Canyon de Chelly National Monument

The Canyon de Chelly is located in northeast Arizona, near where that state intersects with Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. It runs thirty miles long on the Navajo Reservation. The red sandstone walls of the canyon are steep and high, rising to one thousand feet in claustrophobic narrowness in places. Though not the most scenic canyon in the area, the dwellings, paintings, and artifacts of the primitive people who lived there from the fifth century through the fifteenth century, all before the time that Columbus brought European culture to this continent, gives Canyon de Chelly special significance.

The Anasazi, the Basketmakers, whose civilization dates from the first century A.D., are the oldest recorded inhabitants of the canyon. They are the ancestors of the Pueblo tribes of the Southwest. Anasazi culture was vast and complex. Many of their paintings can be found on...