The Blessing Way (1970)

A city in northeastern Massachusetts famous for its brutal and bloody witch trials in the 1692, where religious leaders of the town convicted 19 women of witchcraft and condemned them to death by hanging. The town was founded by Roger Conant in 1629 and was the location of the first Congregational Church. Salem became a shipbuilding center of the East coast in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Crickets are insects that have long antennae and powerful legs adapted for leaping. The males produce a shrill chirping sound by rubbing their front wings together to attract female crickets, a sound with cultural resonance all over the world.

In 1896, Utah became the 45th state to join the United States, and Salt Lake City was named its capital. The Great Salt Lake, after which the capital is named, is the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere. The state itself was named after the Ute people, and Utah remains home to five distinct Native American Tribes including the Ute, Paiute, Goshute, Navajo, and Shoshone. In 1869, Promontory Point, UT was the site of completion for the first transcontinental railroad. Utah is also one of the four-corner states, including New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona, which all connect at right angles.

Utah boasts some of the country's best mountain biking trails, hiking, rock climbing, scenery, and skiing. It is also host to a cluster of National Parks, inlcuding Zion National Park, Arches National Park, which features over 2,000 natural rock arches, Bryce Canyon, and many other parks, forests, and recreation areas.

A small community in New Mexico located east of the Chuska Mountains and 60 miles north of Gallup. Its Navajo name "Tó Háálí" means “water flows up,” which references the numerous springs in the area. There is a trading post and a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding school in the town.

Albuquerque is mentioned in ten Hillerman Navajo mystery novels. It is a major city in central New Mexico and is located at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level. The city is bounded on the east by the Sandia Mountains and on the west by the famous Rio Grande. Interstate-40 and Interstate-25 intersect in Albuquerque, dividing the city into four quadrants. Major institutes in the city include the University of New Mexico, the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History, the National Hispanic Cultural center, and the Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute among others. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also has an official division in Albuquerque.

Albuquerque was settled by Spaniards in 1706 after King Phillip of Spain granted permission to colonists to do so, and the city was then named after the Duke de Alburquerque. There were originally two “r”s in the city’s name, but later, the first “r” was dropped because it was too difficult for non-Spanish speakers to pronounce. The Navajo name for Albuquerque is “Bee’eldíídahsinil,” or “At the Place where the Bell Peals.”

Gallup is the most populous city along I-40 between Flagstaff, AZ and Albuquerque, NM , which is the interstate overlay of "the mother road," Route 66. The city was founded in 1881 and named for David Gallup, an employee of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. Gallup is also located just to the southeast of the Navajo Nation and has become known for its Native population, "trading post" pawn shops, and its high rate of alcoholism, among other things. As one of the U.S.'s last remaining frontier outposts, intercultural exchanges seem intensified in this border railroad town, as it's the last stop before entering reservation country. In many senses, Gallup maintains a thriving intercultural population, despite the poverty, and the violences associated with poverty, that afflict a great portion of the city's population. Often referred to as the capital of Indian Country, Gallup has also been, and remains, an ideal location for creating cinematic representations of an iconic Southwest, because of its natural scenery as well as the rich Native American cultural traditions that have coalesced in the city.

One of three land-grant universities in Arizona, Arizona State University (ASU) is one of the largest public universities in the U.S. Its multiple campuses are primarily found throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area, but ASU also maintains a handful of extension campuses in cities around the country.

The Zuni Reservation, also referred to as the Zuni Pueblo, is located about 150 miles west of Albuquerque. The main reservation is located in the western part of New Mexico, but the Zuni also have holdings in Apache County, Arizona, which are not adjacent to the main reservation. According to Zuni traditional knowledge, the Zuni finally arrived at the Middle Place, or Ha'wi-k'uh, after a long migration. Historically, the ancient site of Ha'wi-k'uh was the first pueblo village encountered by Spanish explorers, specifically an African slave named Estavenico. Although Estavenico was killed trying to escape from the Zuni hosts he had ceremonially offended, later reports of this first encounter identified Zuni land as the the site of the fabled cities of gold, which in subsequent generations became known as Cibola. Most historians have assumed that Cibola, and therefore what is now the Zuni Reservation, is a reference to a European myth about the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, but other research suggests that Cibloa may be a Spanish mistranslation of the Zuni self-ascription A:shiwi.

In the Southwestern U.S., the primary setting for Tony Hillerman's Navajo detective series, ruins typically refer to ancient Puebloan structures that are scattered across the landscape, from cliff dwellings in high canyon alcoves to complex urban and road structures such as those found in Chaco Canyon. The relative remoteness and ruggedness of the Southwest also took its toll on European settlers, and remnants of Spanish rancheros, Hispanic villages, and Anglo-American ghost towns are found along networks of two-track dirt roads, ephemeral waterways, and defunct railroad spur lines.

At the turn-of-the-century in the Southwest, Puebloan ruins "discovered" by photographers, artists, and commercial entrepreneurs provided the perfect backdrop for marketing the Southwest as a land of ancient cultures with haunting echoes of lost civilizations. Since the Renaissance, European cultures tend to revisit their ruins, as ruins were thought to symbolize innate beauty and timeless value. Especially during the Romantic period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, ruins were artificially and artfully juxtaposed into manipulated landscapes to emphasize the picturesque "wilderness" of the landscape.

In comparison, Native American cultures in the Southwest tend to maintain a tradition of staying away from these abandoned sites, associating them ancestor spirits. This intentional distancing is a sign of respect for the ancestors, who are believed to remain tied to these places.

Among the Native Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest, the term kachina (often also spelled "katsina”) generally refers to protective deities; either ancestors or guardian spirits. Yet the term can also be applied to masked dancers who personify and become gods or spirits, as well as to the dolls created in the likeness of these dancers and/or the actual gods and spirits. The dolls are traditionally used to teach children to recognize the characteristics and attributes of a Pueblo's spiritual belief system. The pantheon of kachinas is different for each Pueblo, although kachinas are generally understood as supernatural manifestations of elements occurring in the natural world, such as weather phenomena, plants, and animals. In essence, kachinas are perceived as reminders of the animating presence that invests all things in the universe with life, vitality, and purpose.

In the Hopi and Zuni tradition, kachinas are tied to the various clans that make up the tribe, and kachina societies are formed accordingly, each with their own origin stories, and with a variety of ceremonies and traditional spiritual practices.