Mummy Cave is a rock shelter and an archaeological site in Park County, Wyoming, United States. Mummy cave is found in Canyon De Chelly found in the northeastern portion of the US state of Arizona. It is a unique place for permanent homes, campsites, and shelters. Climbing canyon walls every summer is very common for Americans. Many Americans climb the canyon wall in the summer to escape the heat. Moreover, summer is a good season for having fun. Thus, people go climbing walls in the evenings for fun as the weather is convenient because it is not snowing or raining, but rather it is warm and energizing for activities.
The Mummy Cave is believed to be the last pueblo the Anasazi occupied before abandoning the canyon around 1300 A.D. Within the cave, about 70 rooms have been uncovered at Mummy Cave, and there are also at least three kivas. 1 The cave is believed to have been home for about 60 to 70 people, and thus within the cave, these rooms still exist. 2 Human communities have existed in the caves with the first being the Puebloans who lived in the cliffs and were village farmers. The historic Navajos then followed them.
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According to history, the Navajos arrived in the cave before even the Puebloan people left the place. However, archaeology records report that they came way later after the Puebloans abandoned the cave. In either way, the Navajos originated from Athabaskan-speaking bands. They were agriculturalists at some point growing patches of corn, beans, and melons (Ornelas et al.2018). Then they introduced sheep and goats from Spanish. Thus they became pastoralists. Later, they introduced flocks and horses to their lives. The Navajos valued the Canyon de Chelly especially the Mummy Cave where they stayed.
The Navajos believed that the Spider rock, which is a twin rock and stands 800-foot high, had supernatural powers. 3 They used it as the home of the Spider Woman, who was one of their gods. 4 I wish I knew how the sand paint rituals applied on the walls worked to heal Navajo soldiers’ wounds and how they were fairing on after the ceremony (Gerstenberger, 2018). I would love to do this without breaking their taboo that will keep me from the Enemy Way Ceremony. The soldiers were being healed in the ceremony after a war, but I wish I would know the rituals that went down inside the cave during the ceremony. 5 Navajo warriors used canyon vantage points to fight off military expeditions and Ute, Comanche and Apache raids while women and children huddled in the canyon’s many secreted stone shelters (Gerstenberger, 2018).
Some practices were taboos to the Navajo culture. For example, it was a taboo for the community to stand on high rocks as they believed the rocks would grow to the sky with them (Williams & Shipley, 2018). It was a taboo for the Navajos to look at clouds moving in the sky, as it would make a person a slow runner (Champion, Charley, Klein, Stewart, Solomon, & Montoya, 2017). Moreover, it was a taboo to throw rocks at the whirlwind as it would turn back and chase a person. The Navajo culture was a fascinating culture to learn about as they had many rituals that they respected.
Abandoning their smaller pit houses, which were formerly located on top of cliffs in Canyon de Chelly, the Ancestral Puebloan people constructed compounds of apartment-like buildings made with adobe brick blocks or stone blocks (Champion et al. 2017). The Ancestral Puebloan people constructed these cliff dwellings or houses in places where there were numerous overhanging cliffs within what is present-day Canyon de Chelly.” The Navajos, on the other hand, built their homes which lasted long. The houses were called hogans, and they were earth houses. They made these permanent houses. Hogans was built using special wood framework packed with strong clay. The houses were dome in shape, and the door was facing east. The area was windy that is why the Puebloans opted to live in the cliffs, but the Navajos were living in the cave, they had to build permanent houses and doors facing East to protect the people from heavy and bad weather.
The Mummy Cave lies some 90 m (300 ft) above the tributary bed of the Canyon del Muerto, and it is located some 16 km (10 miles) east from the White House Ruins (James, 2018). Mummy Cave once provided shelter to about 60-75 people. Archaeologists believe that human settlement in the canyon dates back some 5,000 years. Ancient prehistoric tribes and peoples utilized the canyon while hunting and migrating seasonally, but they did not construct permanent settlements within the canyon (James, 2018). The Navajos were the first ones to build permanent houses in the area, and thus the 70 rooms discovered in the cave were built by the Navajos.
The Navajos chose to live alongside the mountains as a safe place from their enemies who they had been fighting with for a long time. 6 They did, however, begin to build their lodges with sandstone slab and jacal-type walls, foreshadowing later Puebloan construction. Although the population size did not change appreciably over the next two or three centuries, the canyon residents began to move to the “city,” abandoning their small hamlets for larger villages, possibly to make better use of water resources and arable land during a prolonged drought (Jay, n.d.). This was when the community built their new homes, not over pits, but on the natural surface of the floors of the larger caves, raising masonry or jacal walls, another construction step that looked like the Puebloan construction. According to Jay (n.d.), remaining true to their ancestry, they still built large pithouse structures, not as lodges, but rather as kivas in the front of their villages. Temporarily, their artisans breathed new life into the design and production of their ceramics
In an interview, Navajo medicine man said that the Navajos were active people who valued health and culture. They did everything that was on their mind. If they thought of weaving, then they would put it into practice and learn how to weave. 7 They were hardworking people, and that is why their history will never be forgotten. Trisha Krishnan has done interviews where she has talked about the Mummy Caves and how they mean a lot to the Navajo Indians. Trisha has shown that she respects the cave and she even believes it offers a medicinal significance to the healing of her cancer.
Conclusion
Mummy caves obtained their name from two mummified bodies, found still wrapped in yucca plant fiber. These bodies were found in 1882 by an archaeological expedition. Despite many communities living in the Mummy Caves, the Navajos are the ones who are mostly remembered because of the significant signs that they left. What I finally found out about the wonders within Mummy Cave of Canyon De Chelly is that in the interest of preserving the archaeological record, you must leave any artifacts in place, the rock art untouched (Tredick, Kelly, & Vaughan, 2016). No one may enter the fragile ruins, a rule the Navajo guides enforce strictly because they feel a deep sense of responsibility for the ancient heritage of Canyon de Chelly. The Mummy cave ruins are filled with many pieces of evidence which show the Navajos were the ones who made the place more historical than the other communities.
References
Champion, W. M., Charley, P. H., Klein, B., Stewart, K., Solomon, P. A., & Montoya, L. D. (2017). Perception, culture, and science: A framework to identify in-home heating options to improve indoor air quality in the Navajo Nation. Science of the Total Environment, 580, 297-306.
Gerstenberger, E. (2018). Navajo Chants, Babylonian incantations, Old Testament Psalms: A Comparative Study of Healing Rituals. INTÉGRITÉ , 16.
James B. W. (2018, September, 27). Canyon de Chelly . Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/Canyon_de_Chelly/
Jay W. S. (n.d.). Canyon De Chelly. A Measure of Time . Retrieved from https://www.desertusa.com/desert-arizona/canyon-de-chelly-2.html
Tredick, C. A., Kelly, M. J., & Vaughan, M. R. (2016). Impacts of large-scale restoration efforts on black bear habitat use in Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, United States. Journal of Mammalogy , 97(4), 1065-1073.
Ornelas, I. J., Osterbauer, K., Woo, L., Bishop, S. K., Deschenie, D., Beresford, S. A., & Lombard, K. (2018). Gardening for Health: Patterns of Gardening and Fruit and Vegetable Consumption Among the Navajo. Journal of community health , 1-8.
Williams, D. H., & Shipley, G. P. (2018). Cultural taboos as a factor in the participation rate of Native Americans in STEM. International Journal of STEM Education , 5(1), 17.
