TOM WOODARD INTERVIEW

   

   [BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE A]

   

   This is Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona

University.  It is Monday, December 14, 1998, and we're

here with Tom Woodard for an interview about his life

and association with Indian traders over the years.

Also in the room are Brad Cole and Lew Steiger.

   

   Underhill:  We're going to start at the beginning

with your life.  Can you tell us when and where you

were born?

   

   Woodard:  I was born in Gallup in 1936.

   

   Underhill:  And who were your parents?

   

   Woodard:  M. L. Woodard and Ann Woodard.  My dad, I

guess, got to Gallup about in the mid to late twenties.

When he first was over there, he had a newspaper called

Southwest Tourist News.  And then, I think, in the

early thirties, 1930 on, he went to work for the

Chamber of Commerce and the Ceremonial Association and

the United Indian Traders Association and the

Highway 66 Association.  He was in those jobs, I

believe, until--I think some of them he left about

1948.  And then I think he resigned as director of the

Traders in 1950.  I have a copy of his resignation for

the dates.  I know they tried to get him to stay on,

but he had opened a store there in Gallup at the same

time, so he was just too busy to handle all of it.

   

   Underhill:  What sort of store did he open?

   

   Woodard:  Indian arts and crafts.  Of course he had

worked along with the traders for many, many years, but

was never actually in the trading business himself,

until he opened that store in the late forties.  He did

run the--during the war the Indian Traders Association

got silver released to the Navajo people, because the

older Navajos were of no use to the military in any

way, because of their language barrier, and they just

were not able to really be of any help at all to the

military.  So in order for them to make a living, the

traders got the silver released, and it was the only

precious metal released during wartime for jewelry

production.  And it really created a boom period for

many of the silversmiths who were left here in the

area, and older people.  That was a period when some of

the--I heard that Marshall Fields came out, sent a

buyer out from Chicago, had a check for $50,000, and he

just wanted sterling silver.  And this was the only

place that anyone could get it.  Of course that was a

lot of money in those days--not that it's not today,

but it was a lot more then.  It really did not help the

quality of the craft in that they wanted something made

out of a precious metal, they did not care what it

looked like.  Most of the traders were used to an

entirely different type of jewelry--there was more work

went into it, and a sense of design and creativity and

that was very important, where at that point in time it

really wasn't.

   My dad actually ran that place, and then he had a

fellah that helped him.  After the war, the traders did

not see any reason to continue in the silver business,

because so many other people could get in it, and they

sold the silver business that they had.  And at that

time, I think my dad had 'em put the money they got

from that, in AT&T stock.  And that's why we're all

sitting here today!  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  Well, if we could back up just a little:

why and when was the United Indian Traders Association

founded?  Your dad went to work as executive director.

   

   Woodard:  Before I was here!  (laughs)  It was

founded in the early thirties, and it is my

understanding, and of course I probably ran over most

of these early traders with my tricycle or something

like that.  I got to know a number of them before I was

really thoroughly interested in the Indian field.  I

mean, I just grew up in Gallup and had a lot of very

good Indian friends, but as far as the trading

business, I didn't really even think a whole lot about

it.

   But it is my understanding that the reason for the

Traders Association had a lot to do with government

controls and government interference.  In the earlier

days you had the BIA--Bureau of Indian Affairs--and

some of these various Washington people that needed a

Southwest vacation, I guess, and they came out to "save

the Indians" and the traders were takin' advantage of

'em--which is not a true story at all.  Time after

time, they [the traders] had to prove that they were

really taking care of these people.  There was always--

well, in the pawn, which is the Indian way of using a

safety deposit box.  It's really no different than what

we would today use a safety deposit box for.  And they

would put their jewelry and other things important to

them--they would pawn them.  I know of many things that

have been in pawn for thirty, forty, fifty years.  They

go in and get the jewelry out of pawn--not necessarily

paying it off--but borrowing it from the trader for a

sing.  And they bring it right back in, because the

trader's had it for a long time, he knows the people,

they're gonna bring it back, that's where they leave it

for safekeeping.  Then upon the passing of some of

these people, all of their jewelry would be redeemed

and would be buried with them.  Contrary to the old

pawn signs that you see all over town, that old pawn

was made in Albuquerque yesterday and tomorrow.  I

think they use the Window Rock phone book for names

that they put on the pawn tickets that have never been

in the pawn shop.  (others chuckle)  There's really

been a lot of things happen in recent years that have

changed the arts and crafts side of the business.

