Tony Hillerman

The best-selling author who portrayed Navajo life

Tony Hillerman

1925–2008

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Tony Hillerman, who has died of pulmonary failure in Albuquerque, was one of the most successful crime-­fiction authors in the country. Most of his mysteries featured Indian police officers Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn on the huge Navajo reservation covering parts of Arizona and New Mexico. Even many Navajos were surprised to learn that Hillerman, named an official Friend of the Navajo for his well-researched portrayals of contemporary Indian life, was not a member of any Native American tribe.

The son of farmers who also ran a small store, Hillerman was born in Sacred Heart, Okla., population 50. He grew up listening “spellbound to locals who gathered to tell their stories,” said the Los Angeles Times. Since the teacher at the local one-room school house “was rumored to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan,” Hillerman’s parents enrolled him and his brother, Barney, at St. Mary’s, a school for Potawatomie Indian girls in nearby Asher, where he developed “a lifelong respect for Indian culture” and firsthand knowledge of what it meant to be “an outsider in your own land.” In 1943, Hillerman dropped out of college to enlist in the Army, took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and “was severely wounded in battle at Alsace, France.” Awarded a Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, he returned home “a genuine war hero,” suffering from temporary blindness and two shattered legs. He later returned to college to obtain his degree, and found work as a reporter. After earning a master’s degree, he eventually became chairman of the journalism department of the University of New Mexico.

In the late 1960s Hillerman decided to try his hand at writing a mystery novel, said The New York Times. He based the book, The Blessing Way, on an incident that occurred while he was on convalescent leave from the Army. While visiting Crownpoint, N.M., he had come upon a group of Navajos on horseback and in face paint holding a Navajo Enemy Way ceremony, “a curing ritual for a soldier just like himself just back from the war.” The ritual was intended to exorcise “all traces of the enemy” from returning warriors. After spending three years writing the novel, Hillerman sent it to Joan Kahn, a prominent mystery editor at Harper & Row, who advised him to beef up the character of tribal policeman Joe Leaphorn. Harper & Row published the book, and Hillerman went on to write 18 novels set on Southwest Indian reservations that were “invariably instructive about ancient tribal beliefs and customs.”

“Good reviews delight me when I get them,” Hillerman once said. “But I am far more delighted by being voted the most popular author by the students of St. Catherine Indian school, and even more by middle-aged Navajos who tell me that reading my mysteries revived their children’s interest in the Navajo way.”