Cultural Reference

Tony Hillerman's use of the term Indian country throughout his Navajo detective series is suggestive more of a concept and a state of mind than a specific territorial reference, a romanticized evocation of the high desert and red mesa landscapes that fill the Four Corners regions of the Southwestern U.S. Hillerman's usage of the term, however, also shares a resonance with the 19th-century use of the term, which was originally a somewhat pejorative reference to the always-receding lands west of the expanding U.S. frontier. Indian Country was wild, unsettled, and ripe for the taking, once the indigenous populations had been subdued and removed. Although Hillerman was an advocate for rather than an enemy of the peoples whose cultures he sketched into his novels, it's telling that one of his most used resources was an American Automobile Association map entitled "Indian Country," a detailed map of the roads and routes on the Navajo Reservation.

Today Indian Country is defined by law as land that is part of an Indian reservation, and in some cases federal trust land, which is officially owned by the U.S. government but is legally entrusted to a tribe. In the context of Tony Hillerman’s work, the term “Indian Country” refers to the territory of the Navajo Nation, which is the largest reservation in the U.S., and which spreads over northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and small portions of southern Utah and Colorado.

A site of ancient Hopi village ruins, located in the southern portion of First Mesa on the Hopi Reservation in Northern Arizona. The site is probably more well-known than some of the other ancient ruins in the area, because it was the location of a large excavation (mainly in cemeteries) by Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution in 1895. The result of this excavation was the discovery of large numbers of pottery pieces all made in the unique “Sikyatki-style.”

According to Hopi oral tradition, as it is recounted in Tony Hillerman's work, the settlement was abandoned after conflict with the neighboring village of Walpi, which is still inhabited today. While historians are uncertain as to why Sikyatki was abandoned, there is some consensus that the people left the village as such conflicts escalated. It is estimated that the village was first settled in the 1400s and abandoned between 1500 and 1600, before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers.

In his novel 1980 Navajo detective novel THE DARK WIND, Hillerman portrays the village as still being a settled community, while in actuality Sikyatki has not been occupied for centuries, although it remains a significant, sacred site to the Hopi.

The informal name for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's police force, which operates on both the federal and provincial levels. The force was founded in 1873, and the troops who served during its early periods rode horses to patrol large territories. These mounted troops were known for mediating, in a relatively peaceful manner, conflicts between members of the First Nations and white settlers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is famous for its formal uniform of bright red jackets and wide-brimmed ranger hats, a dress uniform they still wear today.

A graduating student who achieves the highest grades in his/her class. This student usually gives a speech at the commencement ceremony at the end of a school year.

Although the Navajo Nation can in some senses refer to the Navajo Reservation as a territory, and in other senses to the Navajo as a people, the Navajo Nation is a specific reference to the governmental entity that engages with other nation-states in the management and negotiation of Navajo tribal sovereignty. In this sense, the Navajo Nation can incorporate elements of territorial sovereignty as well as the cultural bedrock comprised of Navajo traditional lifeways and language, but it is a distinct governing body that participates in the political, economic, educational, and social realms at a transnational, and sometimes international, level on behalf of the Navajo people.

On April 15, 1969, the Navajo tribal government officially rejected the U.S-designated assignation of "tribe" and self-identified as "nation." From that point forward, governing bodies such as the Navajo Tribal Police became the Navajo Nation Police

In the context in which Tony Hillerman tends to use the word "beauty," it refers to the Navajo concept of hózhǫ́, the state in which all living things are ordered, in balance, and walking in beauty. The opposite of hózhǫ́ is hóchxǫ́ǫ́, which refers to disorder and chaos in one’s life. In Hillerman's work, chaos and imbalance manifest as as physical or mental illness, infections of the body and soul contracted from contact with mainstream U.S. culture.

The name refers to an iconic frame for eyeglasses which was originally made of horn or tortoise shell. However, those materials are no longer in use, and horm-rimmed glasses are now made of thick plastic. The thick, durable plastic is usually dark in color, making this kind of frame appear bolder and more pronounced than other kinds of frames made of thin metal, for example.

The term refers generally to Mexicans, or people of Mexican descent, living in the U.S., and who identify as American. The etymology of the word is not clear, but linguists point to it as a variation of "Mexica," pronounced "Meshica," the name pre-Columbian tribes in Mexico used to identify themselves. In the early part of the 20th century, "Chicano" was a derogatory name used by white people to racialize Mexican Americans, but with rise of the Chicano movement in the 1960s it was reappropriated by people of Mexican descent as a way to create a proud self-defined ethnic identity. Part of this identity included an awareness of territorial longevity, that many who had been denigrated as "outsiders" to the U.S. nation-state had actually been in the Southwest border region, also known as Aztlan, for centuries prior to European incursions, and that it was the international boundary between the U.S. and Mexico that had crossed over these groups, they had not crossed the border.

The Chicano movement, which was part of the greater Civil Rights movement beginning in the 1960s, was a social and political organization initiated by Mexican American communities of exploited farmworkers in Texas and California who came together to protest and demand basic labor rights. The movement expanded ideologically to encompass various social, economic, political, and cultural issues surrounding racial inequality, and developed a rich discourse celebrating the hybrid (Indigenous-Spanish) ethnic identity and culture of Mexican American immigrants and descendants of immigrants living in the U.S. Although the movement spread across the country and has major branches in many big cities, its bases remain particularly active and are still present in the U.S.-Mexico border regions of the Southwest, in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and especially California.

The belief system upon which the Native American Church is established. Founded in 1918 as a Pan-Indian movement and in response to government abuses and relocations, the Native American Church synthesized Christian faith and principles with the sacramental use of peyote, a small, spineless cactus that grows primarily in Texas and Mexico and that is known as a hallucinogen. Although using peyote for ceremonial purposes occurred in many tribes prior to the organization of the Church, the Native American Church is the first, large ceremonial organization to transcend tribal differences. The Church still exists today despite U.S. legal objection to the use of peyote, which is classified as an illegal drug.

Peyote ceremonies, intended for healing and blessing, usually take place on weekends, but there is no set schedule. Some groups hold meetings monthly while others are more spontaneous. Because peyote is psychoactive, service participants often have visions, but it is the community experience of these effects that gives the ceremony spiritual power.

A term used in music to describe abrupt sounds that are set apart as opposed to smoothly integrated or sustained sounds, thereby creating a style of singing or playing that is marked by short, disconnected, and often quickly played notes. In musical annotation, the staccato note is recognized by the placement of a small dot above or beneath the note, depending on the cleff, to indicate the quick lifting sound the playing of the note should register.