The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona Part 1

The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly, Arizona.

by Cosmos Mindeleff.

INTRODUCTION

HISTORY AND LITERATURE

Although Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly is one of the best cliff-ruin regions of the United States, it is not easily accessible and is practically unknown.

At the time of the conquest of this country by the "Army of the West" in 1846, and of the rush to California in 1849, vague rumors were current of wonderful "cities" built in the cliffs, but the position of the canyon in the heart of the Navaho country apparently prevented exploration. In 1849 it was found necessary to make a demonstration against these Indians, and an expedition was sent out under the command of Colonel Washington, then governor of New Mexico. A detachment of troops set out from Santa Fe, and was accompanied by Lieutenant (afterward General) J. H. Simpson, of the topographical engineers, to whose indefatigable zeal for investigation and carefulness of observation much credit is due. He was much interested in the archeology of the country pa.s.sed over and his descriptions are remarkable for their freedom from the exaggerations and erroneous observations which characterize many of the publications of that period. His journal was published by Congress the next year[1] and was also printed privately.

[Footnote 1: Thirty-first Congress, first session, Senate Ex. Doc.

No. 64, Washington, 1850.]

The expedition camped in the Chin Lee valley outside of Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly, and Lieutenant Simpson made a side trip into the canyon itself.

He mentions ruins noticed by him at 4, 5, and 7 miles from the mouth; the latter, the ruin subsequently known as Casa Blanca, he describes at some length. He also gives an ill.u.s.tration drawn by R. H. Kern, which is very bad, and pictures some pottery fragments found near or in the ruin.

The name De Ch.e.l.ly was apparently used before this time. Simpson obtained its orthography from Vigil, secretary of the province (of New Mexico), who told him it was of Indian origin and was p.r.o.nounced _chay-e_. Possibly it was derived from the Navaho name of the place, Tse-gi.

Simpson's description, although very brief, formed the basis of all the succeeding accounts for the next thirty years. The Pacific railroad surveys, which added so much to our knowledge of the Southwest, did not touch this field. In 1860 the Abbe Domenech published his "Deserts of North America," which contains a reference to Casa Blanca ruin, but his knowledge was apparently derived wholly from Simpson. None of the a.s.sistants of the Hayden Survey actually penetrated the canyon, but one of them, W. H. Jackson, examined and described some ruins on the Rio de Ch.e.l.ly, in the lower Chin Lee valley. But in an article in Scribner's Magazine for December, 1878, Emma C. Hardacre published a number of descriptions and ill.u.s.trations derived from the Hayden corps, among others figures one ent.i.tled "Ruins in Canon de Ch.e.l.ly," from a drawing by Thomas Moran. The ruin can not be identified from the drawing.

This article is worth more than a pa.s.sing notice, as it not only ill.u.s.trates the extent of knowledge of the ruins at that time (1878), but probably had much to do with disseminating and making current erroneous inferences which survive to this day. In an introductory paragraph the author says:

Of late, blown over the plains, come stories of strange newly discovered cities of the far south-west; picturesque piles of masonry, of an age unknown to tradition. These ruins mark an era among antiquarians. The mysterious mound-builders fade into comparative insignificance before the grander and more ancient cliff-dwellers, whose castles lift their towers amid the sands of Arizona and crown the terraced slopes of the Rio Mancos and the Hovenweap.

Of the Chaco ruins it is said:

In size and grandeur of conception, they equal any of the present buildings of the United States, if we except the Capitol at Washington, and may without discredit be compared to the Pantheon and the Colosseum of the Old World.

In the same year Mr J. H. Beadle gave an account[2] of a visit he made to the canyon. He entered it over the Bat trail, near the junction of Monument canyon, and saw several ruins in the upper part. His descriptions are hardly more than a mention. Much archeologic data were secured by the a.s.sistants of the Wheeler Survey, but it does not appear that any of them, except the photographer, visited Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly. In the final reports of the Survey there is an ill.u.s.tration of the ruin visited by Lieutenant Simpson about thirty years before.[3] The ill.u.s.tration is a beautiful heliotype from a fine photograph made by T. H. O'Sullivan, but one serious defect renders it useless; through some blunder of the photographer or the engraver, the picture is reversed, the right and left sides being interchanged, so that to see it properly it must be looked at in a mirror. The ill.u.s.tration is accompanied by a short text, apparently prepared by Prof. F. W. Putnam, who edited the volume. The account by Simpson is quoted and some additional data are given, derived from notes accompanying the photograph. The ruin is said to have "now received the name of the Casa Blanca, or White House," but the derivation of the name is not stated.

