THE M A G A Z I N E - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

hand-and-toe trail while little brown men
pulled their stone hoes through the growing
corn in the fields in the canyon below.
The old medicine man's casual offer
had unexpectedly brought me the longwished-for
experience of viewing a prehistoric
cliff dwelling in pristine condition.
Presently we moved nearer to inspect
the dwellings at close range. Before long
we were at the base of the red sandstone
cliff in which eons of wind and water
had carved out the cave. Sheer wall stood
above us. The only breaks were two narrow
shelves. Scaling the treacherous sandstone
slope which led to the lower part
of the trail, we found the worn concavities
of the old hand-and-toe trail.
Standing against the wall between the
first and second benches was an oak pole
20 feet long. It had been hewn with
a sharp metal object and not by the blunt
stone axes of the old people. I suggested
that a Navajo at some time had attempted
to make the ascent but Avoo'anlh nezi
stated definitely that none of his people
had ever entered the houses.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying
to scale the cliff while the Navajos lay
under a tree and laughed at my clumsy
efforts. The deepening shadows of sunset
Apparently as intact as when their
prehistoric oivners deserted them
perhaps 800 years ago, the Three
Turkey House dwellings are in an
inaccessible cove 50 jeet above the
floor oj the canyon. The three turkeys
in brown and tuhite pigment
may be seen on an upper wall in the
background. Photo by Milton Jack
Snow.
drove us from the canyon that day with
Tatazih bekin still unconquered.
While Three Turkey House was often
in my mind, it was over a year before I
could again visit the site. Harry Chandlee,
a visitor from the west coast, and my interpreter,
Scotty Begay, helped me carry
100 feet of rope over the tedious
trail into the canyon and to the foot of
Tatazih bekin. We tried to swing the rope
from a high overhanging ledge above the
cave in which the houses lay but our hard
work proved fruitless. The upper lip extended
too far out and a man making the
descent down the rope would find himself
dangling far over the canyon instead of
the houses.
We discovered that the old oak pole
which we found on the ledge on our first
trip was rotten. New green ones were cut
but were neither long enough nor strong
enough to insure safe ascent above the
dangerous jumble of talus that lay below.
Again we were stalemated and as we
struggled out of the canyon that evening,
no Penitentes could have felt more painfully
the increasing weight of that snaky
burden of rope. Tatazih bekin lay above
us, serene and unexplored.
Two weeks later Milton Jack Snow,
companion of many an archaeological expedition
in the Southwest over the past
ten years, returned with me to obtain pictures,
some of which are shown as illustrations
in this story.
Fearing the site might be accidentally
found by some wandering outsider and
its remarkably preserved architectural features
despoiled, the location of the discovery
has been made known to the Museum
of Northern Arizona at Flagstaff.
Recently, I learned that I was not the
first white man to view Tatazih bekin.
Sam Day II and his brother Charley were
guided to this place by Hatalli nezh, a
Navajo medicine man, 40 years ago. They
took pictures of the well preserved structures.
Others may have visited the place. It is
the opinion of the Navajos in the vicinity,
however, that Three Turkey House has
never been entered in modern times even
by their own tribesmen. The remote cliff
Continued on page 57
N O V E M B E R , 1938 13