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The Four Corners Going back in time on Native American land By Roger Toll
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Photo by George H.H. Huey
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n a turquoise sky, the setting sun is turning tendrils of cloud a flaming orange. To the south, the San Francisco Peaks, holy mountains to both the Hopi and the Navajo, pierce the horizon across a desert punctuated by sharp buttes and rock pinnacles, totems of this ravishing, desolate land. Unknowingly, I am sitting on holy ground in Shungopavi village northeast of Flagstaff, Arizona, at the end of Second Mesa. And the Hopi elder is saying I should move. “This area is reserved for our most sacred dances,” he says, “and nonIndians are not allowed.”
A framed view of Sentinel Mesa in Monument Valley
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Back where I parked the car,
The Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park
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onoring the land, and living in balance with it, is not a quaint Indian belief in these parts, but a matter of survival.
PhotoS by (FROM TOP) dawn kish and George H.H. Huey; Map (OPPOSITE PAGE) by james laish
Navajo guide David John at Canyon de Chelly National Monument
local villagers as well as friends from the other two Hopi mesas are gathering to watch a women’s group dance for a suc cessful harvest. A woman selling jewelry invited me earlier in the day, and I am the only non-Indian there. At 6:30, the dancers emerge from a kiva, a traditional underground ceremonial site. With ears of corn in hand and cornhusks hanging from their hair, 50 women walk in single file to a dusty plaza, where they begin chanting a mesmeric song while danc ing from one foot to the other in a circle. I exchange smiles with a family next to me while children play on a dirt pile beside a stone house that, like others in the village, might have been built 400 years ago. The luminous air of the high desert and the slanting red rays of the sun transform what some might view as a tawdry village into a magical Oz. Our clothes are the only props that plant us in the 21st century, and I feel again the startling juxtapositions of time I have been experiencing over the past week as I make my way through a landscape, both psychological and material, that has barely changed. From the ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs of Ho venweep, Mesa Verde and the Canyon de Chelly to my perch at Shungopavi, I’ve come to realize that nowhere else in North America do the distant past and present, mythology and harsh reality, so intermingle. In this dry, desolate and remote land (about 200 miles northwest of Albuquer que, New Mexico, and 250 miles north east of Phoenix), the ceremonies of these ancient cultures are part of the precarious balance inherent to a people threatened for centuries by a lack of rain, people who still employ dry farm ing to grow their corn and beans. Hon oring the land, and living in balance with it, is not a quaint Indian belief in these parts, but a matter of survival. Perhaps this is one reason why native culture in the Four Corners region is more alive than anywhere else in the
lower 48 states. The Four Corners area—loosely defined as the stunning geography (and Indian Lands) radiating from the intersection of Utah, Colo rado, Arizona and New Mexico—has one of the highest concentrations of pre historic sites anywhere in the world, with more than 100 per square mile. A week immersed among centuriesold ruins, majestic landscapes and the people of these lands is an ideal antidote for those of us caught in the stress of schedules and material demands. I have no cell phone reception, see no Star bucks and don’t even think about Wi-Fi. There is no freeway in and out, either, though I’m only a half-day’s drive from several airports. Still, at times this place feels as exotic as Bhutan or Bolivia; I can hardly believe I am still in the United States.
The Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloans) For anyone with a touch of vertigo, ac cess to Mesa Verde National Park’s Bal cony House, up a steep, 60-foot ladder set against a dizzying slab of slick rock, is daunting. Below, the red cliffs drop sev eral hundred feet further. My admira tion for the climbing abilities of the Anasazi, with only divots in the bare rock to use as footholds and handholds, soars with each step up the ladder. The setting is stunning. Built into a vast, grottolike alcove in the sandstone wall is a stone complex of 40 rooms and two kivas. Though smaller than other dwellings in the area, the Balcony House has so phisticated architectural features, in cluding second-story balconies, wooden racks in rooms and a balustrade on the
edge of the cliff. “The architecture is reminiscent of Hopi pueblos built cen turies later,” National Park Ranger Kathryn Harrison says. “Clearly, the people who built Mesa Verde didn’t just disappear, but carried their knowl edge elsewhere and evolved.” A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Mesa Verde is a good place to begin ex ploring native cultures of the South west, for it presents various stages of Anasazi (now more properly called An cestral Puebloan) culture. Within a short distance of Balcony House, many other communities were built into simi lar alcoves, including the enormous Cliff Palace, which with 150 rooms and 23 kivas appears to have been a ritual or administrative center. From the time of their earliest structures, built around A.D. 500, to the time of their most so phisticated, the late 1200s, the Pueb loans developed from a hunting and gathering culture living in crude pit houses—holes in the ground covered with earthen roofs—into a relatively complex culture that lived in extended communities and farmed collectively on the fertile tablelands of Mesa Verde, above the canyons that sheltered their Sky September 2005
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Painted wall decorations inside the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde
the past than about digging it up, ar chaeologists today are saving sites by keeping them covered, says Lynn Dyer, who worked for nine years at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and is now tourism director for Mesa Verde Country. Today, archaeologists work with geologists, biologists and others to understand how and why ancient peo ple lived here, not just when and where, Dyer says as we walk through the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colo rado, an excellent museum of Ancestral Puebloan culture and architecture north of Mesa Verde. “There are many questions yet to be answered,” she says. “Why they left, how they used the kivas, what the various dwellings were for. Modern techniques can help solve these
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y admiration for the climbing abilities of the Anasazi, with only divots in the bare rock to use as footholds and handholds, soars with each step up the ladder. important questions without having to expose the ruins to the elements. As soon as you dig it up, it is no longer be ing preserved.” If Mesa Verde is one of the world’s most impressive sites of prehistoric civ ilization, the Canyon de Chelly National Monument is among the most dramatic. At 9 a.m., 26 of us climb into a four-wheel-drive, open-air “bus” and set off on a full-day excursion up Chinle Wash, the sometime river that runs down the middle of Canyon de Chelly (pronounced “duh-Shay,” from the Na vajo word “tsegi,” meaning “rock can yon”). On both sides, rock walls rise precipitously 1,000 feet over the canyon floor. The contrast of the rich reds of the sandstone cliffs with the deep blue sky and the bright green of the huge cotton wood trees is stunning. As in Mesa
Anasazi pictographs at Canyon de Chelly
PhotoS by George H.H. Huey
condo-like settlements. Within a short drive of Cortez, Colo rado, are Hovenweep National Monument, Ute Mountain Tribal Park and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, all open to the public for visits. In the 164,000-acre Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, which extends from Cortez to the Utah border, more than 6,000 archaeological sites have been recorded. More concerned about preserving
White House Ruin at Canyon de Chelly Sky Month 2005
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fter 30 minutes, Morgan veers in a surprising direction. “My father was a hand trembler, a medicine man.” we cross, are probably the same as they were 100 years ago, or 1,000. More than one person has called Canyon de Chelly “the most spiritual place on Earth.” To me, it feels like a passage into timelessness.
The Navajo
Verde, deep alcoves have given shelter to families for hundreds of years, while the moist sand in the narrow valley has provided sustenance for crops and live stock. Today, the Navajo still grow corn, beans and alfalfa in the valley floor, and cattle and horses graze. Petroglyphs and pictographs, myste rious designs painted or pecked onto the sandstone walls, represent clans and nat
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ural forces, our Navajo guide, David John, tells us. Spirals represent the sun, he says, and were used to mark solstices and other astronomical events. When he tells stories, John has a way of sud denly shifting centuries—from 100 to 400 or 800 years ago—that disorients me, as though time itself were com pressed and events were part of some eternal now. Maybe it is the effect of the
