Tracking the Spirit of Tony Hillerman

I am standing on a rise overlooking the San Juan River, outside of Shiprock, N.M., scanning the landscape for a dusty silver trailer shaded by a stand of cottonwoods. It’s the home of a hero of mine, Navajo Tribal Police Officer Jim Chee, and the scene has been so clearly described that it’s mildly disconcerting not to find it. I put down my field glasses and catch my 13-year-old daughter cutting me a long-suffering look.

“Mom,” Delia says with exquisite scorn, “give it up. He’s fiction.”

She’s right, of course, but it’s a kind of cockeyed tribute to the talents of Jim Chee’s creator, mystery writer Tony Hillerman, that even now, six days into a family driving trip across Hillerman territory, I keep forgetting that his stories are invented.

I first opened Tony Hillerman’s atmospheric Southwestern novels when I lived in New York City. They provided an appealing alternate reality in the vividly rendered landscape of the Four Corners region--the area where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico meet--and a captivating look at the Navajo culture through the eyes of protagonist Chee and retired Tribal Police Lt. Joe Leaphorn.

I didn’t want to turn the trip into a crackbrained literary Easter egg hunt, where we’d trudge up every dry wash or climb every cliff whose name had found its way into the Hillerman canon. No, it’s the zeitgeist of the place I’m after, as personified by Jim Chee, the thoughtful, college-educated cop whose Janus-like perspective on the two cultures he straddles--modern American and traditional Navajo--is at the heart of Hillerman novels. Jim Chee’s defining dilemma is whether a person can assimilate into a dominant culture while holding fast to ancestral core values. Hillerman’s whodunit story lines revolve around the mayhem spawned by the clash between the old (the Navajos and the patchwork of Pueblo tribes nearby) and the new (variously personified by big-city criminals, archeologists, mining companies and the FBI).

Now, with the American Automobile Assn.’s excellent “Indian Country” road map spread out before me, the same map the maestro has hanging on his study wall as he writes, I’ve cooked up a plot of my own: a family road trip through the region that encompasses the landmarks defining Hillerman territory. It also should give us a crash course in Navajo culture, beginning with the heart of Navajo country at Monument Valley Tribal Park, 652 highway miles east of Los Angeles.

*

You know you’re in another country when you hit the Navajo Nation, even if you miss the highway welcome signs. Supermarket window placards advertise mutton, a staple of Navajo cuisine. A hand-lettered poster promotes a “Squaw Dance.” The Dineh (dih NEH), as the Navajo people call themselves, are all around: venerable ladies in long velveteen skirts riding in the back of pickup trucks, their menfolk in cowboy hats and hefty silver concha belts. The FM radio offers our first taste of the Navajo language as the deejay reads public service announcements that occasionally feature the familiar “basketball” and “fund-raiser.” Across the broad, scrub-brush landscape we sometimes spot hogans, the Navajos’ traditional log and earth circular cabins, or a border collie watching a grazing flock.

The southern gateway to Monument Valley is Kayenta, a town that appears depressingly down at the heels. The windows of the strip mall are grimy, the little gray HUD houses crowd together on postage-stamp lots of bare earth and bits of trash are plastered up against the chain-link fences. The concept of a “village” is foreign to the Navajo, who traditionally lived in family compounds scattered widely. Looking at Kayenta, you get the sense that the people’s acceptance of the dominant culture is grudging at best, that there’s even a grim satisfaction in knowing that the wind-driven earth could eventually cover it over.

My husband Gerry and I, accompanied by our daughter and 7-year-old son, Pete, are lucky to have snagged accommodations at Goulding’s Trading Post and Lodge, a few miles out of town. The panoramic view of Monument Valley is at once otherworldly and oddly familiar. It’s the mythic landscape of the Old West: the jutting, watercolor-hued spires are noble and exhilarating. The only thing missing is John Wayne. A selection of videos at the desk includes “Cheyenne Autumn,” a community in-joke since the movie’s “Cheyenne” are locally hired extras who crack ribald jokes in Navajo.

We dump our luggage and head to Monument Valley, eager to enjoy the late-afternoon sun on the peach-to-vermilion spires and mesas. In the visitors’ center parking lot, we find an array of tours operating out of tiny booths. We choose what locals call a “Shake and Bake,” an open flat-bed truck fitted with seats and railings. Our guide, Sam, is soft-spoken, with a quick, shy smile and a miserable head cold. With Sam at the wheel, our family foursome rattles off over rutted roads, wrapped up against the chilly breezes of spring at 5,200 feet. Now and then he pulls over so we can climb out and he can tell us about Navajo mythology and the various movies and car commercials shot here.

