In 1849, the New Mexico territorial government found it necessary to request that a U.S. Army expedition be sent to subdue the Navajos. Lt. J. H. Simpson of the Topographical Engineers accompanied the troops. His journal, published in 1850, contained the first detailed account of some of the Canyon de Chelly ruins.
After Simpson’s visit, other military expeditions and a few civilian parties probably entered the canyons. No archeological investigations were made, however, until 1882, when James Stevenson surveyed the area for the Smithsonian Institution, making sketches, photographs, and ground plans of 46 ruins in the two main canyons.
Stevenson found two mummies in a rock shelter ruin in the northern canyon. Because of this find the ruin is known as Mummy Cave, and Stevenson gave the canyon a Spanish name, Canyon de los Muertos, or canyon of the dead men. The name has since been shortened to del Muerto.
First Ruin in the lower part of Canyon de Chelly. It has 10 rooms and two kivas.
Later in 1882, Cosmos Mindeleff, also from the Smithsonian and a member of Stevenson’s party, mapped the canyons and showed the locations of some of the larger ruins. Mindeleff’s monumental architectural survey of the ruins of Canyon de Chelly was published in 1896, after two more visits.
Much of our knowledge about material objects used by the early Puebloan inhabitants of the canyons comes from the work of the late Earl H. Morris, who excavated a number of the important cave sites in the 1920’s. Since then a comprehensive survey of the monument has been carried out by David L. De Harport for the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, and additional excavations have been conducted by National Park Service archeologists.
The upper and lower White House ruins were probably connected when the ancient Indians lived there.