[Footnote 2: Western Wilds, and the Men who Redeem Them: Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Chicago, Memphis, 1878.]

[Footnote 3: U.S. Geog. Surveys West of the 100th Meridian, Lieutenant George M. Wheeler in charge; reports, vol. VII, Archaeology; Washington, 1879, pp. 372-373, pl. xx.]

In 1882 Bancroft could find no better or fuller description than Simpson's, which he uses fully, and reproduces also Simpson's (Kern's) ill.u.s.tration. In the same year investigation by the a.s.sistants of the Bureau of Ethnology was commenced. Colonel James Stevenson and a party visited the canyon, and a considerable amount of data was obtained. In all, 46 ruins were visited, 17 of which were in Del Muerto; and sketches, ground plans, and photographs were obtained. The report of the Bureau for that year contains an account of this expedition, including a short description of a large ruin in Del Muerto, subsequently known as Mummy Cave. A brief account of the trip was also published elsewhere.[4]

The next year a map of the canyon was made by the writer and many new ruins were discovered, making the total number in the canyon and its branches about 140. Since 1883 two short visits have been made to the place, the last late in 1893, and on each trip additional material was obtained. In 1890 Mr F. T. Bickford[5] published an account of a visit to the canyon, ill.u.s.trated with a series of woodcuts made from the photographs of the Bureau. The ill.u.s.trations are excellent and the text is pleasantly written, but the descriptions of ruins are too general to be of much value to the student.

[Footnote 4: Bull. Am. Geog. Soc., 1886, No. 4; Ancient Habitations of the Southwest, by James Stevenson.]

[Footnote 5: Century Magazine, October, 1890, vol. XL, No. 6, p.

806 et seq.]

In recent years several publications have appeared which, while not bearing directly on the De Ch.e.l.ly ruins, are of great interest, as they treat of a.n.a.logous remains--the cliff ruins of the Mancos canyon and the Mesa Verde. These ruins were discovered in 1874 by W. H. Jackson and were visited and described in 1875 by W. H. Holmes,[6] both of the Hayden Survey. This region was roamed over by bands of renegade Ute and Navaho, who were constantly making trouble, and for fifteen years was apparently not visited by whites. Recent exploration appears to have been inaugurated by Mr F. H. Chapin, who spent two summers in the Mesa Verde country. Subsequently he published the results of some of his observations in a handsome little volume.[7] In 1891 Dr W. R. Birdsall made a flying trip to this region and published an account[8] of the ruins he saw the same year. At the time of this visit a more elaborate exploration was being carried on by the late G. Nordenskiold, who made some excavations and obtained much valuable data which formed the basis of a book published in 1893.[9] This is the most important treatise on the cliff ruins that has ever been published, and the ill.u.s.trations can only be characterized as magnificent. All of these works, and especially the last named, are of great value to the student of the cliff ruins wherever located, or of pueblo architecture.

[Footnote 6: U.S. Geol. Survey, F. V. Hayden in charge; 10th Ann.

Rept. (for 1876), Washington, 1878.]

[Footnote 7: The Land of the Cliff Dwellers, by Frederick H.

Chapin; Boston, 1892.]

[Footnote 8: Bull. Am. Geog. Soc., vol. XXIII, No. 4, 1891; The Cliff Dwellings of the Canons of the Mesa Verde.]

[Footnote 9: The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, by G. Nordenskiold; Stockholm and Chicago, 1894.]

GEOGRAPHY

The ancient pueblo culture was so intimately connected with and dependent on the character of the country where its remains are found that some idea of this country is necessary to understand it. The limits of the region are closely coincident with the boundaries of the plateau country except on the south, so much so that a map of the latter,[10]

slightly extended around its margin, will serve to show the former. The area of the ancient pueblo region may be 150,000 square miles; that of the plateau country, approximately, 130,000.

[Footnote 10: See Major C. E. Dutton's map of the plateau country in 6th Ann. Rept. U.S. Geol. Survey, pl. xi. His report on "Mount Taylor and the Zuni plateau," of which this map is a part, presents a vivid picture of the plateau country, and his descriptions are so clear and expressive that any attempt to better them must result in failure. The statement of the geologic and topographic features which is incorporated herein is derived directly from Major Dutton's description, much of it being taken bodily.]

