In one of his rare forays into mystery writing, Manly Wade Wellmann created the first Amerind detective in the history of crime fiction. Ironically, considering his name, this was David Return's first and only recorded case! A newly appointed tribal policeman, he must determine logically which of three friends, sacred musicians, wielded an instrument of murder. His tribe, the Tsichah, is fictional, based on the Cheyenne with some elements of Pawnee. There are minor, strategic references to warriorship, but no physical combat; persistence in the face of enmity is the most visible warrior virtue. The story appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1946 and won EQMM's 1st prize as best short story of that year. Time has patinaed some of the prose with a political incorrectness that will probably be more amusing than offensive to most sensitive modern readers.

-IBList reader synopsis

Collected in The Ethnic Detectives (1985).