   But back to the early thing:  All of these

government agencies were also working with the Indian

people, and they would come out and say, "You have to

have a major stock reduction, because the land's being

overgrazed.  They were trying to obtain certain prices

for their wool, and things that they did of that

nature.  There was always something coming up, that

they had some agency that was trying to check up on

'em.  I don't think they ever really got in any serious

trouble.  Maybe their records--I know in one situation

which was later, I think, in the early seventies, where

they said they had to improve their bookkeeping

records.  Well, I don't think you can buy a computer

program or a whole lot of accountants don't understand

the nature of trading.

   In that article I gave you that Tom Kirk did, just a

minute ago, he discusses one situation there where the

traders would pay fifty cents an ounce for silver, and

they would pay the Indian fifty cents an ounce to make

it up.  Then they would sell it for a dollar an ounce.

Well, where's their profit?  Well, they decided that

their profit was in their trade, because the Indians

traded the fifty cents labor deal there for groceries

and things of that nature, or maybe interest on pawn or

something like that.  The profit was built in

elsewhere.

   Now today, you make profit on each one of 'em.

(chuckles)  The whole accounting system was

considerably different in those days.  They also had

tokens that they traded with.  A number of the

individual trading posts--I know of forty or fifty

different posts that had their own trade tokens that

they made up.  Then it was against the law for them to

be printing any kind of money--that came up at that

time.  They still used 'em anyway.  But somebody from

the government decided they couldn't have their own

local trading.  The saloons in Durango and places like

that could have 'em, but not the Indian traders.

   Okay, where do you want to go from there?

   

   Underhill:  You had mentioned before we began the

interview, what your dad's office was like.  Can you

describe that office where the United Indian Traders

Association files were?

   

   Woodard:  It was two very large Navajo hogans, and

built exactly like the hogans that are the older-style

hogans that you see today, with the mud roof and all of

that.  There was more of a hallway built between the

two of 'em which was the secretary's office.  There

were benches all the way around the outside of the

hogans.  And these, I would say, were probably fifty,

sixty feet across.  So to give you an idea, much larger

than most of the hogans that you would see today.  They

had benches around all of the outside of them, and

under those benches was all the records for, of course,

Chamber of Commerce, ceremonial traders, and all of

that.  And in later years, I believe that property was

sold, and the traders moved into a new building that

was built for the Chamber of Commerce.  That job kinda

always went with the Chamber of Commerce also.

   And then the Ceremonial Association had built quite

a large grandstand, all steel construction.  I have

some pictures somewhere of that, the original building

of that.  They had a lot of storage space underneath

that, which they moved a lot of the early records out

to that facility.  I had heard that in later years,

that there was a water leak or something that destroyed

part of some of the records.  And then I think Ike Mary

[phonetic spelling] was later the director and I've

been in a number of organizations with Ike, and he

wasn't really the most organized file keeper I ever

saw.  I think a lot of the material kind of

disappeared.  I'm not sure who the real early lawyers

were with the traders, but I know Tansey up in

Farmington was a lawyer with them for many, many years.

And I know that they kept a lot of the records up

there.  And it was my understanding--in fact, I had

stopped in there about five years ago, on a couple of

occasions to see if they had anything that would refer

to the old hallmarks.  One of the younger lawyers up

there told me he'd been through everything, and there

wasn't anything relating to that.

   

   Underhill:  And what is your theory about the

hallmark system with United Indian Traders, as to when

it came into being and why?

   

   Woodard:  Well, early on I was under the impression

it was done in the thirties, but then I run across some

papers which I have given you, where they were really

tryin' to get it goin', and the dates on those papers

is 1948.  Now, some of the traders used 'em.  As we

discussed earlier also, some of the numbers are in

question as to who actually had them, and no one has

been able to come up with a list.  And I think it's

just a matter of you're gonna hafta question a number

of people.  I know Barton Wright has some of them that

have been reported to him that have been by certain

traders.  Tobe Turpen, Jr., I think told me what their

number was.  Of course Al Packard.

