For the morning of our full day in the tribal park, we decided to splurge a bit and hire a guide to take us into some areas of Monument Valley that are outside of the tribal park and not open to the public unless you are with a Navajo guide. (All of the land in Monument Valley is considered sacred to the Navajo.) Our guide was Steven Holiday, and we could hardly have asked for better. Steven is a life-long resident of the area, fluent in Navajo (spoken from birth), very well-versed in the history of the area and his people, and a natural storyteller. As it turns out, he’s also an aspiring professional photographer and we were privileged to see some of his beautiful work.
Mystery Valley got its name from the time of the Spanish Conquistadors. The Spaniards noticed that the Navajo women wore elaborate silver jewelry and tried to force them to disclose the source of the metal. They steadfastly refused, knowing that if they told they would likely be killed. So the location and working of silver remained a mystery to the Spaniards.
Mystery Valley lacks the huge monoliths of the tribal park. Instead, it features elaborately sculpted sandstone edifices and twisty canyons with arches and alcoves that housed some Pueblan families in cliff dwellings similar to those in Mesa Verde. A few Navajo families live in the valley now, farming and keeping livestock. The roads through the area are more like paths—narrow, sandy, muddy, and rocky all at the same time. Only 4WD vehicles with high clearance can navigate them—in good weather.
None of the Pueblan sites in Mystery Valley have been excavated, nor will they ever be. Only Navajo residents are allowed direct access to the sites, and most respect the sites and stay away.
The experience was profound in many ways, not the least of which was the opportunity to learn about Navajo social structures, history, and lore of the area’s indigenous peoples. Everything has a name and a story, and everything is connected to everything else. the Navajo people call themselves Diné (sounds like d’NI) which literally means “The people” but which, as Steven explained, is really a compound word that roughly translates into ”between the mother and the father”—in this case, Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Here are a few images with explanations. I hope I do them some justice.
