BY TOM VALTIN
"PULL THE RAFTS OVER HERE," directs Zuni elder Octavius Seowtewa, pointing to a sandbar on river right. We maneuver our flotilla—two paddle boats, half a dozen oar boats, and a monster 30-foot motorized raft—out of the powerful current and onto the beach.
Looming thousands of feet above us on either side are the multihued walls of the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River is cold as we step out of the boats, but the mid-September day is hot—a welcome change after 48 hours of chilly, spitting rain and damp clothing.
Seowtewa leads us along a faint, winding path through sand and scrub toward a jumble of ocher boulders atop a gentle rise. We squeeze through a defile in the rock, and suddenly, there they are: thousand-year-old petroglyphs, etched onto a huge sandstone slab. Seowtewa says that they depict the creation history of the "ancient ones" from whom the Ashiwi (or Zuni, as they are commonly known) are descended.
"The Grand Canyon is where the Ashiwi emerged into this world," Seowtewa explains. "Our oral history tells us this, and so do these petroglyphs. They show how we emerged from the canyon, took human form, and were directed to our middle place, the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico. It's here in the canyon where our spirits will return. The Grand Canyon is our holy place..."