R.C. Gorman’s ”Canyon de Chelly.”
My friend Jack McGowan has been drawn to Canyon de Chelly for decades, ever since obtaining a magnificent R.C. Gorman print of the iconic Southwest canyon network — which hangs in his home. Last month, Jack and his wife Jan ventured into the canyon with a Navajo guide — a high point in an epic seven-week trek across the Great Southwest, which also included stops at a historic trading post in the Navajo Nation and a moment’s pause at the location where the great Chihenne Apache leader Mangas Coloradas was murdered by Americans in 1863.
The gun rack at an historic trading post in the Navajo Nation. Photo courtesy Jack McGowan
Over breakfast at The Gallery Restaurant in Sisters, Jack regaled me with tales of his adventures.
“That canyon just reverberates with ghosts from the past,” Jack told me.
The Canyon de Chelly National Monument is operated in partnership between the U.S. National Parks Service and the Navajo Nation. Those who wish to venture into the canyon must do so led by a Navajo guide. Jack and Jan engaged the services of a Navajo man named Davidson, who loaded them into a beat up Jeep Renegade and took them deep into the majestic canyon for a four-hour tour. Actually, the landscape is a complex of three branching canyons — Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto and Monument. At its deepest, the sandstone walls rise 1,000 feet above the canyon floor.
Photo courtesy Jack McGowan.
The canyon is one of the longest-inhabited sites in North America, and Jack notes that about 40 families live in the canyon today. In the mid-19th Century, Canyon de Chelly was a vast stronghold for the populous but highly-decentralized Navajo Nation.
Jack got a lot of shots of the multitude of petroglyphs and pictographs that graffiti the canyon, messages from multiple cultures and of many vintages.
In his excellent popular history Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West, Hampton Sides writes:
The canyon walls were scrawled and chipped with untold thousands of petroglyphs and pictographs, often in the unlikeliest of places… The deigns came in a dazzling confusion. Serpents, lightning bolts, elaborate fret patterns, whorls… Men impaled with arrows, men with enormous dangling penises, alien-humanoid figures with strange protuberances emerging from their left ears…
Jack described the canyon as “drop dead gorgeous,” changing with the light through the day.
A spiritual heartland, a fortress, a place of refuge, in 1864, Canyon de Chelly would be the focal point of a grinding, soul-searing scorched earth military campaign, part of one of the most grim and sorrowful episodes in the history of the Frontier Partisans.
In Part II of our exploration of Canyon de Chelly, we encounter the controversial legacy of one of the most legendary of all Frontier Partisans: Kit Carson.
wayne says
I hiked through this area in a group with a Navajo guide 30 years ago. The history is palpable, with visible mounds of peach pits from the trees that were cut down by the U.S. Army when the Navajos were temporarily removed in the 19th century. Your pictures show petroglyphs, which are carved in rock. Pictographs are painted on rocks.
JimC says
Thanks for the clarification Wayne. You are right of course — corrected text. Both are present in the canyon.
Brian H. says
Not a place where you have to look hard to see it’s history. I spent a lot of years in the southwest. Many times in the canyon country we’d come across ruins or petroglyphs that never made it onto a tourist map or guide book because they didn’t count as a “complex” or a “regional center”. The pic of the gun rack reminded me of the stories some old timers would tell at the local gun shop counter of getting original Colts and Winchesters for easy money on those reservation trading posts back in the seventies. I guess now that seems like whitey, once again, ripping off the redman.
Saddle Tramp says
Jim,
In September / October I took a 5,000 mile Big Circle Trip over a two week period which included a hike down into Canyon de Chelly. Just to clarify, you can hike alone (no guide) down into the bottom of the canyon to the WHITE HOUSE RUINS. It is the only area that you can go to without a guide. The weather was perfect for the hike. Shamefully though, they have had to run a chain link fence across the front of it to protect it from theft and vandalism. I wish I would have had the time to take a guided trip as Jack did. I went all around the south rim and did see Spider Rock from the overlook. Stunning. I went from there down to Hubbell’s Trading Post and then to Window Rock before making my way up through New Mexico stopping at Fort Union near Las Vegas, New Mexico. Quite a sight to behold and a major stopover on the Santa Fe Trail. I made my way across Kansas and Missouri spending an extended time in St. Joseph, Missouri. I really liked St. Joe and worked there for seven years. Stock full of history. For brevities sake and not to step on Jack’s epic trip I will end it here and just mention that on my return trip I happened to stop at Fort Reno in Oklahoma and stumbled into the packing up of the National Calvary Competition that was held that weekend. I only wish I could have arrived the day before, but was lucky enough to catch what I did. I’ll send a few pics your way. Looking forward to the rest of this series…
JimC says
Great to hear from you, ST — was just thinking of you this weekend listening to SE’s “Guy.” Look forward to the pix.
Jean Nave says
Wonderful article. I grew up wandering many of these areas with my folks. I love to visit the Southwest but I want to live in the Northwest. Thanks for your excellent commentary.
JimC says
Thank you Jean. Glad it resonates.