Your tour Jeep sits at the mouth of Canyon de Chelly in Chinle, Arizona — on the western edge of the Four Corners. Spreading before you, like a theatre curtain opening on a magical set, are imposing red rock formations, lofty cottonwoods and willows, and quilted fields of crops, orchards, and pastures. You are about to be counted among the people who have visited or lived here over the last 5,000 years.
With its 700-foot-tall sandstone walls, the canyon is nearly invisible from the tableland of the Defiance Plateau into which the Chinle Wash has made its mark, creating homes for Paleo-Indians, Ancient Puebloans, Hopi, and Navajo. Puebloans built stone villages, the remains of which are here today. Hopi lived and farmed on the canyon floor, but all that remains of their time are petroglyphs. The Navajo first occupied the canyon 600 years ago. It’s still their land today.
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How to see Canyon de Chelly
Canyon de Chelly (pronounced D’Shay) is about 45 miles long. Ten miles from the canyon entrance, Canyon del Muerto splits off, forming a complex of which 84,000 acres comprise Canyon de Chelly National Monument. While the National Park Service manages visitation and protects the ruins, the canyon is part of the Navajo Nation. Visitors can drive the rim roads and stop at nine overlooks to see the canyon, but you need a Navajo guide to enter Canyon de Chelly itself. That’s not a suggestion; it’s a requirement.
Take a Jeep tour or see the canyon on horseback
There are certified, Navajo-owned companies that lead tours into the canyon by Jeep and on horseback. You’ll also find hiking tours and one company that arranges for camping in the canyon. Jeep tours range in price from $75 per person to $350 for a group of six. There’s a 4-hour hike with a Diné guide to teach you about geology, culture, and history. It costs about $250. Visit the national park website — Canyon de Chelly National Monument — for detailed information to plan your visit. Then, go to navajonationparks.org and click on Guided Tours for a list of authorized tour operators. Lodging and campsites are available in Chinle.
Regardless of how you choose to see Canyon de Chelly, your adventure will be worth your effort. Where Chinle Wash exits the canyon is the only place vehicles can access it. Just outside Chinle at the visitor’s center, you’ll meet your guide and obtain a permit.
What you’ll see in the canyon
You’ll see the cliff dwellings, although none of them is accessible. You’ll stop at First House Ruin, so designated because it was the first ruin explored by Smithsonian archaeologist James Stevenson back in 1882.
Depending on the tour you’ve arranged, you’ll also see Junction Ruin, built where Muerto and de Chelly canyons join. There’s Fortress Rock and Spider Rock, legends in their own right; Rounded Corner Ruin, notable for its unusual architecture; and Antelope House Ruin, named after the pronghorn pictograms painted nearby by Dibe Yazhi, Little Lamb, in the 1830s. The only ruin at ground level is White House. This multi-story village was named for its top layers of white stone.
Rock art as an open history book
The story of people who’ve lived here is found in rock art, both pictograms (art painted on rock) and petroglyphs (images chipped into the rock’s desert varnish). Some images are symbols relating to ceremonies and rituals, calling on deities for rain, bountiful harvests, and fertility. The Ancient Puebloans included human figures with arms extended, some with hands pointing down and others pointing up. Your guide will explain these are messengers. Hands-down figures say, “Welcome. This is a good place to be.” Hands pointing up is a warning. “There’s danger, and people should flee.”
There are other stories told in the rock art — the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, hunting deer on horseback, and the dreaded U.S. Cavalry to round up the Navajo. In 1864, the army marched the Navajo on The Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. The Diné call it Hwéeldi — the Place of Suffering. During that military mission, Kit Carson’s troops destroyed more than 3,000 fruit trees in the canyon. In the 150 years since the Navajo have replanted their orchards and again harvest their bounty.
Navajo farm and raise livestock in the canyon
While the canyon is owned by the Navajo, only a few families choose to live there, usually only in summer. You’ll see a few hogans and shade arbors providing sufficient protection from wind and rain, but there is no electricity, water, or indoor plumbing, so life there is hard. But the land is productive. The water table beneath the sandy wash is high enough to support agriculture.
Farmers grow traditional corn, beans, and squash as well as tomatoes, melons, and grapes. They tend to orchards of apricots, cherries, peaches, and apples. Cows, sheep, and horses roam free, so cultivated fields are fenced to keep livestock from feeding on crops.
Meet a Navajo family during your visit
Your tour may include a stop at a summer home where a Navajo woman will show you the rug she is weaving. If you’re lucky, she’ll demonstrate wool carding, spinning, and dyeing skeins in colors not naturally occurring in Churro sheep wool.
Besides talking of the natural beauty of the canyon, your guide will likely relate personal experiences to help you realize this is not a museum or collection of ruins of long-dead people. Canyon de Chelly has long been called home and for many, still is today.