The plateau country is not a smooth and level region, as its name might imply; it is extremely rugged, and the topographic obstacles to travel are greater than in many wild mountain regions. It is a country of cliffs and canyons, often of considerable magnitude and forming a bar to extended progress in any direction. The surface is generally smooth or slightly undulating and apparently level, but it is composed of a series of platforms or mesas, which are seldom of great extent and generally terminate at the brink of a wall, often of huge dimensions. There are mesas everywhere; it is the mesa country.

Although the strata appear to be horizontal, they are slightly tilted.

The inclination, although slight, is remarkably persistent, and the thickness of the strata remains almost constant. The beds, therefore, extend from very high alt.i.tudes to very low ones, and often the formation which is exposed to view at the summit of an incline is lost to view after a few miles, being covered by some later formation, which in turn is covered by a still later one. Each formation thus appears as a terrace, bounded on one side by a descending cliff carved out of the edges of its own strata and on the other by an ascending cliff carved out of the strata which overlie it. This is the more common form, although isolated mesas, bits of tableland completely engirdled by cliffs, are but little less common.

The courses of the margins of the mesas are not regular. The cliffs sometimes maintain an average trend through great distances, but in detail their courses are extremely crooked; they wind in and out, forming alternate alcoves and promontories in the wall, and frequently they are cut through by valleys, which may be either narrow canyons or inters.p.a.ces 10 or even 20 miles wide.

The whole region has been subjected to many displacements, both flexures of the monoclinal type and faults. Some of these flexures attain a length of over 80 miles and a displacement of 3,000 feet, and the faults reach even a greater magnitude. There is also an abundance of volcanic rocks and extinct volcanoes, and while the princ.i.p.al eruptions have occurred about the borders of the region, extending but slightly into it, traces of lesser disturbances can be found throughout the country.

It has been said that if a geologist should actually make the circuit of the plateau country, he could so conduct his route that for three-fourths of the time he would be treading upon volcanic materials and could pitch his camp upon them every night. The oldest eruptions do not go back of Tertiary time, while some are so recent as probably to come within the historic period--within three or four centuries.

The strata of the plateau country are remarkable for their h.o.m.ogeneity, when considered with reference to their horizontal extensions; hardly less so for their diversity when considered in their vertical relation.

Although the groups differ radically from each other, still each preserves its characteristics with singularly slight degrees of variation from place to place. Hence we have a certain amount of similarity and monotony in the landscape which is aided rather than diminished by the vegetation; for the vegetation, like the human occupants of this country, has come under its overpowering influence.

The characteristic landscape consists of a wide expanse of featureless plains, bounded by far-off cliffs in gorgeous colors; in the foreground a soil of bright yellow or ashy gray; over all the most brilliant sunlight, while the distant features are softened by a blue haze.

The most conspicuous formation of the whole region is a ma.s.sive bright-red sandstone out of which have been carved "the most striking and typical features of those marvelous plateau landscapes which will be subjects of wonder and delight to all coming generations of men. The most superb canyons of the neighboring region, the Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly and the Del Muerto, the lofty pinnacles and towers of the San Juan country, the finest walls in the great upper chasms of the Colorado, are the vertical edges of this red sandstone."

Of the climate of the plateau country it has been said that in the large valleys it is "temperate in winter and insufferable in summer; higher up the summers are temperate and the winters barely sufferable." It is as though there were two distinct regions covering the same area, for there are marked differences throughout, except in topographic configuration, between the lowlands and the uplands or high plateaus. The lowlands present an appearance which is barren and desolate in the extreme, although the soil is fertile and under irrigation yields good crops.

Vegetation is limited to a scanty growth of gra.s.s during a small part of the year, with small areas here and there scantily covered by the p.r.i.c.kly greasewood and at intervals by clumps of sagebrush; but even these prefer a higher level, and develop better on the neighboring mesas than in the valleys proper. The arborescent growth consists of spa.r.s.ely distributed cottonwoods and willows, closely confined to the river bottoms. On intermediate higher levels junipers and cedars appear, often standing so closely together as to seriously impede travel, but they are confined to the tops of mesas and other high ground, the valleys being generally clear or covered with sagebrush. Still higher up yellow pines become abundant and in places spread out into magnificent forests, while in some mountain regions scrub oak, quaking asp, and even spruce trees are abundant.

