Canyon de Chelly

Our guide, David explains the ruins in the Canyon

We’re certainly glad that we took the half day tour with the Navajo, it was a great combination with the rim road. On the tour, we saw quite a few petroglyphs and pictographs from different ages. The earliest were about 2000 years old (symbols, hands, dancing men, snakes), the latest from the 1800’s (running antelope) and in between from the 1600’s, we had figures of men and horses hunting deer and antelope. There were also quite a few cliff house ruins, the most spectacular being white house, with its 2 white towers among all the rust color. We also heard of the Navajo story, particularly the hard times in the 1800s when Kit Carson (as head of the Indian agency) drove all of them out of this area to a Fort in the middle of New Mexico. Many held out on Navajo Fortress, a large rock platform in the canyon, where they could hide from the soldiers. But eventually, they were starved out. On the road to New Mexico and over the next 4 years, half of them died, until they finally were allowed to return to their traditional lands.
In the afternoon, we took the rim road, where you can see more ruins, but at a distance. More interesting was the canyon itself with its steep cliffs, dune shaped rocks, and occasional stone pillars, like Spider rock. The area reminded us of Colorado National Monument, but the valley was much more fertile, a lot of corn and fruit trees dot the bottom of the canyon.

Canyon de Chelly from the rim