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Updated: June 3, 2025
Instances of the use of stone in this way are not uncommon in the pueblo country, and there are a number of examples in De Chelly. As before stated, the typical Navaho burial cist is of dome shape. The roof or upper portion is supported on sticks so arranged as to leave a small square opening in the top.
Figure 52 shows a cluster of rooms in the little canyon called Tseonitsosi. This is another Casa Blanca, or White House, and, oddly enough, it resembles its namesake in De Chelly, not only in the coat of whitewash applied to the front of the main room, but in having a subordinate room to the left, over which the wash extends, and in the character of the site it occupies. The principal part of the structure was built in a cave, 18 or 20 feet from the ground, across the front of which walls extended as in the other Casa Blanca, and, like that ruin, there are also some ruins at the foot of the cliff, on the flat. Figure 53 is a ground plan. The resemblance to the other Casa Blanca, however, goes no further. The ruin here illustrated represents a very small settlement, hardly more than half a dozen rooms in all, and there is no trace of a circular kiva, or other evidence of permanent habitation. It is possible that the space between the edge of the floor of the cave above and the whitened house back of it was occupied by some sort of structure, but no evidence now remains which would warrant such a hypothesis, except that the door of the white house is now about 4
In Dead Man's Canon a deep gorge that is lateral to the once populated valley of the Rio de Chelly, Arizona stands a stark spire of weathered sandstone, its top rising eight hundred feet above its base in a sheer uplift. Centuries ago an inhabitant of one of the cave villages was surprised by hostiles while hunting in this region, and was chased by them into this canon.
The distribution of kivas in the ruins of De Chelly affords another indication that the occupancy of that region was quiet and little disturbed, and that the ruins were in no sense defensive structures.
But, aside from the peaches, De Chelly was until recently the great agricultural center of the Navaho tribe, and large quantities of corn, melons, pumpkins, beans, etc, were and are raised there every year.
Moreover, there does not appear to be any place in the scheme for the cliff ruins of the variety especially abundant in De Chelly and found in many other localities, unless indeed such ruins come under class II detached family dwellings; yet this would imply precedence in time, and the ruins themselves will not permit such an inference.
Del Muerto is even more tortuous than De Chelly, and in places it is so narrow that one could almost throw a stone across it. At its mouth the walls of Canyon de Chelly are but 20 to 30 feet high, descending vertically to a wide bed of loose white sand, and absolutely free from talus or débris.
Am. Geog. The ruins in De Chelly are so much broken down that few examples of openings now remain; still fewer are yet intact; but there is no doubt that they are of the regular pueblo types. Most of the openings in the De Chelly ruins are rectangular, of medium size, neither very large nor very small, with unfinished jambs and sills, and with a lintel such as that shown in plate LVIII, composed of one or two series of light sticks, sometimes surmounted by a flat stone slab. This example occurs at the point marked 3 on the map, in what was formerly an extensive village. The wall on the left, now covered by loosely piled rocks, was pierced by a narrow notched doorway. The opening shown in the illustration, which is in the northern wall, is 2
Such are the conditions in the modern kivas of Tusayan. In the smaller structures of De Chelly they must have been worse. The fire is, therefore, made very small and always of very dry wood, so as to diminish as far as possible the output of smoke.
The mountain route is preferable, however, to the valley roads, where the traveler for several days is without wood, with very little water and forage, and his movements are impeded by deep sand. To the traveler on foot, or even on horseback, Canyon de Chelly is easily accessible from almost any direction.
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