The Ghostway (1984)

Ceremonials are ritual, sacred, or spiritual practices found in many cultures around the world, including the Pueblo and Navajo in the American Southwest. Pueblo ceremonials are not homogeneous among the various Pueblo groups, but are instead a shared attribute among them, and includes ceremonials associated with their kiva societies. Pueblo kiva societies nurture the traditions affiliated with specific kachina, who are ancestor spirits and spirits associated with natural phenomena.

In the Navajo tradition, ceremonials are performed by a singer, also known as a hataałii, to address symptoms of imbalance that manifest as mental or physical illness. Navajo cures are targeted at body, mind, and spirit, and can last anywhere from one to nine days. Navajo ceremonials include chants, songs, prayers, lectures, dances, sweat baths, prayer sticks, and sand paintings.

A small, fully enclosed truck, similar to a pickup truck with a shell, except that the "shell" is part of the vehicle's body./cite>

This an isolated mountain range of extinct volcanoes located in northeastern Arizona within the Navajo Reservation. These mountains are part of the Chuska-Tunicha-Lukachukai-Carrizo mountain chain, the highest peak of which is Pastora Peak. In Spanish, “Carrizo” means “Reed Grass,” whereas the Navajo word for this mountain range is Dził Náhooziłii, which means “Mountain that Gropes Around.” These mountains constitute the lower extremities of the Navajo mythological being Yódí Dziil (Wealth Mountain), whose enormous prone body is comprised of the linked chains of mountains listed above.

In military or paramilitary organizations, such as police departments, captains outrank, or are higher in an organizational hierarchy, than lieutenants and other rank-and-file members of the given organization.

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

• Chief
• Deputy/Assistant Chief
• Commander
• Inspector
• Lietenant
• Sergeant
• Trooper
• Police Officer

A general reference to much of the Four Corners region of the U.S., whose geological distinctiveness is in great part derived from the riddles of canyons, large and small, that break the terrain of this part of the country into a series of interlinked canyon systems, fragmented watersheds, and iconic geologic formations.

One of the most significant words in the Joe Leaphorn/Tony Hillerman lexicon.

The term refers to apparently random, often serendipitous, set of occurrences that are seemingly unrelated but that are aligned in a mix of happy accident and/or corresponding incidents. Sometimes coincidence is likened to "fate" or "fortune," events that come into being through forces that are beyond human control.

Joe Leaphorn, a savvy, experienced, and pragmatic lieutenant, does not believe in coincidence. Things happen for a reason, or come into alignment for a reason, and it's up to the perceptive investigator to recognize covert machinations that seem belied by overt, if allegedly random, connections.

An interrelated social group, whose connections derive from parentage as well as kinship. For different indigenous groups, clan structures develop and are expressed uniquely. For example, in Navajo culture, which is matrilineal and matrilocal, after the four original clans were established by Changing Woman, women who came into the tribe's membership either brought a clan name with them, or were assigned a clan on acceptance into the tribe. Some were existing clans from other tribes, while others were created out of circumstance. Today, the total number of clans represented is calculated in to be over one hundred and forty, from twenty-one major groups. K'é—the Navajo clan system—is the strength of the People. It keeps the Navajo people together.

For the Zuni and other pueblo communities, however, clans and kinship are partly expressed through membership in various kiva and medicine societies, although this is not exclusively true, as one can be elected into some kiva societies, while one is born into others. The Zuni clan system overlaps and interlocks with kinship and religious systems to enforce, regulate, and, to a degree, control the socioreligious behavior patterns of the Zuni.

A cigarette, often spelled cigaret in Tony Hillerman's mystery novels, is a small amount of finely cut dried tobacco rolled in small squares of thin paper into a torpedo-shaped tube for smoking.

Quite often, characters in Hillerman's novels smoke together or offer cigarettes to one another. The exchange and shared experience of smoking cigarettes, which is a common cultural phenomenon, is in some ways evocative of indigenous ceremonial practices of exchanging pipes, breath, and words. Not to over-simplify the effects of smoking cigarettes, especially those produced by large companies, Hillerman warns his readers through one of his main protagonists, Joe Leaphorn, that smoking is "never good. It hurts the lungs. But sometimes it is necessary, and therefore one does it" (Dance Hall of the Dead 13).

Also spelled chʼįį́dii in Navajo, a “chindi” is the spirit of a dead person. Navajos are taught to avoid contact with the dead or enclosed places, like a hogan, where someone has passed to avoid coming into contact with chindi and contracting ghost sickness. Navajos believe that when a person dies, everything that is bad or out of harmony with the person will be left behind as a kind of malevolent spirit that has power to harm the living. For this reason, any hogan or structure inside which a person has died potentially contains chindi and must be abandoned. If a Navajo contracts ghost sickness by coming into contact with a site to which a chindi is still attached, the proper ceremonies must be performed in order to restore balance to the living.

A plant common to the U.S. Southwest, cactus grows in habitats that regularly experience drought. Most cacti are considered succulents, meaning that they store water above ground in their flesh, water they scavenge from their harsh climate with their extensive, wide-spreading root systems. As a result, many cacti grow spines, which are modified leaves, which can prick to the touch. These spines protect the plant against herbivorous predators on the hunt for water during the brutal dry spells that help to characterize their desert environs.