The Mysteries of Tony Hillerman Quiz

Answer: Navajo Tribal Police

Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee both chose police work as a career. The Navajo Nation is a sovereign reservation occupying a large swath of northern New Mexico and Arizona; the exact legal amount of sovereignty that they practice is a complicated and contentious question. The Nation runs its own police force and enacts its own laws, but these have to be approved by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. The fractious relationship between the Navajo authorities, the federals, and the state authorities is often touched upon in the novels.

The Navajo Tribal Police were established in 1959, and are funded by a combination of federal grants and tribal money. Because jurisdictional issues are so complex, the 300-odd cops must not only be certified as Navajo police officers, but also as federal agents and State Peace Officers in three states (Arizona, New Mexico and Utah).

Answer: He was educated outside of his culture, at Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools.

Many children of Joe Leaphorn's generation were taken from their parents every fall by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which educated them in boarding schools and returned them only for the summer farming season. The idea was to ease the children's integration into white society; the result was a weakening of family and clan ties and a generation of children who felt detached from both cultures. The practice was abusive both in its ideals and in its execution; children far from home in an unfamiliar environment were particularly vulnerable to cruel adults.

Leaphorn's childhood experiences shape his adult detective work. He grew up hearing only a quarter of the legends of his people - the ones that were supposed to be told in summer - and sometimes finds himself lost about the details and taboos of the culture he's policing.

Answer: Emma

Emma dies in a hospital, offscreen (as it were), between the books "Skinwalkers" and "A Thief of Time"; Leaphorn is devastated. In subsequent books he looks for excuses to spend as much time as he can away from home, which reminds him of his departed wife.

When he later develops a close friendship with anthropologist Louisa Bourbonette, the memory of Emma holds him back; it is only over the course of several books that he comes to accept finding love again.

Answer: Positive -- in fact, his dream is to become a traditional shaman or spiritual healer.

Jim Chee, young enough to have spent his entire childhood at home with his family and his people, dreams of following in the footsteps of his beloved uncle, Frank Sam Nakai. While police work is also a passion, he spends many of his free hours studying lore and memorizing ceremonial rites. Over the course of the books, his quest to become a shaman is the source of considerable dramatic tension.

Answer: Bernadette Manuelito

Poor Chee's first love is Mary Landon, a white schoolteacher, but after a long and passionate courtship she realizes that she wants a husband from her own culture; he cannot keep his traditions and make her happy. He chooses his culture. A similar conflict plays out in his romance with Janet Pete, a half-white, half-Navajo lawyer whose dream of working in Washington, DC, would require Chee to leave his reservation behind.

Bernadette "Bernie" Manuelito is a fellow officer and full Navajo who gently chases Chee over the course of several books. It takes him some contemplation to decide he's ready to marry, but there is little question that they are a good match.

Answer: They drive.

The Navajo lands are vast (27,000 square miles or 70,000 square kilometers) and sparsely populated (about 175,000 people live on that land). Naturally, Leaphorn and Chee are responsible for only a small portion of that land, moving from jurisdiction to jurisdiction over their careers. Notable station assignments include Window Rock (the capital), Shiprock, and Tuba City.

Still, they cover large distances over the course of any investigation, visiting crime scenes and interviewing witnesses (many of the more isolated hogans do not have telephone service). Virtually every one of the mysteries includes long driving scenes, during which our heroes often begin to piece things together. Leaphorn uses a large AAA map of the Navajo Nation as a tool in solving cases; by placing color-coded pins to indicate the incidence of a particular kind of crime, he notices patterns that others miss.

Answer: Skinwalker

A skinwalker (yee naaldlooshii) is a type of witch--almost always a male--who can change at will into an animal form. In fact, the Navajo term literally translates to "he goes on all fours". They have been initiated into the Witchery Way by committing some terrible crime, such as the murder of a family member, giving them terrible powers at a terrible cost. Like other types of evil Navajo witches, skinwalkers can use powdered corpses to curse their enemies.

Fear of skinwalkers runs deep in the traditional communities patrolled by Leaphorn and Chee. Often, witnesses will mistake a criminal for a skinwalker (memorably, one old woman in "The First Eagle" was persuaded that a scientist in a biohazard suit was a witch). Sometimes, a novel's villain will exploit these beliefs; for example, in "Skinwalkers," the murderer filled his victims' mouths with sand in order to evoke corpse powder and keep his neighbors fearful. Leaphorn's and Chee's detective work thus often depends on their familiarity with these beliefs.

Answer: The federal agents chafe at the restrictions placed on them by the local cops.

Tensions arise for these reasons virtually everywhere that local police and federal agents (from, for example, the Drug Enforcement Agency or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) collaborate -- but the federal agents exercise much more control over the investigations than the locals do. In the Navajo Nation, tensions are even higher since ALL laws are in a sense federal (see Question 1). All laws must be approved by the federal government, which is therefore much more involved in daily life than is the case in most of America. For example, it's a federal offense to possess alcohol in the Navajo Nation!

"The Shape Shifter" casts a harsh light on these conflicts. A young Joe Leaphorn is investigating the theft of a Navajo woman's pinyon sap (which she uses to fireproof her baskets) when Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents call him away to cool his heels at the site of a fire, where they suspect one of their Most Wanted fugitives has died. They don't have anything for him to do there, but it's much more important than a petty theft! Decades later, of course, Leaphorn realizes that the pinyon sap was the key to the whole mystery, and the feds had missed it because of their lack of local knowledge. They didn't realize that pinyon sap is a fantastic fire accelerant, a fact which changed the fire from an accident to an arson ...

Answer: Cowboy Dashee

Cowboy Dashee's presumably prosaic "real" first name is never mentioned, but he is a frequent guest star in Hillerman's mysteries. A smart, friendly Hopi officer, he enjoys teasing Chee but is--in the end--always ready to pitch in and help with an investigation.

In situations where a suspect has crossed reservation lines, or where an understanding of Hopi culture is essential for solving the case, Dashee's help is invaluable.

Answer: Yes. In 1987, he was presented with a Special Friends Award by the reservation government.

For more than thirty-five years, Tony Hillerman's mystery novels have presented Navajo culture, religion, tradition and geography to the wider world, authentically and respectfully. Hillerman also gives the world two bona fide Navajo heroes--the brave, honest, smart and complicated Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee--during an era when Amerindian heroism is all too often played down. (For example, the 2002 movie "Windtalkers"--despite being titled after Navajo marines who served as code talkers during World War II--focuses exclusively on the white soldiers assigned to protect them.)

Hillerman was reportedly nervous at first about the possible Navajo reaction to his books, but his worries were soon assuaged when he was given the Special Friends of the Dinč Award. (The Navajo refer to themselves as the Dinč, which means "people"). In a 2003 online discussion at washingtonpost.com, Hillerman recounted his particular pleasure at the fact that his books are used in tribal schools: "I asked a boy once if he'd ever read any of my books. He said, 'Mr. Hillerman, we've got to read your books or drop out of school.'"

Thanks very much for playing this quiz! I hope you've enjoyed this trip through the world of Chee and Leaphorn.