In the mountain regions there is often a reasonable amount of moisture, and some crops, potatoes for example, are grown there without irrigation; but the season is short. In the Tunicha mountains the Navaho raise corn at an alt.i.tude of nearly 8,000 feet, but they often lose the crop from drought or from frost. On the intermediate levels and in the lowlands cultivation by modern methods is practically impossible without irrigation, except in a few favored localities, where a crop can be obtained perhaps two years or three years in five. But with a minute knowledge of the climatic conditions, and with methods adapted to meet these conditions, scanty crops can be and are raised by the Indians without irrigation throughout the whole region; but everywhere that water can be applied the product of the soil is increased many fold.

Near the center of the plateau country, in the northeastern corner of Arizona, a range of mountains crosses diagonally from northwest to southeast, extending into New Mexico. In the north an irregular cl.u.s.ter of considerable size, separated from the remainder of the range, is called the Carrizo; and the range proper has no less than three names applied to different parts of it. The northern end is known as the Lukachukai, the central part as the Tunicha, and the southern part as the Chuska or Choiskai mountains, all Navaho names. The two former cl.u.s.ters attain an alt.i.tude of 9,500 feet; the Tunicha and the Chuska are about 9,000 feet high, the latter having a flat top of considerable area.

On the east these mountains break down rather abruptly into the broad valley of the Chaco river, or the Chaco wash, as it is more commonly designated; on the west they break down gradually, through a series of slopes and mesas, into the Chin Lee valley. Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly has been cut in the western slope by a series of small streams, which, rising near the crest of the mountain, combine near its head and flow in a general westerly direction. The mouth of the canyon is on the eastern border of the Chin Lee valley. It is 60 miles south of the Utah boundary and 25 miles west of that of New Mexico; hence it is 60 miles east and a little north from the old province of Tusayan, the modern Moki, and 85 miles northwest from the old province of Cibola, the modern Zuni. Its position is almost in the heart of the ancient pueblo region; the Chaco ruins lie about 80 miles east, and the ruins of the San Juan from 60 to 80 miles north and northeast.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XLII Map of Canyon De Ch.e.l.ly and Its Branches Surveyed by Cosmos Mindeleff]

The geographic position of Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly has had an important effect on its history, forming as it does an available resting place in any migratory movement either on the north and south line or east and west.

The Tunicha mountains are a serious obstacle to north and south movement at the present day, but less so than the arid valleys which border them.

Except at one place, and that place is difficult, it is almost impossible to cross the mountains with a wheeled vehicle, but there are innumerable trails running in all directions, and these trails are in constant use by the Navaho, except in the depths of winter. The mountain route is preferable, however, to the valley roads, where the traveler for several days is without wood, with very little water and forage, and his movements are impeded by deep sand.

To the traveler on foot, or even on horseback, Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly is easily accessible from almost any direction. Good trails run northward to the San Juan and northeastward over the Tunicha mountains to the upper part of that river; Fort Defiance is but half a day's journey to the southeast; Tusayan and Zuni are but three days distant to the traveler on foot; the Navaho often ride the distance in a day or a day and a half. The canyon is accessible to wagons, however, only at its mouth.

The main canyon, shown on the map (plate XLII) as Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly and known to the Navaho as Tse-gi, is about 20 miles long. It heads near Washington pa.s.s, within a few miles of the crest of the mountain, and extends almost due west to the Chin Lee valley. The country descends by a regular slope from an alt.i.tude of about 7,500 feet at the foot of the main crest to about 5,200 feet in the Chin Lee valley, 25 miles west, and is so much cut up locally by ravines and washes that it is impa.s.sable to wagons, but it preserves throughout its mesa-like character.

About 3 miles from its mouth De Ch.e.l.ly is joined by another canyon almost as long, which, heading also in the Tunicha mountains, comes in from the northeast. It is over 15 miles long, and is called on the map Canyon del Muerto; the Navaho know it as en-a-tse-gi. About 13 miles above the mouth of the main canyon a small branch comes in from the southeast. It is about 10 miles long, and has been called Monument canyon, on account of the number of upright natural pinnacles of rock in it. In addition to those named there are innumerable small branches, ranging in size from deep coves to real canyons a mile or two long.