Cultural Reference

An adjective referring to something that is authentic, frank, straight forward, objective, or non-edited.

Aware.

Conoco is another name for the Continental Oil Company, a petroleum company founded in 1875. At one point, Conoco had 1,800 wells throughout the Rocky Mountain region. In 2002, Conoco merged with Philips Petroleum Company and became known as ConocoPhillips.

The role a priest plays during a Catholic confession. In this function, the priest witnesses a supplicant's oral and physical expression of his or her desire to "return" to the Christian God after straying from the path of righteousness. The self-professed sinner acknowledges his or her sins by revealing them, in a private audience, to the priest, who has the power to authorize forgivenss on God's behalf, especially when accompanied by some sort of performative act of contrition. Ultimately, the supplicant receives absolution from the priest.

Similar to the rights of privacy that exist between a doctor and his or her patients, a priest is also under obligation to preserve and respect the privacy of the members of his congregation, meaning that what is said to the priest stays with the priest.

The small enclosure within which a priest hears a Catholic supplicant's confession.

Often seen with the Anglicized spelling of "concho," a concha is a traditional Native American jewelry design that resembles a concha, which means "shell" in Spanish. Conchas are about the size of large shells, and can be flat or domed plaques, usually made of silver. They are used primarily to decorate leather belts, although can be seen in necklaces, bracelets, or pins. The Navajo in particular, using highly detailed silversmithing skills, have created intricate designs for belt conchos that were often studded with turquoise stones.

A reference to a person's face. Sometimes the word specifically draws attention to skin color (dark, sun-burned, fair), sometime it refers to skin condition (smooth, leathery, weather-beaten), and sometimes it refers to a person's attitude, mood, or overall character (cheerful, obdurate, temperamental), which can often be read in a person's facial expression.

A commune is a group of people living together and sharing common interests, values, and endeavors, including property, possessions, and resources. In the 1960s and 1970s, communes were part of an international, post-industrial movement that worked toward realizing the utopian vision of non-violent, egalitarian societies. In Western Europe and North America, communes were and still are associated with "hippies," back to the land movements, and various expressions of alternative lifestyles and subcultures.

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.