Porcupines are large herbivorous rodents with a coat of sharp spines, also known as quills. These quills are actually strands of hair coated with layers of keratin, a form of protein found in skin. The quills function both as camouflage but also as protection, as the hard sheath of keratin tapers into barbed points, making the porcupine appear sort of like an elongated pincushion.
Unless stated otherwise, Hillerman's use of "pollen" refers to yellow corn pollen (or tádídíín in Navajo), which is a sweet tasting, yellow-colored powder that is collected from the tassels of mature corn plants. Because corn, or maize, has traditionally been a life-giving staple of indigenous groups throughout the Americas, the pollen, which is necessary for corn's own survival via pollination, has attained a sacred, life-giving status of its own. Often kept in small leather pouches, corn pollen is used in ceremonies as a blessing and offered in prayer.
An ethnic slur directed at individuals of Polish descent, suggesting characteristics of ignorance and stupidity.
A wood panel that is manufactured by gluing thin sheets of wood together. Although the wood sheets are thin, the combination of multiple layers of wood and resin (glue) combine to create a relatively light-weight, strong, and inexpensive building material.
A hand tool used to grab, pinch, pull, bend, cut,turn, twist, or hold objects depending on formation of their pincers, also known as their nose.
Also known in a general sense as "the Ice Age," the Pleistocene Epoch ended between 13,000 - 9,000 years ago and is the most recent period when the Northern Hemisphere was covered in advancing and then retreating sheets of ice, otherwise known as glaciers. During the late Pleistocene Epoch, Paleoindians moved through areas of what is now known as New Mexico, although evidence of their hunting camps grow few in number once one travels west beyond the Rio Grande Basin. Most of the evidence of Paleoindian activity is in the form of stone tools and lance points.
An architectural feature found in the built environments of many cultures around the world, plazas are open spaces for public functions around which structures form an almost amphitheater-like setting. In Native American traditions in the U.S. Southwest, plazas are created by the terraced clustering of a pueblo community around usually one of several open spaces significant to the community. The early Spanish explorers in the region believed that they recognized in these open spaces the plazas of their own secular and religious built environments, and therefore called them plazas, which is the term still in use today. Puebloan plazas have social, secular, and spiritual functions, and are oriented in space to accommodate seasonal and diurnal solar patterns, as well as the ceremonial needs of a linked system of spiritual fraternities. Plazas are often associated with prominent kiva societies and ceremonies; because of this, the Catholic church appropriated Puebloan plazas as locations upon which to site their mission compounds as they evangelized the northern perimeters of New Spain in the Americas during the sixteenth, seventeenth , and eighteenth centuries. Over time, Puebloan plazas came to accommodate both indigenous and Catholic practices, revealing the syncretic use of space still in practice today in many Pueblo communities.
An elevated, fairly level expanse of land raised sharply above adjacent land.
A mixture of lime or gypsum, sand, and water that is applied to the walls of structures as a sealant. In the Southwest, many pueblos are made of adobe, which comes from the Spanish verb adobar, meaning “to plaster.” Part of the annual maintenance cycle of pueblo structures can include the ritual of whitewashing, or plastering, interior and exterior walls with a local derivative of plaster.
Also known as an air gun. A weapon that uses compressed gas to fire a projectile, as opposed to a firearm which uses a propellant, such as gunpowder, in order to fire.