The Blessing Way

The Blessing Way (1970) by Tony Hillerman is the first crime novel in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series. The novel follows divorced anthropology professor Bergen McKee as he visits his old college friend, Joe Leaphorn, on the Navajo Nation to continue his research into Navajo witchcraft. McKee investigates rumors about a Navajo Wolf in the haunted Many Ruins Canyon region as Leaphorn, now a detective, simultaneously investigates a homicide in the area. The men soon learn that the Navajo witch is central to both of their investigations—and that McKee is in danger. The Blessing Way launched 17 more novels in the Leaphorn/Chee series, as well as an AMC television adaptation of the series, Dark Winds. The novel addresses themes such as Alienation From Traditional Culture, The Complexities of Law Enforcement in Indigenous Societies, and The Role of Cultural Knowledge in Survival.

This guide follows the Harper Publishing 2018 paperback reissue.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of substance use, animal cruelty, animal death, racism, death, graphic violence, and death by suicide. In particular, the text interrogates anti-Indigenous discrimination.

Language Note: The source material uses outdated terms and anti-Indigenous slurs for Indigenous people and the Navajo Nation. This study guide reproduces this language only in quotations; elsewhere, it refers to Indigenous people.

Plot Summary

Luis Horseman, a young Navajo man on the run from the police for a stabbing incident, hides near Many Ruins Canyon in the northern Kam Bimghi Valley in Arizona. He tries to recall what his uncle taught him about setting traps and Navajo hunting songs so he can find food. As he wanders along a plateau, he sees trucks driving through the valley toward the haunted Anasazi ruins. He rests uneasily at his camp, and in the morning, he sets off to hunt prairie dogs. As he stalks the animals, a Navajo Wolf—a large man wearing the skin and skull of a wolf, a figure of shapeshifting evil—surprises him and sends him running away in a frenzy. Horseman covers himself in ashes to hide from the Wolf as he waits for his cousin, Billy Nez, to bring him supplies.

Meanwhile, Navajo Law and Order officer Joe Leaphorn reviews Horseman’s case and a letter he received from Bergen McKee, his friend and an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico. McKee studies Navajo witchcraft and asks Leaphorn every year to visit the Navajo Nation to research supposed witch activity. In his Albuquerque apartment, McKee reminisces about his past enthusiasm for his academic career before his wife, Sara, left him for another man.

McKee receives a reply from Leaphorn that includes a report on possible witchcraft activity and an invitation to the Nation. McKee teams up with his colleague, Dr. Jeremy Canfield, who is looking for help on his own research trip. Ellen Leon, the daughter of Canfield’s colleague, asks Canfield to keep an eye out for her fiancé, Dr. Jimmy Hall, an electrical engineer who may also be in the area, while on his trip.

McKee travels to the Navajo Nation before Canfield to get a head start on his research. He visits Shoemaker’s trading post with Leaphorn to ask locals about witchcraft gossip while Leaphorn spreads word about Horseman’s case. Horseman’s victim is recovering, so Leaphorn hopes the young man will come out of hiding. They meet a man called the Big Navajo, who is shopping to replace his stolen hat. The man seems interested in Horseman’s case but claims he doesn’t know the boy.

Later that night, Horseman’s body is found in a remote southern area, which surprises Leaphorn, who was certain the boy was hiding in the north. Leaphorn and McKee bring coroner Rudolph Bitsi with them to the crime scene. Bitsi theorizes that Horseman died of alcohol poisoning, but with more investigation, Leaphorn comes to believe Horseman was murdered and dumped in the area. Leaphorn leaves McKee to speak with Old Woman Gray Rocks, who tells him several stories about recent witch activity. The affected clans think the Wolf is a stranger, which will make counteracting his witchcraft difficult. McKee learns that Horseman was hiding in the north and that a white man, possibly Hall, was also in the region.

McKee meets up with Canfield, who reports that Ellen Leon will visit them in the coming days. The pair set up camp near Many Ruins Canyon. In the morning, McKee meets up with Leaphorn and drives into Chinle to investigate. Horseman’s autopsy lists his cause of death as suffocation by sand, and his stepfamily, the Nezes, confirm he was hiding up north. The pair also learn that the Tsosie family is conducting an Enemy Way ceremony to get rid of the witchcraft’s influence. The men theorize that Horseman was killed over the reward for a missing Army missile, but when they learn the reward is long-cancelled, they no longer have a motive for the killing. McKee leaves to conduct his research, visiting Ben Yazzie’s hogan first. The property is deserted, but McKee finds the carcasses of five penned-in rams that were obviously attacked. He dismisses the possibility that a witch caused the damage, but it doesn’t seem like an animal attack. Back at camp, McKee finds Canfield’s camper missing and a note signed with the wrong name, which concerns him.

