Though the stunning sheer red cliffs of Canyon de Chelly are easily the
national monument’s most spectacular feature, the area was set aside for
its importance to the study of prehistoric peoples in the Southwest. The
architecture, tools, clothing, ceramics, and other decorative or useful
objects found here contain a comprehensive record of many hundreds of
years of human activity.
Nothing was known about the ancient culture sheltered here until
archeologists began piecing together the information gleaned from Canyon
de Chelly’s many ruins and burials. Their story survived because these
people lived in a physical environment that posed a minimal threat to
normally fragile remains.
Wherever the remains of ancient man occur in the open, building ruins
and some objects of stone, bone, and pottery survive, but those of wood
and fiber disappear completely. Most of what we know about peoples from
the dim past thus comes from materials that have been buried and
protected. For the archeologist there are few better sources of
information than formal burials, which often contain extensive
offerings, and situations like those at Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del
Muerto, where sites served as dwelling places for long periods of time
and the steady accumulation of refuse buried layers of cultural debris.
The extremely arid conditions in the caves of these canyons offered
additional protection. The climate here is so dry that human burials are
perfectly preserved as natural mummies or desiccated bodies (there being
no attempt at artificial preservation by these people), and such fragile
buried objects as baskets more than a thousand years old are in good
condition.
The people who lived at Canyon de Chelly in prehistoric times are today
called the Anasazi, a Navajo word meaning “old people.” These people
were the ancestors of modern Pueblo Indians, and they lived in the
vicinity of northern Arizona and New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and
southeastern Utah from about the beginning of the Christian era to the
end of the 13th century. Over most of that period they lived in these
canyons. Before they learned to build in the cliffs they located and
constructed their houses much differently. But the canyons always
sheltered them, and their homes, their dead, and their debris tell us
how it was with these people from the beginning to the end of their time
here.
[Illustration: These bone tools were used to work leather and weave
baskets.]