   And these numbers, of course, if they were used, in

later years, this type of thing would have been, the

original thoughts on it would have been created in the

mid-thirties when the Traders Association went against

the Mazell [phonetic spelling] Company in Albuquerque

for machine reproduction of jewelry.  They spent a lot

of time in court on that.  They got a federal

regulation outlawing....

   And the truth in advertising thing on what is

actually Indian handmade jewelry and kind of a

description as to what is really Indian handmade

jewelry.  I saw some of the original exhibit, and there

were some Indian Maid rings--that's Indian M-A-I-D.

This little pot metal adjustable touristy type things

that were not related to the Indians at all.  And they

had blue plastic stones in them--just really did not

resemble turquoise very well.

   And of course the Indian people, they would pawn

their jewelry, and Indian jewelry has been, well, maybe

a tourist item and this type of thing, but to the

Indian people, it is very important.  They can spot

good jewelry a lot quicker than anybody else, and they

place a lot of their wealth in the jewelry.  This will

relate to why pawn is--why they want it under

safekeeping.  Your movie stars have diamond necklaces,

turquoise is the Indians' diamond necklaces.

   In our store in Gallup, we would sell probably more

Indian jewelry to Indian people than we did to any

other group of people.  They were very good customers,

and they would buy the better jewelry.  The price on

it, if it was good enough quality, the price did not

affect them at all, 'cause they would really pay for

really good material.

   I think–this case where there was the reproduction

and copies of supposed Indian jewelry was one of the

earlier steps that would have created the idea in their

heads that they needed hallmarks which would more

authenticate where it came from, and it's by a

legitimate dealer.  They probably need it worse today

than they ever did, in that there is so much junk on

the market today.

   It was on national news here a couple of months ago,

and our wonderful attorney general said that 40 percent

of the people that buy Indian jewelry in New Mexico are

gonna get stung, which I don't--just depending on where

they buy it.  The Arabs that have gotten into the

business have created a tremendous problem.

   And there have been groups that have come in here

before.  In that article that Tommy Kirk did, there was

a group of, he said, Armenian traders, that came in

here and started working with the traders, buying the

jewelry.  And they had phony scales, thinking the

traders didn't know the difference between Troy and

avérer du poids weight.

   They had a system then where they just all got

together and none of them would sell them anything, so

that got rid of the problem.  But the problem has

resurfaced with the Arab people that have come in.  You

go into various stores here in Santa Fe and I would say

that 70 percent of what they've got in there is not

even made in this country, nor is it labeled as the

current laws that we have in existence require.

   At a seminar in the mid-seventies, I gave a talk to--

I was representing the Indian Arts and Crafts

Association, and I gave a talk to--there were about 600

people that were made up of all the Indian-owned and

Indian guilds and cooperative organizations as to where

they really needed to go, and we got to discussing the

law.  And the secretary of the Indian Arts and Crafts

Board, Bob Hart [phonetic spelling], happened to be

there--one of the few times the Arts and Crafts Board

has ever been in the Southwest.  They were having

meetings in Hawaii, which I don't think there's a lot

of Indian arts and crafts production there.  I did get

fooled, though.  I was telling a previous member of the

board that--Mr. Fred Dockstedter [phonetic spelling]--

and he told me that there were probably 70,000 Indian

people living in Hawaii, which would be many of them

passed through there on their tours of duty in the

service, and many of them just settled down there.

However, they still produce virtually no, as we call

them today, Indian arts and crafts.  But I almost got

caught there!

   I asked Mr. Hart the question of how many people

have been charged under the federal law since 1935, I

believe it was, that it came in.  He told me that two

people had been charged.  I asked him what the outcome

of those cases were, and he did not know, because it's

out of their hands, it's in the Department of Justice

then.  So that tells you kind of how the U.S. Arts and

Crafts Board has helped out.

   Now, the Indian Arts and Crafts Association, along

with the New Mexico Retail Association, got together

and got some legislation in the state of New Mexico

which was later adopted by Colorado and some other

states.  Tony Anaya [phonetic spelling], I believe, was

the attorney general for the state of New Mexico at

that time.  There was a big turnaround.  He was

confiscating a quarter of a million dollars' worth of

jewelry, and I had dealers in Santa Fe call me and

wantin' me to fly over here and examine their material

and tell 'em what was handmade and what wasn't, because

they were scared to death that they were gonna lose it

all.  He brought their attention to the fact that we

are trying to have handmade Indian arts and crafts.

