Recently relocated from Arizona at the behest of his ailing wife, Emma, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is skeptical of traditional Navajo ways and adheres strictly to police procedure. His return to the reservation challenges his beliefs and leads to his involvement in a case more elusive than any he's handled.

Born in northeastern Oklahoma to a Cherokee family, Wes Studi grew up speaking Cherokee as his first language. He served in the Army in Vietnam and worked as a teacher, reporter, and translator before breaking into films. In Dances with Wolves he played the Toughest Pawnee, earning Entertainment Weekly's accolade as scene-stealer of the year. In The Last of the Mohicans he was the rapacious Magua, and he was the title character in Geronimo: An American Legend. In addition to being an actor, he is a musician, sculptor, director, community activist, and author of two books for children for the Cherokee Bilingual/Cross-Cultural Education Center.

In Hillerman's words:
In the small universe of the Navajo Police, total membership perhaps less than 120 sworn officers, Lieutenant Leaphorn was a Fairly Important Person, and somewhat of a legend. Everybody knew he hated bootleggers. Chee shared that sentiment. Everybody also knew Leaphorn had no tolerance for witchcraft or anything about it -- for those who believed in witches, or stories about skinwalkers, corpse sickness, the cures for same, and everything connected with the Navajo Wolves. There were two stories about how Leaphorn had acquired this obsession. It was said that when he was new on the force in the older days he had guessed wrong about some skinwalker rumors on the Checkerboard. He hadn't acted on what he'd heard, and a fellow had killed three witches and got a life term for murder and then committed suicide. That was supposed to be why the lieutenant didn't like witchcraft, which was a good enough reason. The other story was that he was a descendant of the great Chee Dodge and had inherited Dodge's determination that belief in skinwalkers had no part in the Navajo culture, that the tribe had been infected with the notion while it was held captive down at Fort Sumner. Chee suspected both stories were true.

Skinwalkers, Chapter 6