The valley is full of wonders apart from its natural beauty, including crumbling Anasazi cliff dwellings and a gorgeous wall of cave paintings. It’s dotted with hogans and herds of sheep. We’ve been cautioned against infringing on the privacy of the inhabitants, so it’s a treat when Sam pulls up to a hogan and we’re able to go in.

The mud-plastered exterior doesn’t give a clue to its intricate construction. Peeled cedar logs are criss-crossed and buttressed beautifully. Inside, a silver-haired woman sits straight-backed on the floor before a tall loom. This, Sam says, is Susie Yazzie, who speaks no English but is pleased to answer our questions through him. Her gnarled, nimble hands fly, threading the shuttle through and back, through and back, weaving wool she has spun from the fleece of her own sheep. The rug is a big one, nearly five feet across, in a Yei| Bei| Chei| dancer design. It will take six months to finish and has already been sold to a collector.

Outside, I shyly ask Sam how to pronounce the Navajo greeting. “Ya |et |ey,” he says, swallowing the glottal stops. The kids and I dutifully parrot it, but it comes out more like “Yadda-hey!” Sam tries not to wince. We’ll practice.

One of our last stops is Wind Rock, a bowl-like formation where, Sam tells us, people come to sing. Unexpectedly, he tilts his head back and does exactly that, in a wonderfully mellifluous voice that rings against the cliff walls. The last notes die away, borne up on the wind. A traveling song, he says, as his reserve abruptly returns. A prayer.

The next morning, we head 75 miles southeast to the community of Teec Nos Pos, which would be just another dot on the map if it weren’t for its fortuitous position near Four Corners, the only spot in the United States where four states meet. You stop for the novelty of getting your picture taken while you straddle all four, state flags snapping noisily in the wind.

A few souvenirs heavier, we head on to Colorado and through the town of Cortez into Ute country. Our destination, about 60 miles from Four Corners, is Mesa Verde, the archeological preserve encompassing ruins as old as 1,500 years. There is no particular Hillerman connection, but it’s too fascinating to pass up. Once the heart of the ancestral Anasazi civilization, the area has changed very little in the 700 or so years since it was last inhabited. Precisely what happened to these Anasazi is an enduring mystery.

We poke our heads into tiny apartments built one upon the other into a deep recess in the side of a cliff and clamber down a rough wooden ladder into a kiva. To us visitors, it feels like a community built at two-thirds scale. We marvel at the state of preservation. I’ve seen condos in Reseda that didn’t look this good.

*

After a night in nearby Durango, we head south, through Farmington, N.M., and I catch myself looking for Jim Chee again--maybe dining at a local lunch counter with his girlfriend Janet Pete, as he does in Hillerman’s world.

From here, Route 64 back to Arizona has little to recommend it except a string of pawnshops. Some traditional Navajos distrust banks and often put any extra money into chainsaws, blankets and silver jewelry, items they can pawn in an emergency. Unredeemed, they become dead pawn. The jewelry is often the kind of first-quality stuff you’ll never see in the tourist stores. It’s a great way to buy heirloom-grade jewelry--a massive concha belt or a single sea-green turquoise stone that covers your entire forearm.

If there’s a mecca on this trip, it’s Shiprock, N.M., 26 miles west of Farmington, home to the Navajo Tribal Police headquarters, where Jim Chee is sometimes stationed. Only self-restraint--and that look again from my daughter--keeps me from blowing a whole roll of film on images from Hillerman novels. A Navajo Tribal Police car. Snap. Shiprock High School’s sign, “Home of the Chieftains.” Snap. A neon storefront church cross flashing “Jesus Saves!” Snap. A Shiprock laundromat--could it be the same one at which Hosteen Joseph Joe witnessed a murder in “The Ghostway”? Snap, snap.

“Mom!” Delia wails. “You’re embarrassing me!”