And people don't realize the quantity of Indian arts

and crafts that's made in the, say, Four Corners area,

including the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado,

and some in Utah, of course.  But it's a multi-million-

dollar industry and it employs just a very, very large

number of people in these states.  Most people just

don't realize the importance of this to the economy of

this area.

   Gallup itself has always been a wonderful business

town.  Gallup, when I grew up there, it was maybe 8,000-

9,000 people lived in the town.  Then on the weekends

it was like 50,000-75,000, which were Indian people

coming in to trade in Gallup.  And they would come from

as far away as--well, people living close to

Farmington, Flagstaff.  Gallup was the trade center.

The Indian people were a major source of revenue for

the state of New Mexico--and it wasn't only traders

involved there.  They bought from other stores, the GMC

dealer there I think sold more units than any other GMC

dealer in the world.  So that'll give you an idea of

what the market....  And of course all the Indians have

to have a pickup, so that'll give you an idea of what

the trade area is of the area surrounding Gallup.

   

   Underhill:  Why do you think Gallup was more popular

than Farmington or Flagstaff or other border towns?

   

   Woodard:  I really don't know.  Of course Farmington

not being a railhead would probably be one drawback

there, in that things had to be transported up there

and were probably a little more expensive in

Farmington.  Flagstaff, Winslow, Holbrook, of course

they were all on the railroad.  But I just don't think

that....  Well, many of the earlier traders, there was

Gross-Kelly, Gallup Mercantile, which was, I think,

started by C. N. Cotton.  Those places were major

suppliers to many of the trading posts.  And of course

Gallup just--the Indians liked Gallup, and they all met

there.  I mean, it was also a social event to go to

Gallup.  Being from a very remote area, there'd be four

or five families that would come in, in one pickup.

And I even remember back when they'd come in in wagons.

And then you could watch the ceremonial parade over a

succession of years there.  They had the old wagons

that you could really hear 'em grindin' down the

pavement.  Then they went to the rubber-tired ones, and

then they went to the ones with motors called pickups.

But everything has really changed in that area, and of

course on the reservation today I've joked, told

people, "I'm gonna do a book on the Indian traders, and

I just finished with all the Wal-Mart managers, and I'm

goin' to the Thriftway guys next."  (others chuckle)

So that is what has really changed.  There are still

some people who are active and really trying to work

with the people and what we would consider the old-

style trader, that does everything for the people.  But

they're getting fewer and far between.

   Then you've had different organizations that have

come in that have created problems.  The legal aid that

the Navajos had called the DNA.  When they came in, and

they were anti-trader, anti-everybody, I think.  They

told the Indians you could go in and you could buy a

pickup, and as long as you never took it off the

reservation, they could not come on the reservation and

repossess it.  So they didn't have to make payments.

So the automotive dealers got together and said, "Well,

we can handle that one!"  So they just changed it to a

layaway situation.  You want to buy a pickup?  You come

in, you start payin' on it.  When it's all paid off,

like layaway, you can take it home.  Well, that didn't

work.  The Indians immediately decided that they had

some bad advice there.  It was really not helping the

people at all by coming up with something like that.

   

   Underhill:  And what kind of impact did the DNA have

on traders?

   

   Woodard:  Well, just the same implications that all

government agencies and the BIA--you know, they're

charging too much and....  I got involved with the

national wire services, Associated Press.  I happened

to have some children at the time, and I was very well

aware of the price of Pampers.  I went out to a trading

post at Smoke Signal, Arizona, with a friend of mine,

and they were actually cheaper out there than they were

in Gallup.  And that's way out on the reservation.  So

I had to tell the AP that.

