and forth along the canyon floor. Ray started driving straighter short cuts through the woods instead of following the wiggling wash.The ride became increasingly jarring, much worse than riding rapids in an inflated raft. Several Indian vendors asked us, with knowing smiles, how the trip was. It was that friendly Navajo teasing again.

At each stop Ray would get out of the truck, stand on truck step facing us and tell us about the site. Every stop, except the two rest stops, were “ancient puebloans” petroglyphs or cliff houses. “Ancient puebloans" is the new name for the Anasazi.

The Hopi, who live in pueblos, claim the Anasazi or “ancestral puebloans” are their ancestors. So the Navajo guide, Ray, was telling us about the archaeological remains of ancestors of a competing group, the Hopi. On the second stop, the first cliff house, Ray told us that Navajos were taught from childhood not to go near the “ancestral puebloans” cliff houses. The spirits of the ancestral puebloans living in the ruins will make Navajo sick.

At the two rest stops, there were vendor booths selling mostly Navajo jewelry, one sold flutes and one or two sold pottery. The quality seemed quite high and the prices reasonable, ranging from as low as $5 to $350. Kathy purchased one many-strand necklace and took the business card from another vendor.

Twice Ray told us that his relatives were Navajo rug makers. According to him they often made little rugs, I think about the size of place mats. They sold for $50 to $75, compared to full sized rugs that went for hundreds of dollars.

We saw lots of horses in the canyon, behind fences and wandering free. Ray told us several horse stories. He told us about well trained Navajo horses that will forget about the rider on its back and run down deer in a fifteen mile chase. When the deer is down, exhausted, Navajo hunters dismount and blow corn dust up the deer's nose to suffocate the animal. The skins of these deer are used in a special ceremony because their skins are not pierced with arrows or spears. He then asked who wants to go hunting tomorrow.

In another story, an Anglo woman from Oregon, I believe, wanted to release one of her old horses in the canyon to roam free. Ray had advised her against this because someone would take the horse as their own.

At one stop, Ray pointed to white streaks on huge boulders near the canyon walls. The white streaks are “surfing” marks made by children sitting on flat rocks and sliding down the boulders.

Ray, then, drove the truck a short distance around a canyon corner to a perpendicular cliff about 500 feet high. A trail of hand and foot holds lead almost straight up the canyon wall. Many canyon residents have second dwellings up on the rim. Parents send their kids into the canyon to pick some vegetables or fruits from their canyon gardens and fields. They use these holds to go up and down the canyon walls. I think Ray said there were over a hundred of these trails.

At 1:30 our tour ended near a wonderful cactus bush.

Kathy asked the guide whether the land we saw in the canyon was “legally” or just “traditionally” owned by families. Ray said the fenced in land was “legally” owned by families. The non-fenced in land was traditionally owned by families. On the tour, Ray told us that some families own several plots of land. The families will inhabit different plots of land at different times of the year depending on the crop they are growing at that time. Ray also told us that many of the canyon dwellers work at regular jobs during the week and return on weekends to tend their canyon crops.

From Canyon De Chelly we drove east listening to the Tony Hillerman abridged audiobook, Hunting Badger. Navigator Kathy was pointing on our road map the places mentioned in Hillerman's book. Many of the places are nearby.

We stopped at a large Diné supermarket." Diné” means “the people” in the Navajo language. In other words, we stopped at a Navajo supermarket looking for Indian food. This supermarket was little different from large Dillons store. Though better stocked than our Great Bend “big” Dillons, the biggest difference is a greater selection of mutton and lamb. We were disappointed that we didn't find some new and interesting foods to try. We purchased junk food and drove away continuing the story of Hunting Badger.

We stopped for the night at Bluewater Lake State Park in the Zuni Mountains just east of the Continental Divide. It is a nice campground though the women's facilities need better maintenance.

I observed that starlings had stuck one mud nest on the ceiling of the bathroom porch. A starling would fly around as visitors approaching the bathroom, but at a distance that was little noticeable because the strong wind kept blowing the bird far down wind and then the bird had to fly back up. On porch I heard chirping sounds from the mud nest. I thought it may be babies, but, eventually, a beak appeared and an adult flew out to join its mate.

The next morning as I carried trash to the trash bin, I saw a ground wasp come out of a hole and stand around flickering its wings. I could see a worm laying in the hole. I supposed the wasp had stung the worm into immobility and had laid eggs in the worm. I was puzzled why the wasp left the hole open. I would have thought that the wasp would cover the hole to prevent other animals from finding and eating the worm and the wasp's eggs.