One thing Hillerman hasn’t prepared me for is the poverty, which is more glaring in this urban setting. Tourism and its ancillary enterprises are the big industry here, but clearly they aren’t enough. Unlike many other Native American tribes, the Navajos have consistently voted down casino initiatives, largely on the belief that gambling is a soul-killing sickness. Drinking, too, is regarded as a disease and alcohol is illegal in the Navajo Nation, even if its scourge is depressingly evident. A bunch of teens in a primer-streaked Trans-Am zoom by, tossing crumpled beer cans onto the road; a white-haired man, his face a ruddy relief map, begs outside a convenience store. Lives out of balance, as Jim Chee would observe.

But there’s evidence that others, like Chee, are finding ways of blending the old ways with the new. I spot a hogan sprouting a small satellite dish painted with a traditional red-and-black basket design. The tract homes on the outskirts of town have old-fashioned sweat lodges in their backyards. Checking out tapes at a local record store, I find my favorite example of culture-straddling: an Indian rap group called WithOut Rezervations.

In the distance looms Shiprock itself, the monument that gives the town its name, looking exactly like what a Navajo story says it is--a magical winged mountain that flew through the air, bearing with it the original Navajos. As we pass it, the weather takes a sudden turn for the weird. A dust storm rises up, so powerful that the rock’s no longer visible. Soon, nothing is, including the road. We slow to a crawl. Within this furious red cloud, the car shimmies like a tethered kite. We more or less feel our way to the Chinle Holiday Inn for the night.

The next day we head southeast some 90 miles to the Hopi mesas, villages built into the landscape, the scene of Hillerman’s “Sacred Clowns” and home of Jim Chee’s best friend, Arizona County Deputy Sheriff Albert “Cowboy” Dashee. The mesas, a jumble of old and new pueblos, some dating back to the 11th century, sneak up on you. I’ve been hunting for them a good five minutes before I realize I’m looking straight at them. They blend seamlessly into the rocky outcrops. These are living villages, and the people are less concerned about keeping them architecturally pure than they are with the practical realities. A heap of tumbled stones and a section of an ancient wall lean crazily against a new house of concrete blocks. Rutted dirt roads wind without an apparent plan, dead-ending in somebody’s yard among a clutch of rusting wrecks.

The Hopi Cultural Center Museum is a good place to look for pottery and kachinas, but a bowl of the Hopi national dish, boiled hominy and bits of fatty mutton swimming in a thin gray broth, answers any lingering questions about why Hopi cuisine hasn’t caught on.

*

A few weeks later, back home in Southern California, I assess what I saw--and what I missed. While I didn’t really expect to run into Jim Chee, I had hoped for a more revealing encounter with his society. Although the Navajos were invariably polite, they were likewise unfailingly remote. Short of moving there as Hillerman had, how could I dip into a culture that places such a high premium on privacy?

Cruising Navajo Web sites a few weeks later, I find what might be an answer: Will Tsosie’s Coyote Pass Hospitality. It promises a doorway into the Navajo world, with off-the-beaten-track escapades their specialty. My daughter’s game to make a return trip, so I call Tsosie. He’s articulate and funny, a computer expert who’s sidelined his tech career to focus on running this family business. Coyote Pass, he explains, is the name of his mother’s clan--his primary, “born to” clan, in the Navajos’ matrilineal way of reckoning such things. Hmmm. A man with a foot in both cultures.

What can we do in a day and a half? Tsosie offers a night at his family’s hogan, part of his bed-and-breakfast program, and a day driving around. Where? I wonder. “Let’s just see where the day takes us,” he advises. “That’s how we do things on the reservation. You hike?” “Not far and not fast,” I admit, and he laughs. So it’s back to Arizona. We make it to Tsaile, about 25 miles east of Chinle, late in the evening. Pulling into a gas station, I telephone Tsosie and get his answering machine. Half an hour later, he drives up. Stocky, barrel-chested, a sprinkle of gray in his dark hair, I figure him for forty-something. He extends a hand for the quick, airy clasp that is the Navajo concession to our handshake. “Phone’s out,” he explains, “but I figured you’d be here.”

We follow him down some country roads, then up a muddy trace to his family’s land. His parents’ traditional log cabin and his aunts’ two trailers are situated a discreet distance from each other. Under a tree stands the hogan. My daughter isn’t thrilled by the sight of the outhouse, and I’m a little disappointed when Tsosie flips on electric lights inside the hogan. Pictures and a Navajo rug hang on the walls between the small windows. A throw rug lies between two bedrolls on the dirt floor. Our host makes sure that we have fresh water and towels and promises to awaken us by 9 if we oversleep. “If you want to visit the sheep in the morning, you can,” he says.

