Canyon de Chelly

Visitors and guides have long described the overlook and canyon floor near Massacre Cave as carrying a heavy, sorrowful weight, with some reporting the sound of gunfire, hoofbeats, or distant screaming with no visible source. The cave is a rock shelter where, in the winter of 1805, a Spanish military expedition fired into the shelter in which Navajo women, children, and elders had taken refuge, killing an estimated 115 people. The Navajo name for the site, which translates roughly to "two fell off," recalls a woman who fought off a Spanish soldier and fell with him from the ledge. Canyon de Chelly has been continuously inhabited for centuries and remains home to Navajo families today, its walls holding ancient Ancestral Puebloan dwellings.