Canyon de Chelly, AZ (Canyon del Muerto)

DAY 9
FRI 5 OCT 2012

Ben Teller, Navajo guide
Antelope House Tours

Canyon del Muerto is a legendary place, one that figures prominently in Diné oral history.

In Canyon del Muerto, Ben Teller tells us the story of Spanish soldiers in 1805, who rode through the canyon, plundering farms and crops, and killing Navajo men, women and children. Some took refuge and shelter among the caves along the high ledges of the canyon walls.
As one Spanish soldier crossed the threshold of a cave with the notion of rounding up prisoners and taking them as slaves, a brave Navajo woman ran towards the soldier and locked her arms around him, then hurled herself over the precipice - the two figures, locked in a desperate grip, plunged several hundred feet to their deaths.

The Diné have settled here long before European recorded history, and they have long suffered numerous attempts to dispossess them of their land, livelihood, and culture – first by the Spanish Conquistadors, and later by American soldiers and settlers.

Those who survived the periodic purges, enslavement, and forced marches - returned home to retell their stories, and to reaffirm their identity and kinship to the land.

Canyon de Chelly’s red earth symbolizes to the Diné, not only death and bloodshed, but also rebirth and survival; its deep canyons are doorways that open into the past, present, and future.

Tourists now flock to the cottonwood trees at Antelope House, and stroll about where long ago, Diné blood once flowed in these same canyon trails.




See also:
"The Place Where Two Fell Off" by Hampton Sides,
Oct 2 2006
www.outsideonline.com/1825096/place-where-two-fell