Before we turn in, I thumb through the guest register, surprised to find a hefty number of French and German visitors. We had brought sleeping bags, as instructed, and we place them on the bedrolls and settle in. A sheep bell clanks somewhere, a dog barks, his friends join in, then finally all goes quiet.

I wake up first the next morning, splash my face in the basin and stagger out to the picnic table. An old lady as brown and bent as a manzanita bush, her long skirt dusting the tall grass, shepherds a small flock of sheep to pasture. Tsosie appears bearing a covered tray and hands me a mug of steaming tea made from local herbs. It isn’t coffee, but it’s hot and good, as is the blue corn mush and thick, tender tortillas. Delia joins me and we eat, serenaded by bleating sheep and birdsong.

I take the tray to Tsosie’s aunt’s trailer and find him hunkered over a large loom. He’s learning, he explains somewhat sheepishly, because his aunt was tired of hearing him lecture tourists about weaving without being able to do it himself. “Sometimes my great-aunt sits behind me on the couch and cracks me over the shoulder with her crutch--’Hey, boy, you made a mistake,’ ” he says with a grin.

Soon we drive to our first stop, Dine| College, just a few miles away. The college’s commitment to cultural preservation is evident in the six-story glass hogan that dominates the site. Will explains that the college represents a halfway point for the back-country kids, to ease them into the larger world they’ll have to enter if they go to a four-year school. Tsosie gives us a crash course in Navajo cosmology, the stories of how the world and the things in it came to be, tales told by elders to children in great detail during long winter nights. As befits someone raised with oral tradition, he’s a wonderful storyteller, and it’s evident he’s a man with a mission of sharing his ancestral world view. Everything is meaningful, Tsosie stresses: the circular design of the hogan reflects the endless ring of the seasons, the circle of life, the ages of man. The dirt floor keeps a Navajo grounded in the most literal sense, in touch with Mother Earth, from which he sprang.

We then drive to his grandparents’ home, which is ringed by magnificent painted hills. A Navajo sky is full of fluffy fat sheep grazing a limitless blue pasture. We walk around Anasazi ruins, marveling over the ancient painted pot shards scattered like change over the ground. Will picks up a bit of petrified wood and talks about the geology of the area, then leads us farther along to a small box canyon with special meaning for the family. A sleepy owl watches as we peer into crevices, filled with weather-worn belongings of relatives who have passed away. These small shrines have a touching dignity: a child’s stuffed toy and sipping cup, an old man’s cane and liniment bottle.

How does he manage to keep his balance as a man straddling two worlds? Tsosie admits it’s not always easy. There’s so much that’s foreign to him about the modern world. But he lights up when describing his travels to Japan, saying he feels more at home there than anywhere else off the reservation. The premiums Japanese place on honor, on dignity, on discretion, are all comfortingly familiar to him.

What does he think of Hillerman? He hems and haws delicately, mentioning that Hillerman included him in the dedication for “Talking God.”

“He’s a good writer, but he takes some liberties,” especially with Navajo religion and rituals, Tsosie says. “Kind of bends stuff around to make it work for his stories.”

On our way to see what Tsosie describes as one of the few real trading posts left, we see a sign advertising a Sun Dance, a purification ritual practiced by Plains Indians but not traditionally by Navajos. Tsosie explains that there’s a kind of pan-Indian movement afoot among the tribal youth, many of whose parents abandoned ancestral ways when missionaries converted them to Christianity. The kids, unmoored in either culture, are casting about for something to replace the heritage they’ve lost. He’s lucky, he observes, to have been raised in traditional ways. He worries about the young, unequipped to live in either world, and about the gradual erosion of all that sets the Navajo apart. He also confides that he’s contemplating becoming a a hatathli, like his father, a singer who performs the long healing prayers central to Navajo curing ceremonies. The songs are so complex that most people can’t learn more than a few in a lifetime. It’s a big commitment, not to be made lightly, and there aren’t many with the patience or time to take it on. A hatathli-in-training, like Jim Chee, I observe, and Tsosie laughs. Yeah, like Jim.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Guidebook: Going Native

Prices: Room prices are brochure rates for a double for one night. Restaurant prices are for dinner for two, food only, except where noted.

