The Blessing Way (1970)

Among the Navajo, a listener is one of three different types of diagnosticians who may be consulted to determine the cause of a indivudual's illness and recommend the proper ceremony to cure it. Hand tremblers and star gazers are the other two types of diagnosticians. Any of these three types of diagnosticians may be consulted about sickness, witchcraft, dreams, lost items, or any unusual happenings; however, diagnosticians are most often called in to diagnose the cause of an illness when the cause, and therefore cure, of the illness cannot be determined by obvious symptoms.

A listener, who is most commonly a woman, might meet with the person seeking a diagnosis and any family members or friends to discuss the problem before beginning the consultation, or she might not. The listener then leaves and goes to a location where she can "listen" for the diagnosis. Different from hand tremblers and star gazers, the cause of an illness and its proper cure reveal themselves to the listener through auditory means. Once the listener has heard and understood both the cause of the illness and the path necessary to correct it, she returns to advise the patient. Frequently, this involves recommending a particular healing ceremonial. The listener may even recommend a medicine man (or hataałii) to perform the ceremony.

In military or paramilitary organizations, such as police departments, a hierarchical organization of personnel exists, often called the chain of command.

The general rankings within a police force, depending on its size, is as follows, in order from highest to lowest rankings:

• Chief
• Deputy/Assistant Chief
• Commander
• Inspector
• Captain
• Lieutenant
• Sergeant
• Trooper
• Police Officer

Also known as "island hopping," leapfrogging as a strategy occurs when two or more units support each other as they advance or retreat. While one unit changes location, the other unit(s) provide cover. Once the first unit is in place, the second unit can advance (or retreat) under the protective cover provided by the other unit(s).

The muscle surrounding the pupil of the eye, which gives the eye its color.

A large naval vessel with a long angled deck that serves as a runway for launching or landing airplanes. Tony Hillerman uses the aircraft carrier as a size comparison to mesas, as these are huge vehicles that visually dominate the surrounding landscape.

Tony Hillerman’s use of “Division of Law and Order” as part of the Navajo Nation's tribal authority is an intentional “mistake,” as there is no Division of Law and Order under the Navajo Tribal Council. Rather, the Navajo Nation maintains the Division of Public Safety, under which are several branches, including the Navajo Police Department. In addition, Hillerman makes a distinction between local Law and Order, which occurs at the tribal and agency level, and federal Law and Order, which occurs at the bureau level and emanates from Washington, D.C.

Law and order, as understood from a Western perspective, was established among the Navajo by an 1849 Treaty between the United States and the Navajo. In exchange for Navajo recognition of U.S. authority, access to and passage through Navajo lands, and the establishment on Navajo lands of U.S. military posts, the U.S. would provide "gifts" to the Navajo. Later, from the time the U.S. acquired the territory of New Mexico from Mexico during the Mexican-American War (1846-48), "law enforcement" among the Navajo was handled primarily by the U.S. military or by the Federal Government’s Branch of Law and Order. This included the forced relocation of the Navajo from their tribal lands during the Long Walk and internment at Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

Today, the Navajo Police Department is a law enforcement agency on the Navajo Nation Reservation, originally established in 1872, four years after the Navajo were released from captivity in Fort Sumner. Despite it's initial success, the Navajo Tribal Police was dissolved in 1975. The Navajo Nation Police were not reestablished until 1959 when the Navajo Tribal Council requested its reinstatement.

A general reference to the societal construction of and belief in "the law" as a body of order, surveillance, and discipline. The "law" can also be practiced by lawyers and advocates as well as enacted by public servants, such as police officers. Hillerman's relationship with "the law," at least in his novels, is ambiguous. At times, the law, as dictated by a society, serves to extract civil order from uncivil chaos. On the other hand, cultural traditions, such as those he observed on the Navajo and other reservations, seem to express a natural law, one that perhaps informs but that also transcends jurisprudence, for example the Navajo idea of hózhǫ́, an expression of natural equilibrium. The protagonists in Hillerman's Navajo detective novels, Leaphorn and Chee, are often placed in situations where they understand the written laws, but remain aware of the limitations and contradictions of the written law as it is practiced.

Also known as volcanic plugs or necks, lava buttes form when magma hardens within a vent of an active volcano. Erosion can remove the surrounding rock, leaving the erosion-resistant plug behind, producing a distinctive, upstanding landform.

Shiprock, New Mexico, is one example of a lava plug.

Magma, or molten rock, rising in liquid form onto the earth's surface, usually by volcanic eruption. The term also applies to the solidified rock that is formed once molten lava has cooled.

Land of the People, also known as Dinétah, refers to the ancestral and traditional homeland of the Navajo. Dinétah extends beyond the political boundaries of the Navajo Reservation to include traditional cultural properties that have been part of Navajo lifeways and cosmology for centuries. Four mountains, or sacred peaks, anchor Dinétah and its people: Mount Blanca (Tsisnaasjini'), Dawn or White Shell Mountain, the sacred mountain of the East, near Alamosa, Colorado; Mount Taylor (Tsoodzil), Blue Bead or Turquoise Mountain, the sacred mountain of the South, near Grants, New Mexico; the San Francisco Peaks (Doko'oosliid), Abalone Shell Mountain, the sacred mountain of the West, near Flagstaff, Arizona; and Mount Hesperus (Dibé Nitsaa) Big Mountain Sheep or Obsidian Mountain, the sacred mountain of the North, in the La Plata Mountains of Colorado.