The Chuska Mountains and Defiance Plateau comprise the wettest, most verdant terrain of the contemporary Navajo Nation. Two-thirds of the average annual surface water generated within the Navajo Reservation originates in this region’s ponderosa pine forests. Although the narrow Black Creek Valley separates the Chuskas from the Defiance Plateau, they are two halves of the same whole, a monocline (upwarp) in the Earth’s crust that geologists call the "Defiance Uplift." Piggybacked upon the larger Colorado Plateau, the Defiance Uplift has been raised up and worn down repeatedly for hundreds of millions of years.
The harder volcanic and sedimentary rocks that cap the Chuskas have strongly resisted the same forces that have eroded the rocks surrounding them, creating the "mountains" that we see today. Most of the gently uplifted Defiance Plateau sits between 7,000 and 8,000 feet above sea level, while the more rugged Chuskas reach up to nearly 10,000 feet. Much of the rain and snow that falls in the Chuskas' montane forests drains westward into the spectacular depths of Canyon del Muerto and Canyon de Chelly, eventually emptying into the San Juan River via Chinle Wash.
The forests of the Chuskas and Defiance Plateau have been important to the indigenous peoples of the Colorado Plateau for thousands of years. Navajo agropastoralists began moving up into the Defiance Uplift’s open, grassy ponderosa pine forests sometime after 1700 A.D., migrating westward out of the tributary canyons of the San Juan River in present-day northwestern New Mexico. These semi-nomadic churro sheepherders and horticulturalists found that the Defiance Uplift’s savanna-like forests provided abundant water, forage, building materials, and other "goods of value" for Navajo people and their livestock, the main source of their subsistence. Since the first Navajos claimed these forests as their own, incorporating them into their language and oral traditions, the Chuskas and Defiance Plateau have been vitally important places within the Navajo cultural landscape. From a traditional Navajo view of this landscape, the Chuskas are the "Goods of Value Range," or a "Mountain of Agriculture," as Navajo headman Barboncito referred to them during treaty negotiations with the U.S. military in 1868. They are considered a sacred male deity whose head is Chuska Peak, whose throat is Narbona Pass, and whose legs are the Carrizo Mountains, at the northern terminus of the range. (adapted from Patrick Pynes essay "Chuska Mountains and Defiance Plateau, Navajo Nation.") |
