Read Online Trip of the Tongue by Elizabeth Little - Free Book Online

of nothing so much as a southwestern duck boat. Every time we saw one, Oscar chuckled to himself. He told me he called those tours “shake and bake.”
    Midway through the morning we stopped at the White House ruins and picked up some cold drinks. Sipping a Diet Coke, I soon lost myself in a dreamy contemplation of the polychromatic canyon walls and rock formations. And then I heard the words “Canyon del Muerto.”
    â€œWhat did you just say?” I asked Oscar, no longer feeling quite so dreamy or contemplative.
    â€œThe Canyon del Muerto. It’s just over there,” he said, pointing. “That’s where you find Massacre Cave.”
    My stomach dropped. I had a feeling I was no longer going to be able to spend my time stupidly admiring the view.
    The Canyon del Muerto, I learned, was not nearly as grim as its moniker. It was named in 1882 when a Smithsonian expedition found a number of burial grounds in the area. For a moment I felt a stab of hope. Maybe for once I’d get through the day without stumbling across a profoundly depressing bit of history. Unfortunately, the story of Massacre Cave was not so benign. Worse, it turned out to be an ominous prologue to what is surely the darkest chapter in Navajo history.
    By the eighteenth century Canyon de Chelly was already an important Navajo population center. The Spanish were also well established in the area by this point, but their settlements were typically located some distance from Navajo settlements, and at first interaction between the two groups was fairly limited. Which is not to say they weren’t aware of one another. The first Spanish references to the Navajo date all the way back to 1626, when Fray Gerónimo de Zárate Salmerón, a Franciscan priest, first wrote of “the Apache Indians of Navaju.” l
    But perhaps not unexpectedly, as the years went by relations were not always cordial between the two groups. The Navajo would on occasion raid New Mexican settlements, and Spanish soldiers frequently captured Navajos and sold them into slavery. In 1805 these tensions boiled over. As part of a series of military operations designed to strengthen Spain’s presence and discourage increasing Navajo aggression, a number of Spanish troops entered Canyon de Chelly, determined to make a show of force. To their surprise, however, the canyon was deserted. They were alone.
    Or so they thought. As a matter of fact, a group of women, children, and elderly Navajo were hiding in a cave in an adjoining canyon. According to Navajo oral tradition, this group gave away their position when an old woman, thinking herself safely out of firing range, began shouting insults at the Spanish forces—in Spanish. The Spanish attacked, and though the Navajo attempted to hold them off, their defenses were no match for the Spanish guns. More than a hundred Navajo died. You can still see the marks the bullets left in the stone in what is today known as Massacre Cave.
    But this wasn’t the last time the Canyon de Chelly was visited by hostile forces.
    At the time of the Civil War, Navajo lands were part of the New Mexico and Utah territories, and Canyon de Chelly had become known as something of a Navajo stronghold. General Edward Canby, the regional military commander, was convinced that the only way to control the Navajo and put an end to hostilities was to forcibly remove them from their traditional lands. In 1862, Canby handed over his command and his convictions to a general named James H. Carleton, a man who would become one of the most—if not the most—reviled figures in the history of the Navajo people.
    Carleton’s philosophy toward indigenous peoples was fairly representative of American thinking at the time: he advocated the “civilization” of the Navajo. He believed that once the Navajo were exposed to English and Christianity and separated from their traditional culture they would abandon any raiding