canyon itself, which has seen a parade of people pass through the valley: hunters and gatherers, the Anasazi ancestors, Apache raiders, Navajo farmers, roving Spaniards, even Kit Carson, who rounded up unwilling Navajos in this canyon in 1864 and set them on their tragic “long walk” to New Mexico and a four-year exile from their lands. The rut ted, sandy trail we follow, even the fords
Photo by dawn kish
Harold Morgan in front of Window Rock
An hour west of Mesa Verde, I hand $3 to a Navajo lady and enter the Four Corners Monument of the Navajo Nation. The flags of the four contiguous states stand at attention in the whistling wind while wooden stalls displaying native wares, such as covered wagons pulled into a circle, betray the Navajos’ unre mitting entrepreneurship. When travel ing this same road at age 10, I had put an arm or leg in each state so I could say that I’d been in all four at once. This time, I snap a photo of the desultory set ting instead. Driving across the Navajo Nation, I am struck by the awesome beauty. Red rock hills stand out above the great sage plain like elephants striding across the treeless desert. Eight-sided hogans, the traditional Navajo home, seem dropped from space, isolated from neighbors and dwarfed by the vastness of the land. Bright yellow school buses crisscross the desert like scurrying ants, returning their charges to their homes dispersed across the countryside. The town of Chinle, Arizona, at the mouth of Canyon de Chelly, looks sad and struggling with its prison for youth, Christian fundamentalist missions and tattered trailers on barren land. I stop by the supermarket to buy beer and find out that the reservation is dry. “You can’t even possess liquor,” one man tells me, “but ask any teenager and he can proba bly sell you beer on the spot.” In Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation, I drop in on the Navajo
Council Chambers, where an elected council of 88 delegates meets four times a year to make governmental decisions. Legislative Assistant Harold Morgan, who is well-versed in Navajo politics and lore after more than 20 years of working there, explains the mural that depicts the history of the Navajo people—or Diné, as they call themselves—in the Council Chambers. After 30 minutes, Morgan veers in a surprising direction. “My father was a hand trembler, a medicine man,” a fact he drops into the conversation. “He could communicate with the spirit at any time, and he gave me this same ability, this sacrament. So what I know comes from my ancestors and from spirit talking through me.” When I ask a question, he goes silent for a moment,
as if waiting for an answer to arrive from elsewhere. When it does, he chuckles to himself as though listening to some sub tle comic only he can hear, then gives me the answer. “It is how our people used to guide themselves. The creator can speak through us. But you have to lead a very clear life to be given this gift,” he says. “Our traditional ways are changing be cause of American education. That is our path now, and we’ve got to take it or we are left behind and get angry, and that only hurts us. This thought comes from the creator. We must not go in opposition to the way things are. But spiritually, we need to follow our own way.” A few blocks away, at the Navajo Nation Museum, Education Curator Norman Bahe explains the reservation’s schism between traditionalists and pro gressives. “Our elders want to preserve our traditional ways,” he says. “But the progressives among us want to bring in programs that develop jobs and eco nomic opportunities. American culture is very strong, so a lot of our children are
On the Rez The best time to travel is May to June or September to October. Despite elevations of 5,000–7,500 feet, summer in the high desert can be hot. Anasazi Heritage Center 27501 Highway 184, Dolores, Colorado; 970-882-4811 Canyon de Chelly National Monument Visitor Center, Route 7 (three miles east of the Route 191 junction), Chinle, Arizona; 928-674-5500; www.nps.gov/cach Canyons of the Ancients National Monument 27501 Highway 184, Dolores, Colorado; 970-882-4811 Crow Canyon Archaeological Center 23390 Road K, Cortez, Colorado; 800-422-8975 or 970-565-8975; www.crowcanyon.org Four Corners Monument west of U.S. Highway 160, 40 miles southwest of Cortez, Colorado; 928-871-6647; www.navajonationparks.org /fourcorners_monument.htm Hovenweep National Monument located along the border between southeast Utah and southwest Colorado and accessible from Cortez, Colo-
rado, or Blanding, Utah; 970-562-4282; www.nps.gov/hove Mesa VerdE National Park U.S. Highway 160 (park entrance nine miles east of Cortez, Colorado, 35 miles west of Durango, Colorado); 970-529-4465; www.nps.gov/meve Monument Valley Visitors Center reached via a short side road opposite the turnoff to Goulding, Utah, off of U.S. Highway 163; 928-871-6647; www.navajonationparks.org /monumentvalley Navajo Nation Museum Highway 264 and Loop Road (northwest of Chinle, Arizona and a quarter-mile west of the Arizona–New Mexico border); 928-871-7941; www.discovernavajo.com Ute mountain Tribal Park Route 160 and Route 491 junction, Towaoc, Colorado (south of Cortez, Colorado); 800847-5485 or 970-749-1452; www .utemountainute.com/tribalpark.htm
