Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,126

This is the grave of Tony Hillerman.

Born in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma in 1925, Hillerman grew up fairly middling, the son of a farmer and shopkeeper in a German immigrant family. Interestingly, Tony wasn’t the only one in the family who would make it in the arts–John Hillerman, i.e., Higgins from Magnum PI, is his cousin. Because of where he grew up, he knew a lot of Native kids, mostly Potawatomi. He later claimed this made him a good writer of Native issues, though it’s hard to know precisely what that means. I always distrust white people who claim that since they were around this minority population some as a kid that they “understand” them. Maybe to some extent, but c’mon now.

Anyway, Hillerman was in World War II in the 103rd Infantry Division in Europe. He was active for the last two years of the war and was severely wounded near the end, leaving him scarred for life and temporarily blind. He received a Purple Heart, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, all the combat medals.

After the war, Hillerman returned to Oklahoma and used his GI Bill benefit to attend the University of Oklahoma. He decided to become a journalist and got his degree in Journalism. So that’s what he did for a long time. He started in Texas and then in 1952, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. That can be a sleepy town, but it’s also the state capital of New Mexico, so there’s really plenty to report on in state politics, especially a complex state like that, even if its issues seem remote to mainstream political coverage. He stayed with that until 1962. He then moved to Albuquerque a few years later and began his fiction career, while supporting himself by becoming the chair of the journalism department at the University of New Mexico.

Hillerman became a master of western mysteries. A good crime writer, he often centered his books on Native lands with Native characters. This started with his first book. The Blessing Way was released in 1970. It starts with a couple of white anthropologists at the University of New Mexico going to Navajo Nation for a summer of field research. One of them meets an old friend of his, a cop who is stationed there. Things happen, there are crimes, and Joe Leaphorn (the friend) and then later another detective named Jim Chee became his key characters over his career. He briefly left behind the Navajo theme for his second book, 1971’s The Fly on the Wall, which is your classic big city corruption case kind of thing. But he returned immediately to the reservation, which provided him more original stories.

I’m still a little sketchy about a white guy creating a series writing Native characters. But he was very clear that he had a singular political goal–he wanted white readers to respect Native culture. Fair enough. He went pretty deep into Navajo and somewhat Puebloan cultures for this, including more controversial matters such as incest. The crimes and the stories were deeply enmeshed into the spiritual culture of the Tribes. Again, I imagine some didn’t like a white person telling these stories, but others were no doubt fine with it.

People LOVED Hillerman’s books. They sold like hotcakes. Chee was introduced in the fourth book, 1980’s The People of Darkness and they started working together in the 7th book, 1986’s Skinwalkers. This was a good example of how he brought together crime and the Navajo spiritual world. When there’s a bunch of murders, is it people? Or is it skinwalkers, a Navajo belief in witches who can take the shape of animals?

Hillerman was a good writer, no doubt. He provided an anthropologist and journalist level of detail. They weren’t just pulp either. He won some big awards. In 1973, he won the international version Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the French crime fiction award, for Dance Hall of the Dead. For comparison, the French winner that year was the amazing Jean-Patrick Manchette. The Navajo largely embraced him as well. He was given awards by the tribe too.

Hillerman got pretty rich through all of these books. A 1996 report listed him as the 22nd wealthiest person in New Mexico. Given the New Mexico economy, that’s not exactly like being the 22nd wealthiest person in California or New York, but still, he was loaded. In the end, I doubt too many people would put Hillerman at the very top of the American literary scene, or even among the very best of American crime or mystery novelists. But he’d be part of the conversation and no one would object to his inclusion at that higher level, I think. That’s no small thing.

I think this is the first person covered in the grave series who I actually met. I did have a wonderful email exchange with Howard Zinn, but I did not meet him before his death. Back in about 2004 or so, I was hired by a former president of the University of New Mexico (where I was completing my PhD) as a research assistant on his history of the university. The whole thing was very boring and the asshole didn’t even thank me in his acknowledgments, which really pissed me off. This really started me off well on my loathing of university administrators, which very much continues to this day. Anyway, I went with him once to the UNM Press board meeting and Hillerman and Rudolfo Anaya were on the board. Neither were remotely interested in who I was. And for good reason, why would they be? But hey, I met them.

Hillerman died in 2008, at the age of 83, of pulmonary failure. He had been sick for some time, having had a couple of heart attacks and a couple of cancer bouts.

Tony Hillerman is buried in Santa Fe National Cemetery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

After his death, Hillerman’s daughter took over the Leaphorn and Chee series of books. Why stop the cash cow from flowing in. They are still put out, just about every year.

If you would like this series to visit other mystery writers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Frances Noyes Hart is in Washington, D.C., and Patricia McGerr is in Silver Spring, Maryland. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.