Discovery of the Ruins 3
The Principal Ruins 7
White House 7
Antelope House 9
Standing Cow 12
Big Cave 13
Mummy Cave 15
The People of Canyon de Chelly 17
The Anasazi 18
The Navajos 27
Further Reading 57
Maps 8, 24, 39
_Far up above me, a thousand feet or so, set in a great cavern in the
face of the cliff, I saw a little city of stone asleep. It was as still
as sculpture—and something like that. It all hung together, seemed to
have a kind of composition: pale little houses of stone nestling close
to one another, perched on top of each other, with flat roofs, narrow
windows, straight walls, and in the middle of the group, a round
tower...._
_In sunlight it was the colour of winter oak leaves. A fringe of cedars
grew along the edge of the cavern, like a garden. They were the only
living things. Such silence and stillness and repose—immortal repose.
That village sat looking down into the canyon with the calmness of
eternity.... I had come upon the city of some extinct civilization,
hidden away in this inaccessible mesa for centuries, preserved in the
dry air and almost perpetual sunlight like a fly in amber, guarded by
the cliffs and the river and the desert._
—_Willa Cather_
Quotation from _The Professor’s House_, 1925, by permission of Alfred A.
Knopf, New York.
[Illustration: The righthand section of Mummy Cave Ruin as it was
photographed by Ben Wittick in 1882 during the James Stevenson
Survey for the Smithsonian Institution.]