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The Hopi From Window Rock, it is an hour or so west to the three mesas where the Hopi have lived since they left their ancestral pueblos in the Four Corners area be tween A.D. 1200 and 1300, perhaps in search of water and fresh land when drought and diminished resources made survival precarious. (The Navajo, of Athabascan descent, are believed to have migrated from Canada in the early
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16th century. Unlike the Ancestral Puebloan people and their descendants, they usually live widely scattered on land where they farm and raise sheep. Numbered sequentially from east to west, the mesas, like fingers extending into the plain below, are several miles apart. You need a guide to walk through Walpi, one of two ancient villages that adorn the First Mesa, and my guide points to a spot far below where there seem to be fewer rocks than on the land around it. “That was where our ances tors grew corn and kept their livestock,” she says. Unable to gauge whether she is speaking of 100 or 600 years ago, I ask her exactly how many years ago she means. She looks at me with compas sion, as though I were the village idiot,
then walks on. A Euro-ethnic sense of time seems not to bridge our different minds. The Hopi are proud and protective of their culture, yet they are also friendly and open, even playful. While they ar guably protect their traditions more carefully than any other tribe in the lower 48 states, to the extent of prohibit ing photography, tape-recording and sketching within the reservation, they are willing, even delighted, to introduce the interested newcomer to their beliefs and delineate their impressive pantheon of Katsina spirits, who they believe are responsible for all things that happen, including the all-important rainfall that keeps crops alive. The motivation behind their restric
onument Valley stretches before me, a spectacular finale to all the landscapes I’ve seen so far. I have an eerie sense of déjà vu.
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Photo by George H.H. Huey
moving away from traditional ways. To balance that, we now have immersion programs that teach them our songs, our language, our ceremonies and our his tory. They even spend time with their grandparents and help them shepherd the flocks.”
tions is as pragmatic as it is spiritual. In the 1980s, I’m told, came a rash of thefts of valuable, age-old Katsina headdresses used in their ceremonial dances, when some of their young people traded relics to outsiders. As with other tribes, the lure of modern American culture presents a continual challenge. Touched by its hypnotic air and friendly people, I want to linger with the Hopi for several days more, but it is time to leave. On my way north to Monu ment Valley, I pass by the large Navajo town of Tuba City, and an hour later ar rive at two remarkable Anasazi ruins, Betatakin and Keet Seal, built in the style of Mesa Verde’s alcove communi ties. A Navajo family that used to rent horses for the 17-mile trek to Keet Seal no longer offers the service, so with lim ited time I have to settle for the strenu ous five-mile round-trip hike through beautiful Tsegi Canyon to Betatakin. As I cross the Utah line, Monument Valley stretches before me, a spectacular finale to all the landscapes I’ve seen so
far. I have an eerie sense of déjà vu. Thanks to the iconic Western film director John Ford, the landscape that stretches out from Monument Valley Visitors Center is part of our national id iom, resuscitated today in TV advertis ing for SUVs. Joining a sunset tour from Goulding’s Lodge & Tours that wanders among the towering buttes on back roads, I watch in silent wonder the vibrant reds and deep shadows that play across their monumental surfaces. In these parts, I reflect, it is the power of the land that defines the place of man, not the power of man that defines the land. After a week of traveling through the Four Corners region, I realize that it is the fine balance between the land and the people of this land that has im pressed me most. Despite the ubiquity of American culture surrounding them, these ancient people have managed to live for the most part in accordance with their traditions and beliefs. “Reverence for the land is our number one value,”
Norm Bahe of the Navajo Nation Mu seum told me. “We Navajos and our land are indistinguishable.” Harold Morgan, the son of the hand trembler, put it even more succinctly: “The earth is our mother.” a Roger Toll often writes for Sky on the vast lands and rich culture of the Colorado Plateau region of the West. His home is in Park City, Utah.
Where to Stay Thunderbird Lodge Chinle, Arizona (half a mile south of Canyon de Chelly Visitor Center); 800-679-2473 or 928674-5841; www.tbirdlodge.com Hopi Cultural Center Restaurant & Inn Second Mesa, Arizona; 928-7342401; www.hopiculturalcenter.com Far View Lodge 15th mile inside Mesa Verde National Park, Mancos, Colorado; 800-449-2288 or 970-533-1944; www .visitmesaverde.com/lodging.shtml Goulding’s Lodge & Tours off U.S. Highway 163, Monument Valley, Utah; 435-727-3231; www.gouldings.com
The Mittens and Merrick Butte (right) at Monument Valley
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