Getting there: To tour the Southwest’s Native American tribal country, your best bet from L.A. is to drive, taking Interstate 15 north to Interstate 40 east. Amtrak has trains to Albuquerque and Gallup, N.M. If you’re going to fly, the most convenient city is Albuquerque. Southwest Airlines flies nonstop. America West has direct flights via Phoenix. Delta and United have connecting flights. Once there, you’ll need wheels; all the major auto rental companies have outlets in Albuquerque, and it’s worth calling around to see what discounts are available.

Where to stay: In Monument Valley, Utah: Goulding’s Lodge, telephone (435) 727-3231, fax (435) 727-3344, Internet https://www. gouldings.com. Adjacent to the Navajo Tribal Park. Rates: $62 to $128. Mesa Verde National Park, Colo.: Far View Lodge, tel. (800) 449-2288, fax (970) 533-7831, Internet https://www.visitmesaverde.com. Historic hotel open from April through mid-October. Durango, Colo.: Strater Hotel, 699 Main Ave., tel. (970) 247-4431, fax (970) 259-2208, Internet https://www.strater.com. Rates: $99 to $235. A restored Victorian. Chinle, Ariz.: Holiday Inn/Garcia Trading Post, tel. (800) HOLIDAY or (520) 674-5000, fax (520) 674-8264, Internet https://www.holidayinn.com. Rates: $69 to $109. Kids eat free in hotel dining room. Canyon de Chelly National Monument: Thunderbird Lodge, tel. (800) 679-2473, fax (520) 674-5844. Rates: $65 to $96. Hopi Mesas, Ariz.: Hopi Cultural Center Restaurant & Inn, tel. (520) 734-2401, fax (520) 734-6651, Internet https://www.hopi.nsn.us. Rates: $60 to $95. Tsalie, Ariz.: Coyote Pass Hospitality, tel. (520) 724-3383 or (520) 787-2295, fax (520) 724-3383, Internet https://navajocentral.org/cppage.htm, e-mail maii@lichee.ncc.cc.nm.us. Rate: $100. B&B-type; lodging in a traditional Navajo family hogan. Will Tsosie tailors tours to particular interests, from archeological expeditions to meetings with local artisans.

Where to eat: Monument Valley: Goulding’s Lodge Stagecoach Restaurant, tel. (435) 727-3231. Try the Navajo fry bread taco; $20. Mesa Verde: Far View Lodge Metate Room, tel. (970) 529-4421; $25. Chinle: Junction Restaurant, next to the Canyon de Chelly Inn, tel. (520) 674-8443; $20. Mexican and Navajo specialties. Canyon de Chelly National Monument: Thunderbird Lodge, tel. (800) 679-2473; $15. Cafeteria-style food, including blue corn pancakes at breakfast. Hopi Mesas: Cultural Center Restaurant on Second Mesa, tel. (520) 734-2401; $16. Hopi specialties, including the Hopi taco. There’s also a Burger King and a Taco Bell in Chinle, Ariz.

What to see and do: Navajo Nation Monument Valley Tribal Park Visitors’ Center, Ariz., tel. (435) 727-3287. Admission: $2.50 for adults, $1 for seniors, kids under 6 free. (National Park Service passes are not accepted at any tribal park.) Tours are operated by various independent companies and can be arranged at booths outside the visitors’ center. Mesa

Verde National Park, Colo., tel. (970) 529-4465, Internet https://www.nps.gov/meve. Admission: $10 per vehicle, good for seven days. Tickets are required for Balcony House, Cliff Palace and Long House tours, $1.75 per person per tour, and can be purchased at the Far View Visitor Center. Four Corners National Monument, tel. (520) 871-6647. Admission: $2.50 for adults, children under 12 free. Hopi Cultural Center Museum, Ariz., tel. (520) 734-6650. Admission: $3 for adults, $1 for children under 13. Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Ariz., tel. (520) 674-5500, Internet https://www.nps.

gov/cach. A guide is a must and can be arranged through the visitors’ center. Tsegi Guide Assn. offers hikes at $10 per hour (three-hour minimum). Dine| College/Ned Hatathli Museum and Gallery, Tsaile, Ariz., (520) 724-6653. On the third and fourth floors of this six-story glass hogan is a museum of the Navajo people, with displays of artifacts. On the second floor are murals depicting the history of the Navajo. The Navajo Nation’s Web site is https://www.navajoland.com. Tony Hillerman’s Indian Country Map & Guide can be ordered at (800) 753-7388 or on the Internet at https://www.mapz.com; $14.95.