Exploring Indian Country

By Eric Lindberg

The iconic vista of Monument Valley
from the View Hotel, looking out at
the Mittens and Merrick Butte.
© Eric Lindberg.

As a howling wind slams tiny grains of Arizona sand against my cheeks, I crouch lower and lean into the gusts. My guide, Gary Tso, is ecstatic. “This is real Hopi weather. I love taking visitors out on days like this. Now you see what it takes to survive here.”

Barely buoyed by Gary’s cheeriness, I duck my head and keep tramping across Third Mesa. We’re in Old Oraibi village on the Hopi Reservation. As the wind pummels the village and chisels away at the mesa grain by grain, I feel like I’m being blown backwards in time.

Old Oraibi is truly ancient. Founded sometime before 1100 A.D., it’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the United States. The three mesas of the Hopi Reservation with their 12 villages are only part of a vast region of northeastern Arizona often referred to as Indian Country. Surrounded by the much larger Navajo Nation, these two reservations together comprise 27,000 square miles of gorgeous and mostly empty spaces.

On this blustery morning the only signs of life are two affable dogs who trail us around the hodgepodge of traditional and modern homes. We walk down lanes bordered by eroded earthen mounds where large pot shards, bones and corn cobs stick out like skeletal remains of an ancient civilization.

My journey began two days earlier in calmer conditions in Farmington, N.M., a logical starting point to Indian Country for most Coloradans. Nearby Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins are important archeological sites, and the Farmington Museum has an in-depth exhibit on the trading post culture that began in the early 1900s and brought the outside world to the reservations.

Following Highway 13 over the Chuska Mountains and onto a rolling pinyon-studded plateau, I reach an overlook where the land abruptly drops hundreds of feet into three dramatic canyons. Scanning the canyon walls far below, I find what I’m looking for: cliff houses and crumbling walls from centuries past. Once home to the Ancient Puebloans, this is Canyon de Chelly National Monument on the Navajo Reservation.

Those first inhabitants are long gone but there’s still life here. I join a Thunderbird Lodge canyon tour with guide Larry Tso, and eight of us board an open-air truck with seats in the back. Locals call the tours “Shake and Bakes,” an apt moniker as we slosh up slippery riverbeds and rumble over rutted roads in the hot Arizona sun.

When we stop at Antelope House Ruin, Larry squints far up the canyon toward a time long past. “I’m third generation in this canyon. This was my playground as a boy. I would bring sheep down from the rim and slide on the rocks.”

Dozens of families live here in summer while farming and herding sheep. To the Navajo, the canyon is more than their backyard; it’s a sacred place. On the reservation their culture is changing fast, but at Canyon de Chelly they return to a more traditional world.

Just outside the park entrance I trade the serenity of that world for the reservation town of Chinle. In a dirt lot next to the car wash the daily flea market is bustling. The food trailer offers local cuisine: blue corn mush, roast mutton and fry bread. As I lean against my car with a bowl of steam corn stew, four unsaddled, spirited horses trot past along the sidewalk. Nobody is leading or herding them. Sticking together, the free spirits pass me and disappear behind the laundromat. Perhaps footloose horses are common here. For me they’re a little glimmer of the old West still roaming these dusty streets.

Less than an hour’s drive south in Ganado is another holdout from a less-tamed past. Hubbell Trading Post is a historic link between the Navajo Nation and the outside world. When the post first opened in 1883, locals traded wool, sheep, rugs, jewelry, pottery, and baskets in exchange for goods. Later they began using cash as well.

White House Ruins, Canyon de Chelly.
© Eric Lindberg.

Inside, the wood floors creak underfoot as I explore the dimly lit room packed with food and household items. The bull pen, or trading room, is filled with rugs, jewelry, pottery, and baskets. Everything is for sale. Guide Micah Binally tells me there’s no shortage of visitors in summer. “People see trading posts in a spaghetti Western movie, and they come here to see the real thing. Hubbell operates pretty much as it always has.”

At daybreak I turn west on Highway 264, the FM station spilling out Navajo songs as feeble sunlight trickles across the sparse sage plateau. Somewhere around Keams Canyon the road crosses into Hopi land and the geography turns interesting, a sprawling landscape of red rock arroyos and stony buttes rising to distant mesas.

By midmorning at the Hopi Cultural Center the wind is whipping sand and dust skyward. My guide, Gary Tso, watches me chase my hat across the parking lot. “Welcome to Hopi land. We need some coffee today.” Retreating to the cultural center restaurant, we order blue corn pancakes and discuss the day ahead.

Driving across First, Second and Third Mesas, we pass through villages with lyrical names: Sipaulovi, Shungopavi, Kykotsmovi. Gary tells of native origins and the fourth world, of European incursion and communities dividing. We visit a potter and a jeweler. My initial impression of simple homes and dirt yards falls aside and a deeper story emerges.

The rough lanes and homes of Old Oraibi village sit on the remains of more than 950 years of continuous habitation. Visitors are welcome but photography, video and sketching are prohibited. This is a place to approach with respect and to absorb by listening and observing.

Leaving 264, we follow a dirt road up a valley and take an unmarked turnoff leading to a natural amphitheater. Along the 1.5-mile curving wall are more than 15,000 examples of rock art etched and painted into the hard stone. Flute players spraying stars, bighorn sheep, lizard-men, snakes and turkeys, duck-headed humans, spirals and abstract patterns; these are the petroglyphs of Dawaki, an ancient trading center.

No signs point the way here; Dawaki can only be visited with a Hopi guide. That’s partly why there is little graffiti or vandalism. Photography is forbidden. These petroglyphs are a form of communication whose meaning is lost. Here in this sheltered place visitors form their own interpretations.

Returning to the highway, I turn west toward Tuba City through a murky dust storm. By the next morning the wind has dropped and after spending two hours at the Navajo Museum I head north on 160 toward Kayenta. Halfway there, I turn off and go 13 winding miles to a little-visited gem tucked into a cottonwood canyon.

Shonto Trading Post is another of the few remaining trading posts still doing business on Indian land. And the man who owns it is a natural trader. “I’ve always been a traveler and a trader—kind of a vagabond.” For 64 years Al Grieve has lived in two worlds. Growing up in Indian Country, he became fluent in Navajo and began trading rugs and jewelry in the ‘60s. With his Navajo wife, Margaret, he has worked at or run several trading posts, including Standing Rock, Rough Rock, Hubbell and Tuba City.

Now he and Margaret own Shonto. As he stands in the bullpen surrounded by Indian art and talking about the business, his reminiscing eyes shine. With trading posts fading into history, men like Al are endangered, among the last of their kind.

Back on Highway 160, I turn left at Kayenta and head north with the hope of photographing Monument Valley at sunset. The classic scene of the Mittens and Merrick Butte from the View Hotel area is probably one of the most photographed landscapes in America. It’s hard not to get a good shot; just look for the tripod holes of countless photographers who came before. But clouds and dull light have followed me all day and I’m not expecting much. I join others gathered along the rim and we wait.

But within minutes everything changes. As the sun dips below the clouds the buttes and towers are bathed in a warm pink light that photographers lust after. For the next 10 minutes the only sounds are clicking camera shutters and the hoarse caws of ravens hurtling past overhead.

Few places move travelers’ spirits like these ancestral lands do. I recall my Navajo guide’s words as we left Canyon de Chelly. “The story of the ancient ones is the basis of who and what we are today. Take a moment to observe, to listen and to feel the peacefulness. Listen to the voices of the canyon.”

The same could be said for all of Indian Country.

Eric Lindberg (www.ericlindberg.com) is a freelance writer and photographer based in Lakewood, Colo.

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