Dance Hall of the Dead (1973)

Smooth muscle tissue, usually associated with organ function, that an individual does not consciously choose to use. Instead, the operates, or performs its function automatically. The heart is an involuntary muscle.

One of the most iconic interstates in the U.S, this route followed and ultimately replaced Route 66. I-40 connects the primary urban areas mentioned in Tony Hillerman's Navajo detective stories including Flagstaff, AZ and Gallup, Grants, and Albuquerque, NM. I-40 is also the primary thoroughfare for traveling east-west through Indian Country.

To formally, if not ritually, bring an individual into a specific group or organization. The initiation process can be triggered by coming of age and reaching a certain societal point of maturation, by accomplishing a series of tasks, or by learning the steps, songs, and procedures of various ceremonials, among many other possibilities. To become initiated into a group suggests that one has passed from one stage of life into another, from one series of responsibilities to another, and from one set of behaviors to another.

An adjective that suggests that something is inevitable, creating a feeling that an event is about to happen and that nothing will be able to stop it.

A historically incorrect but contemporaneously common method of referring to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Believing, or hoping, that they had stumbled upon the eastern shores of the subcontinent of India, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European explorers called the local peoples they encountered "indios" (in Spanish) or Indians; the misnomer stuck and is a vernacular conundrum that persists in the Americas through to the present. Contemporary references to indigenous peoples in the Americas have replaced "Indian" with tribal names, or the terms "Native American" or "First Peoples."

Hillerman's fiction deals exclusively with Native American cultures located in the Southwest region of the U.S., in particular the Navajo, but also the Hopi, Zuni, and other Pueblo groups. In most cases, Hillerman uses the word Indian when referring to members of these various cultures.

"Ice Age" refers to the Pleistocene epoch, which ended between 13,000 - 9,000 years ago. He Pleisticene epoch was the most recent period during which 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 grows scarce the futher one travels west beyond the Rio Grande Basin.

The colloquial name for a genus (Bouteloua) of perennial or annual grasses that grows in clumps or tufts throughout North America and includes such range grasses as: black grama, hairy grama, blue grama, and sideoats grama. The genus Bouteloua was named after Spanish botanists, Claudio and Esteban Boutelou.

A fictional location mentioned by Hillerman in Dance Hall of the Dead. Because the local hippie commune is mentioned as "living in hogans behind Hoski Butte," it seems appropriate to locate the butte close enough to Zuni for locals to be familiar with it, yet out of town enough for abandoned hogans to exist along a "wagon track," which is what Lieutenant Leaphorn drives along when he goes to interview the commune's members.

A vernacular expression for playing, fooling, or screwing around, a usually innocuous but sometimes boisterous activity engaged in by individuals to pass time and expend energy. Horsing around often, although not always, leads to minor property damage or personal injury.

The horse was introduced to the Americas in the 1500s by the Spaniards. While the Spaniards prized the horse for the role it played in travel, exploration, and war, they at times left herds of horses in various locales, hoping that the animal would find ways to establish itself on the continents the Spanish were busily conquering. The horse proved very adaptable and found habitats to thrive in, especially in the Great Basin and Plains of North America. Native Americans, particularly along Spain's northern colonial frontier, emulated the Spaniards' use of the horse for transportation, hunting, labor, and sport, and soon out-mastered the Spanish horsemen in riding, training, and cultivating the beasts the Spanish so prized. The horse took on great significance to many indigenous communities, and in some cases was incorporated into origin stories as a gift from the gods. The horse also occupies a central role in many mythologized frontier narratives about the Western and Southwestern regions of the United States.