Nearby, Sandoval, a traditional Navajo Singer, performs the Enemy Way ceremony for the Tsosie clan. Leaphorn arrives and learns that the family don’t know the identity of the witch, but several people suspect the stranger. When the men conduct the symbolic scalp shooting with a large black hat, a personal item from the Wolf, Leaphorn realizes the witch must be the Big Navajo. After several hours, Billy Nez, Horseman’s brother, finally arrives. He tells Leaphorn how he followed the Wolf after it terrorized his family’s sheep and horses. He tracked the Wolf to Ceniza Mesa and stole his hat for the ceremony. He shows Leaphorn the shape of the Wolf’s tire tracks, and when the boy walks away, Leaphorn worries he’ll have to find the Wolf before Billy does.

In the middle of the night, the Big Navajo arrives at McKee’s camp, wearing a wolf’s pelt and holding a gun. McKee hides as the Big Navajo calls out to McKee that “John” is hurt. Through the night, McKee makes his way down the canyon as the Big Navajo stalks him. In the morning, McKee falls off a ridge, injuring himself. Ellen Leon arrives, finds McKee, and drives him out of the canyon. They reach a path that the Big Navajo is trying to block with a tree, so they turn around and return to the camp for supplies. They abandon the car to continue the journey on foot. Ellen doesn’t believe McKee’s story about the witch and fakes an ankle injury so she doesn’t have to go further, but McKee carries on and finds Canfield dead in his camper.

Before McKee can get Ellen to follow him, the Big Navajo arrives and orders them into his Land Rover at gunpoint. He ties McKee up in the backseat and drives to an Anasazi cliff dwelling in Many Ruins Canyon. At the ruins, McKee and Ellen meet the Big Navajo’s partner, Eddie. The men want McKee to write a letter to his boss to explain that he, Canfield, and Ellen are researching in a different location so no one will come looking for the missing Canfield. McKee agrees to write the letter, but to stall for time, he exaggerates his hand injury and writes poorly. In his anxiety, McKee attacks the Big Navajo, and rather than kill him, the man leaves McKee and Ellen in a closed-in cliff dwelling.

McKee uncovers a secret exit in the dwelling and escapes briefly to scout out the area. He ambushes Eddie, whom the Big Navajo left behind as a guard. Eddie falls over the cliff’s edge and, while dying, confesses to being contracted for illegal work with the Big Navajo. McKee rushes back to Ellen, whom Eddie shot in a struggle, and he treats her wounds before leaving to find Hall, who should be nearby.

Meanwhile, Leaphorn investigates Ceniza Mesa, where Billy Nez stole the Big Navajo’s hat. He hopes to corroborate his theory that the Big Navajo was transporting a missile that went missing from a government facility, but when he arrives, the evidence doesn’t confirm this. Leaphorn can’t make sense of the suspect’s behavior, since it’s so unusual for a Navajo to kill another Navajo, especially for profit. He speeds away from the mesa into the canyon with an urgent sense of dread.

McKee finds Hall’s worksite in the canyon, but the Big Navajo has followed McKee and shoots McKee from the ridge above the canyon. Injured, McKee makes a rudimentary spear and launches it from a sling at the Big Navajo, who dies and tumbles into the canyon. Billy Nez, who is out hunting for the witch, corners McKee but allows him to call to Hall for help. To McKee’s surprise, Hall tries to convince Billy Nez that McKee is the real witch. Leaphorn arrives to arrest Hall, who is the third partner of the Big Navajo and Eddie’s illegal scheme, but Hall shoots himself to evade arrest.

McKee wakes up two days later in the hospital with his wounds treated. Ellen recovers in a room nearby. Leaphorn explains that the Big Navajo is George Jackson, a Navajo from Los Angeles with ties to organized crime. Jackson, Eddie, and Jimmy Hall were all in on a scheme that used Hall’s illegally gathered radar research data on a nearby government missile testing facility to sell on the black market. Jackson pretended to be a Navajo witch to scare locals away from the area so they could operate their radars without being discovered. Horseman was murdered because he stumbled across their operation. Leaphorn leaves and McKee receives a letter from Ellen, for whom he has developed feelings, saying she plans to visit him in the morning.