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Show EXPLORING IN THE CANYON OF DEATH Remains of a People Who Dwelt in Our Southwest at Least 4,000 Years Ago Are Revealed BY EARL H. MORRIS ARUGGED gorge winds westward from the pine-clad slopes of the . Chuska Range to lose itself in the multicolored wilderness of northeastern Arizona. Throughout the 25 miles of its length the mottled black-red walls rise, sheer or ragged, 500 to 1,000 feet above the tortuous ribbon of comparatively level land which forms the canyon floor. The fingers of countless ages have caressed the cliffs and molded them into forms sublimely beautiful. Here, pillar-like, phantasmal colossi support a proportionate architrave ; there, in massive state-liness, a mosque stands clear against the sky, while in the distance a detached pinnacle towers to a height of perhaps 1,000 feet, its lines light and graceful as those of the wing of a bird poised for flight. A SLAUGHTER OF THE HELPLESS Such is Canon del Muerto, the Canyon of Death (see Color Plate V I I I ) and in the origin of the name there lies a story. "In times past," as an Indian told me across the embers of our campfire, "the Navajo and the Mexicans were great enemies." Until, and even after, the occupation of the Southwestern Territories by the United States, they raided back and forth at every opportunity, each in constant dread of the other. In the winter of 1804-05, as nearly as the year can be determined, the fighting men of a band of Navajo placed their women, children, and aged in a cave high in the rim rock, where they could not be seen by wayfarers in the canyon below, and rode away to follow their profession. Before their return a party of Spanish soldiers, for Mexico was still a colony of Spain, marched down the canyon seeking vengeance. They were well past the cave when from the ledge an old woman, who in her girlhood had been a captive among the Mexicans, taunted them in their own tongue as men who walked without eyes. Thus advised of the hiding place, they encamped beneath it, cutting off all escape, and sent a detachment, by a long and circuitous route, to the mesa top. Riflemen crept out on a jutting promontory, whence there was a view of the cave, and opened fire on the defenseless occupants. Many fell before the first volleys, and the remainder crept behind and between the blocks of stone which form a natural rampart along the brink of the ledge. Then the riflemen directed their fire against the sloping wall of the cave, depending upon an occasional deflected bullet to find its mark. When the marksmen judged their end accomplished, they signaled to the watchers below. The latter climbed to the cave, crushed the skulls of the wounded with their gun butts, christened the gorge the Canyon of Death, to commemorate their "victory," and retreated into the night of time. Because of a superstitious fear of the dead, since that day no Navajo has set foot upon the spot where nearly 100 of his tribesmen met their ignominious fate. Although in recent years despoiled by white men, the cave still bears mute evidence of the tragedy-hundreds of white marks where bullets splashed against the cliff, bleached hones, and parts of ligament- bound skeletons lying in general disorder in the dust (see illustration, page 265). WRESTING SECRETS FROM THE DEAD This was only an episode in the history of Canon del Muerto, a history written not in formal documents, but in the results of their occupation, left in the caves by the succession of peoples who for unnumbered centuries dwelt within. Food substances, articles of dress, implements and weapons, domestic utensils, types of dwellings, and burial customs are the alphabet in which the story of people who knew not the art of writing is recorded ; and these symbols the technique 263 |