Margaret Cigaret, Shorty Bowlegs, Luis Horseman, Old Woman Gray Rocks, George Charley, Alice Madman – these are some of the unique characters that Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn encounters on his rounds as a Navajo Tribal Policeman.
Witches, ghosts and werewolves are also principal inhabitants of the 25,000-square mile reservation in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. His investigations take Leaphorn deep into Navajo culture in The Joe Leaphorn Mysteries, by Tony Hillerman: Three Classic Hillerman Mysteries Featuring Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Harper & Row, New York 1978; ISBN 0-06-016174-4).
Hillerman and Navajo Culture
Author Tony Hillerman (1925-2008) was a product of the Southwest. His knowledge of Navajo culture was both academic, by way of studies at the University of New Mexico; and personal, through long and cherished contact with The People. In addition to an array of mystery awards, he received a special commendation from the Navajo Tribal Council.
Much of Leaphorn’s life remains in the deep background. We know that he is married, but only because of a message left by his wife with the police dispatcher. We know that he attended Arizona State University, where he studied cultural anthropology and comparative religion of the Navajo and their neighbors, the Hopi and the Zuñi.
Leaphorn and the Navajo Way
The laconic Lephorn is an expert tracker, of deer and coyote – or of boot prints and tire treads. Reading the tire tracks of a Land Rover, Leaphorn can see that it made two round trips across the sand, empty on the way up a rise, and carrying a heavy weight on the way back down. One set of tracks, he sees, is weeks older than the other set.
Leaphorn is a product of the Navajo Way, a clear distinction for him as he witnesses Zuñi people praying to their gods for rain. Navajo people, he knew, would not pray for rain; they would instead seek harmony with the parched conditions surrounding them.
But mainly, Leaphorn reveals himself in how he thinks. Despite – or perhaps alongside – his immersion in Navajo lore and culture, Leaphorn is as clear thinking and rational a man as any to be found in mystery, police procedural or private eye fiction.
Investigating an apparently senseless double-killing: “Leaphorn said nothing. There had to be sense to it. A reason. It had to fit some pattern of cause and effect. Leaphorn’s sense of order insisted on this. And i the cause happened to be insane by normal human terms, Leaphorn’s intellect would then hunt for harmony in the kaleidoscopic reality of insanity.”
Confronting the Supernatural
Leaphorn’s cases in this trilogy all pivot on some vital point of Navajo ritual and culture, and the supernatural is everywhere.
In The Blessing Way, Leaphorn and anthropologist Bergen McKee meet while investigating reports of Navajo sorcery. They encounter a series of murders, and the key appears to be an old, battered felt hat that was stolen from a car – yet a rich silver-laden hat band has been left behind in the theft.
The Dance Hall of the Dead places Leaphorn in the midst of Zuñi culture and religion. Leaphorn searches for the killer of a young Zuñi, and for the youth’s Navajo friend who has disappeared -- and who could be the next fatality if Leaphorn doesn’t find him first.
Listening Woman finds Leaphorn investigating a double murder, of a sick old man and a young girl. The puzzle pieces include a dead frog, two desecrated ritual sand paintings, and a cult-like society seeking revenge for more than a century of atrocities committed Indians by whites.
Later in his career with the Navajo Tribal Police, Lt. Leaphorn will partner with Officer Jim Chee in a lengthy series of novels. Until then, as Leaphorn would offer in the Navajo blessing: “Go in beauty.”
Mike Perricone - For nearly a decade, I served as Senior Editor and science writer in the Office of Public Affairs at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory ...
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