Introduction

Beautiful and spiritual, the remote and variegated Canyon de Chelly feels far removed from time and space. Pronounced 'd-shay' (the name is a corruption of the Navajo word tsegi, or 'rock canyon'), it's been inhabited for 5000 years, and shelters prehistoric petroglyphs alongside the 1000-year-old cliff dwellings of Ancestral Puebloans.

Navajos arrived here in the 1700s, using it for farming and as a stronghold and retreat for their raids on other tribes and Spanish settlers; today it's administered for the tribe by the NPS. But if these cliffs could talk, they'd also tell stories of great violence and tragedy. In 1805, Spanish soldiers killed scores of Navajo hiding in what's now called Massacre Cave. In 1864, thousands of Navajos took refuge from the US Army here. Starved out, the survivors were forced to march 300 miles – the Long Walk – to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. Four years later, they returned.