Listening Woman (1978)

The Comanche are a Plains Indian tribe federally recognized as the Comanche Nation, with about half the of the nation's population residing on their designated reservation land near Lawton, Oklahoma. The Comanche language is part of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family within the Shoshone dialect, but is spoken by very few people today. Because of their mastery of the horse, imported by Spansih colonists, the tribe had a large reign over the Southern Plains, including areas in what is now New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. They were nomadic people who hunted bison and were known by the other tribes as aggressive, often taking captives in the practice of "raiding and trading," a form of contemporary economic exchange employed by many of the more moblie indigenous groups in North America through the early nineteenth century. The name Comanche comes from the Ute word "enemy," and narrativized and metaphorical depictions of the regional fear engendered the Comanche have found their way into vernacular ceremonial performances in cultural groups along the northern Rio Grande in New Mexico, including the Tewa Pueblos' and northern New Mexican hispanic traditions of the Comanche Dance.

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.

The waste product of stone work that involves chipping away at a core of hard rock. People in cultural groups around the world have developed stone-working techniques to produce tools such as sharp-edged knives, arrowheads, lance points, and bifaces (two-faced stone blades). To produce such tools, the core is held in one hand while the other hand holds a hammerstone (either another stone or an antler tine). The hammerstone is struck against the core at a specific angle in order to gradually break off chips of stone in the process of creating the desired shape of the tool. A chip, also known as a flake, is a small, long, and often thin piece of stone detached from the larger core of rock. The chipping process requires skill, experience, precision, and exact knowledge of the force and angle of the blow required to properly detach a chip. In this manner, stone tools can be produced from cores, often resulting in a large number of chips as waste products. In archaeological sites, chips can be classified by morphology (shape) and provide insights into what tools were produced.

In addition, chips can either be discarded as waste or used as tools themselves. For instance, chips with sharp edges can be used as cutting tools. In the American Southwest, chips were often used as blanks for arrowhead production.

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

Narbona Primero was a greatly respected and wealthy Navajo man born in 1766 and killed in 1849 in a confrontation with the US Army. He was not technically a chief since the Navajo did not have a central authority or structure of that sort, but he is often mistakenly referred to as a chief by outsiders to the culture.

He gained prominence in the tribe by leading men in several battles against the colonizers and attempts to broker peace. The site of an 1829 battle is named Narbona Pass after this leader, changed from its former name, Washington Pass. He was on his way to sign a peace treaty when he was killed.

The Cherokee are a US Native American tribal group who were the largest tribe in what are now the southeastern United States before European contact. Cherokee is an Iroquoian language with multiple dialects. Along with the Creek, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, the Cherokee were considered by non-Native settlers to be one of the Five Civilized Tribes in the 1800s.

The tribe was loosely organized around its many villages, each with two chiefs -- one war chief associated with the color red and one political, religious, economic chief associated with the color white. Chiefs could be men or women, and women sat in on the council. Although related, the villages did not form a completely unified entity until the late 1700s. The people were mainly farmers and lived alongside rivers with a central ceremonial place. It was common to use public shaming and scorn to enforce rules within the villages. The Cherokee also use a matrilineal clan social system.

The Cherokee sided with the British during the American Revolution, but later incorporated methods of farming and life from the colonial settlers. They fought with the U.S. in the Creek War of 1813, where a Cherokee saved Andrew Jackson's life. Despite their growth, their notoreity as one of the Civilized Tribes, and their cooperation, the Cherokee were still pressured to give up land, and the discovery of gold on their land led to the Indian Removal Act, where they were forecefully relocated to 'Indian Territory" west of the Mississippi River. Their removal, beginning in 1838, came to be known as the Trail of Tears during which more than 4000 people died.

They were federally recognized in 1946.

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.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is part of the United States Department of the Interior established on March 11, 1824. The mission of this bureau is to provide services to the 566 federally recognized Native American tribes and Alaska Natives in the United States. The BIA also administers and manages over 55 million acres of land within the U.S. The BIA is one of two bureaus under the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, the other being the Bureau of Indian Education.

Native American groups have clashed with the BIA because they believe the agency is not doing all it can for the groups it is pledged to support. Many of these claims of neglect, mismanagement, misappropriated funds, and hypocritical bureaucratic standards and procedures have been proven in courts of law.

The religion preached by the fictional Buffalo Society, a militant group invented by Tony Hillerman in his 1978 novel Listening Woman. In the novel, the Buffalo Society broke away from the American Indian Movement in order to engage in more violent activities, while the buffalo religionsplintered from the Native American Church.