The Use of Mysteries in the Classroom

By Amy Denton

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In the public school or college classroom, multiple issues face the teacher, one being what to cover and how much to cover in the subject the class is about. Should the class be about history or English? A ready-made assignment is analyzing fiction for the subject. This practice teaches your students that not everything they read is dull, dry, academic text. Analyzation also uses those all-important critical thinking skills. If you're looking for a text that is a good fit for this assignment look no further than the Joe Leaphorn and Walt Longmire novels, written by Tony Hillerman and Craig Johnson, respectively.

In the history and English survey courses, what the student perceives to be the truth can greatly affect how they understand and process the information they are given. It is one of the jobs of the teacher to find out what those perceptions are and find a way to work with them. The easiest way to discover those preconceived notions is to ask. Don’t be surprised by the answers. Make a list. This list of questions is vital for opening the students’ minds to understanding something they may or may not have thought about---what people are like in other parts of the world and/or their own country. 

Ask them where their information about Native Americans comes from. Do not be surprised if the main answer is the internet, TV, or movies. Students today live in a highly digital society. Having easy access to vast amounts of knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in that they can find whatever they need for a class, quickly and easily. But it can be a curse if the information is wrong. It’s a conundrum that has perplexed both college professors and high school teachers since the rise of the internet---how to get the needed information to the students without losing their attention but without turning the subject into a three-ring circus in an attempt to keep the students’ attention.

The answer? Use the media they are used to, video, in the form of tv episodes or movies as well as print media. Use an author who has won awards ranging from the Mystery Writers of America and the Agatha Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement to the Navajo Tribe’s Special Friends of the Dineh Award. Use Tony Hillerman.

The novels themselves will be a throwback in time for students who know no other world than computers, iPods, and cell phones. The first novel in the Joe Leaphorn series was printed in 1970, long before either they—and in some cases, their parents—were born. The first books in the series have no technology and give students a look at what life was like before technology took over. In that brief look, so much can be discovered: about the Four Corners area, the relationships between the characters, and, most importantly, the culture of multiple Indian tribes. It is through the stories that the students will learn about the different tribes, their traditions, and their differences. 

A good place to start the analysis is to look at the background of the writer and where his inspiration came from. The answer is in this case is simple. Hillerman wrote about what he knew. He lived among the people he wrote about. He started writing in the late 1960s, before computers. Research was done the old-fashioned way, living in the setting and among the people in the books. 

His inspiration, Hillerman claims, came from an Australian mystery writer Arthur Upfield. Upfield wrote a series of novels set in the Australian outback featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, “Bony,” of the Queensland Police Force, a half white, half Aborigine. That Hillerman was inspired by a native Australian to write mysteries staring Native Americans make his stories all the more compelling.

The landscape of the Southwest is as much a character as Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee. From Window Rock in Arizona to Shiprock in New Mexico to Tuba City back in Arizona, the depth and the breadth of the Southwest is on full display in all of the books. An interesting avenue to take in class would be to assign specific regions from the books to students and have them research the area and the people that live in it. In this way, the students not only learn about places they have probably never heard of, but they also learn about the people who live there and why they live there. 

All of Hillerman’s novels are steeped in Native American culture; usually Navajo but sometimes Hopi and sometimes Zuni. In the first book in the series, The Blessing Way, the reader is introduced to half of one of the major Navajo song ceremonies, the Enemy Way. The ceremony is done to counter the harmful effects of the “chindi,” a ghost left behind after the death of a Navajo or to kill off a troublemaker. Joe Leaphorn attends an Enemy Way ceremony at the beginning of the book because of a body he finds. In the course of the story, the reader learns that the trouble maker, responsible for the body, is a Navajo named George Jackson, who was hired by Jimmy Hall, to keep people away from an Anasazi pueblo. Hall was collecting radar data from missiles being tested on federal land near the reservation. He had hoped to sell the information for a million dollars, a lot of money in 1970. In the end, Hall fails, shooting himself as Leaphorn approaches. 

In The Blessing Way, the reader discovers the Navajo philosophy of keeping peace in one’s life versus the desire for money. The book can be seen as a morality tale--- this is what can happen when the desire for money overwhelms everything else--- but it is first and foremost an excellent mystery. Seventeen novels continue Leaphorn’s story, each a study in Native American culture. 

Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire mysteries, is another author prime for this assignment type. The series are alike in that they use Native Americans and the life on Native American reservations in their stories. The difference is that the main character in the Longmire series is white. However, his best friend , Henry Standing Bear, is Cheyenne. Longmire doesn’t work for the Tribal Police (Leaphorn does). He is the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. And he often has to deal with Native Americans from the reservation located in his county. 

The Cold Dish, the first book in the series, deals with a young Cheyenne girl suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. She is sexually assaulted by four members of the local high school football team. Two years after nominal sentences are handed out to the boys, the least repentant one is found shot to death. The Cheyenne Nation is considered a sovereign nation within the borders of the United States, meaning Longmire, as an outside law enforcement officer, is not allowed to walk onto the reservation whenever he wants. The conclusion of the story will have students talking long after they have finished the book. 

Like Hillerman, Johnson lives in and among the people he writes about, near both the Crow and Cheyenne reservations in Wyoming. He has used people living on the reservations in the creation of some of the characters. Unlike Hillerman, Johnson came to writing after a career in law enforcement. He grew up in a rural part of the U.S. and comes from a long line of storytellers. Johnson claims he is just the first one in his family to write stories down. Among his many awards is the Tony Hillerman Mystery Short Story Award in 2006 for his short story “Old Indian Trick.”

Johnson has also had the internet and social media at his disposal since he began to write. The use of both in the classroom can make the learning of such complex concepts as “sovereign nations within a nation” or the status of federally recognized tribes in the U.S easier. After reading his books, students can go to Craig Johnson’s  website, download discussion questions and bring them to use in class. The questions are not easily answered. This makes for ready-made class discussions. 

Another media available for Johnson’s work is television. Hillerman had three of his novels turned into movies. Dark Winds is a recent television adaptation of his work. A&E aired the first episode of Longmire in June of 2012, followed by two more seasons. Netflix produced three additional seasons after that. 

One activity suggestion, from the storytelling perspective, is to have students choose a Native American character from the television show and explain why he is the way he is. Two possible examples are Acting Police Chief Mathias, the head of the Cheyenne Tribal Police, or Jacob Nighthorse, a Cheyenne businessman building a casino to benefit the Cheyenne with jobs and the proceeds of the casino. Students might also compare the Walt Longmire depicted in the books with the Walt Longmire seen in the television show to see what the differences are between the two and why.

The episodes of Longmire cover a variety of topics from the modern-day such as the treatment of Native American women. One of the best episodes is from the third season,“Miss Cheyenne.” At its heart, the entry deals with one of the many depredations visited upon Native American women, disguised as “help,” forced sterilization. At the end of the episode, a former Miss Cheyenne is discovered to have murdered the sons of a doctor who sterilized her many years ago without her consent or knowledge during a minor operation. A simple question to ask the students is: Why did the doctor decide to sterilize the woman? To look at it from another angle, why did the woman kill the sons of the doctor? Why not kill the doctor himself? These questions can lead the students to think of Native Americans and their lives in new ways.

Another part of the same episode deals with the Miss Cheyenne pageant, a real event that takes place every year and was “borrowed” by the television show. Contestants in their exquisitely beaded costumes are shown doing ceremonial dances that are part of the pageant. When the students see the costumes and the dancing, they see the real thing. This opens another avenue of questions. What exactly is the Miss Cheyenne pageant? Asking that question and more like it can be answered and discussed in the classroom as an extension of the Native American-White relations or Indian cultures. 

It may have never occurred to either man that their mysteries would be used to broaden high school students’ knowledge of Native Americans. The gift of using the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee novels and the Walt Longmire series in history, English composition or Literature, is that it makes the class come alive.  

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Amy Denton been writing since high school and has been making up stories to amuse herself since she was a small child. Currently, she is a lecturer at University of Houston in the English Department. Denton also teaches history online at Southern New Hampshire University and Lone Star College. She is working on a paranormal mystery about a vampire mystery writer who is being stalked, titled Ink and Ashes. It was a finalist in the 2022 Claymore Awards.