The First Moderns

In Northern Arizona, roughly 300 miles northeast of Phoenix, is Canyon de Chelly, a vast network of canyons and cliffs carved by the headwaters of the nearby Chuska Mountains over the course of 200 million years. These fertile lands, with their dramatic rock formations and towering spires, have been the continuous home to Indigenous people—including Ancestral Puebloans, the Hopi, for more than 5,000 years and, for the last 400 years, the Navajo (Diné). Today, the land, which has been designated a national monument, is part of the Navajo Nation. 

One of the most iconic destinations within the canyon is a twin V-shaped spire that juts out dramatically from the junction of Canyon de Chelly and Monument Canyon. Known as Spider Rock, the narrow fingers of sandstone rise up more than 750 feet, up to nearly the edge of the canyon’s nearby rim. The taller of the twin spires is identified by the Diné as the home of Spider Woman (Na’ashje’ii Asdzaa), the first weaver of the universe. Spider Woman, who is also known as the Spider Grandmother, features prominently in the Navajo creation story, where her gifts of weaving shaped the universe and the Navajo people, including artists whose talents are often traced back to Spider Rock from mother to grandmother to great-grandmother over countless generations. Spider Rock, with its dusty canyon trails and monolithic towers, is part of Diné history. But, for a growing cadre of artists and art experts, the Spider Woman’s home and all that it represents to Diné culture is not a window to the past, but a vision of the future. 

According to Navajo legend recorded in Gladys Reichard’s 1934 book Spider Woman, weaving was a divine act attuned with nature: “Spider Woman instructed the Navajo women how to weave on a loom which Spider Man told them how to make. The crosspoles were made of sky and earth cords, the warp sticks of sun rays.” The Navajo loom is an upright loom not like the Spanish peddle loom. The artist needs to work out the entire design in their mind in order to have it work out on the loom. There’s no room for error.