appaloosa's photos with the keyword: Lloyd Taylor

DAY 9 FRI 5 OCT 2012 Canyon del Muerto is a legendary place, one that figures prominently in Diné oral history. Ben Teller tells the story of how the Navajo, in the winter of 1864, used the Canyon as a hideout when Kit Carson and his troops came rampaging and pillaging through the Canyon. The Navajo men men gouged toeholds into the rock, and used ladders and ropes to stockpile water and food supplies such as smoked turkey, piñon nuts, wild potatoes. Some 300 men, women, and children hid among the ledges and in the caverns. As the siege took hold with American soldiers marching into the canyon and burning corn fields, slaughtering sheep, destroying crops, and killing Navajo men, women and children; U.S. Army troops would camp near the base of Fortress Rock, beside a stream called Tsaile Creek, and attempted to starve the Navajo into final submission. But unknown to the soldiers, the Navajo formed a human chain along the sloping rock, down to Tsaile Creek, when the soldiers were sleeping. They dangled gourds from yucca ropes, dipping the containers into the cold running water and filled gourd after gourd and steadily passed the vessels from hand to hand back up the sheer rock face to the summit, and that way, the Navajo outlasted the siege and survived. The story ends sadly; eventually all the resisters were captured and were forced to join the long walk to the incarceration camp at Bosque Redondo, NM. See this LINK

DAY 9 FRI 5 OCT 2012 Ben takes us further into the channels of the canyon and we stop at a branch called " Canyon del Muerto ." He tells us the story of how his ancestors gouged out toeholds in the rock to climb the ledges. Using ropes and wooden ladders, some Navajos took refuge high up on the large rock formation They would hide fruit, piñon nuts, smoked turkey, and corn to try and outlast the seige of Kit Carson and his men. In 1864, as the American Civil War was winding down, U.S. Government troops under General James H. Carlton, forced the removal of over 8,500 Navajo from their ancestral homelands, to a reservation on the Pecos River at the Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner in New Mexico. This infamous journey is known among the Navajo as the “Long Walk,” and figures prominently in their oral history. It is as embedded in their collective consciousness, much the same way as the holocaust is to the Jews. The Navajo have a strong tradition of oral history, and the events of this terrible past are retold through the elders, from generation to generation. Recommended Reading: Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period , pub. by Navajo Community College Press (Dine College), 1973

Be still and the earth will speak to you. ~Navajo Proverb We gaze into the sandstone amphitheature one last time, and say goodbye, before heading to Monument Valley. Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah DAY 5 MON 1 OCT 2012

We gaze into the sandstone amphitheature one last time to stop and reflect, before heading to Monument Valley. Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah DAY 5 MON 1 OCT 2012

In harmony may I walk. With harmony ahead me, may I walk. With harmony behind me, may I walk. With harmony above me, may I walk. With harmony underneath my feet, may I walk. With harmony all around me, may I walk. It is done in harmony. ~Navajo Our guide and driver, Lloyd Taylor (Flagstaff).