Art: Prehistoric Pictures

When American schoolboys learn about prehistoric cave paintings, they are usually taught about the ones at Altamira, Spain. Enthusiasts may go on to study those of Southern France, Africa and Australia. Amazingly, the nation’s own Stone Age art treasures—mainly concentrated in the Southwest —are seldom mentioned. Yet amidst the labyrinthine grandeur of Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly (pronounced shay) are thousands of caves, largely still unexplored by white men, where Indians long lived and left samples of their art.

The canyon itself is one of America’s most beautiful and least-known national monuments. It lies at the heart of the Navaho reservation, about 80 miles northwest of Gallup, N.M. on a spine-rattling dirt road. Down the winding course of the canyon runs an underground river. In summer, Navahos farm the sandy banks and dig for water in midstream. Superstitiously afraid of the cave ruins, they build their hive-shaped hogans at the feet of the sky-filling sandstone cliffs. The Navahos still paint animals, like the cows below, on the cliffs; the earliest known example of their reportorial pictures is reproduced above.

Before the Navahos came, Pueblo forebears of the Hopi and Zuni Indians lived in the canyon. They turned its widest caves into apartment houses big enough for hundreds of families each, and decorated the walls with mysterious figures such as the rabbits at left. Still farther back in the darkness of the canyon’s Stone Age lived the so-called Basket Makers, who had no pottery and no bows & arrows. Like Europe’s earliest painters, they pictured their own hands flat against the rock, as if to say simply: “We were here.”