ANTELOPE HOUSE
Many large ruins are located in the narrow and twisting Canyon del Muerto. One of the biggest is Antelope House, some 5 miles above del Muerto’s junction with Canyon de Chelly. This 40- to 50-room village was built on the stream bank against the base of a cliff which towers nearly 600 feet above it.
Antelope House received its name from four antelopes painted in tan and white, about half life size, high on the cliff nearby. Navajo families living in the canyon believe that these well-executed paintings were done by Dibe Yazhi (Little Sheep), a Navajo artist who lived here in the 1830’s. Other figures in white paint are probably the work of the prehistoric inhabitants of Antelope House.
Because it stands on the river bank, Antelope House has also eroded badly. Yet many of the house walls still rise two and three stories high, and the masonry outlines of dozens of unexcavated rubble-filled rooms and of two kivas can still be seen.
Antelope House in Canyon del Muerto is on the canyon floor under a towering, overhanging cliff.
An Anasazi pictograph.
The famous “Burial of the Weaver” was found in a small cliff alcove not far from Antelope House. The grave was against the cliff, and a curved masonry wall in front held back the earth. Inside was the tightly flexed body of an old man lying on his left side. His hair was streaked with gray and tied back in a bob; a billet of wood served as a pillow. The body’s outer wrapping was a feather blanket made from the breast down of golden eagles. Under the feather cloth was a white cotton blanket, excellently made and appearing as clean and new as if freshly woven; and under the white blanket was an old gray cotton blanket. Beneath that blanket, lying on the mummy’s breast, was a single ear of corn.
A reed mat covered the floor of the grave, and the amount and variety of objects laid away with the body suggest that the individual was highly respected in life. A long wooden digging stick, broken to fit into the grave, lay across the burial bundle. Beside this, and also broken, was a bow so thick that only a powerful arm could have pulled it. With the bow was a single reed arrow with a fire-hardened wooden point. Five pottery jars, one broken, together with four bowl-shaped baskets woven from yucca leaves, were also in the grave. These containers were filled with cornmeal, shelled corn, four ears of husked corn, pinyon nuts, beans, and salt. Tightly packed around the body and offerings were thick skeins of cotton yarn which measured more than 2 miles in length. A spindle whorl—a wooden disc on a reed stem which probably had been used to spin the cotton—lay on the yarn.
A National Park Service archeologist examines a storage jar found at Antelope House.