   Then another situation that we had, I think it was

in the early seventies when there was really a big

jewelry boom going on.  We got some of the traders

together, a fellah in Albuquerque that wrote an article

in the paper that everybody who was selling silver and

tools to the Indians was really rippin' 'em off.  And

they're gettin' these big high prices and high mark-ups

and things like that.  And so we got together and we

provided catalogs from all of the sources in this area,

and catalogs from back east and the west coast and

other places in the United States.  It is still quite

evident today that you can buy tools, silver, and all

of that, cheaper in the Southwest than you can buy it

anywhere else in the world.  The fellah actually wrote

a retraction to his article, which is very hard to get

out of a newspaper.  And it was just flat proven that

the materials here were less expensive here than they

were anywhere.

   

   Underhill:  Now, because we don't have a lot of

information about the United Indian Traders Association

in the early years, it would be really helpful if you

could tell us what your father was like, to get a feel

for the executive director for all those years.

   Woodard:  Well, he was not a politician.  He was a

registered independent.  In all of the four jobs that I

said that he had earlier, he found that to be really

the smart way to go.  He didn't get involved in

politics, he was a very fair person, and he was a

diplomat.  He could tell you off and make you feel good

about it.  He very rarely did that--everybody just

seemed to like him.  And he was an organization-type

man where he could...  He understood the different

makeups of the organization, of the people in it, and

could pull them all together and work in a general

direction that was advantageous to all of them, and

beneficial to all of them.  He could see a lot further

than the small guy that's lookin' through a stovepipe

or somethin' like that, not lookin' at the whole

picture.  And he was a very good friend of all of the

people he worked with.  He had quite a group of friends

from all over the world.  And of course the

organizations that he worked for, like the Ceremonial

and the Traders, well, many of the Traders were

exhibitors at the Ceremonial.  And the Ceremonial was

interested in really doing the artsy-craftsy thing, and

making the arts and crafts worthwhile and respected

pieces of art, as opposed to Indian trinkets.  The

competitive situation that they had there at Ceremonial

was probably the toughest competition in the United

States of America for arts and crafts.  It had to be

Indian to be there.  And of course many of the traders--

and they were very active in the Association--you have

the different areas that had the different styles of

rugs.  And I know at one time I was the head of the

exhibit hall committee, and we had four or five traders

on there who happened to be in the rug business, and

happened to be on the exhibit hall committee also.  And

we would meet probably the first five or six meetings,

which were usually done in the wintertime after

Ceremonial when it was relatively quiet there.  And you

get into some arguments about rugs from these different

traders that've got some very interesting battles

goin'.  "My area is it and all these rugs that come

from my area are thus and so, and they're a lot better

than his area," which in a case of like there was Pine

Springs and Burntwater.  You can just about throw a

rock between the two.  And there was what you call the

Pine Springs Area rug and a Burntwater Area rug.  And

there were two distinct design differences in the rugs,

but it was essentially the same weavers.

   And then later the chapter houses got the rug

auctions going.  I went to a couple of those, and the

local traders in the area, for instance out in

Chambers, Arizona, which would be like Ganado, Lupton,

Wide Ruins, Burntwater, Pine Springs.  Those folks in

that area, the traders would go to the auctions, and

they would pay the premium prices for these rugs.  And

every one of the weavers would sit in the back of the

auction and watch who bought all the rugs.  So all of

the weavers from that area, if the trader at Klagetoh

had been the high bidder at the last auction, every one

of those rugs from all those areas went to Klagetoh.

If it happened to be Burntwater, they paid the most for

'em, they all came from that area.  So there was more

of a definite style that some of the traders....

   The Hubbells got the Ganado Red style going.  The

Wide Ruins area more so in Pine Springs and Burntwater,

down in that area went more for the vegetable dyes.

You have, of course Two Grey Hills rugs.  You had the

Teec Nos Pos, which are the major areas.  There's a

number of other areas:  Red Mesa, some of the storm

patterns from, oh, Dinnebito, over in that area.  And

there were distinct areas that they kind of stayed with

the same designs that J. B. Moore Rugs at Crystal.  I

mean those just--they did a lot of publicity on the

things that they were trying to have their people do.

And then you had cooperation, like a fellah by the name

of Herman Schwietzer [phonetic spelling] that was a

purchasing agent for the Fred Harvey Company from, I

think, 1905 until he died in 1956--something on that

order.  He was very helpful, and the Fred Harvey

Company really did a lot of promotion of Indian arts

and crafts.  I know Schwietzer had contacts with a

number of the traders.  I was doing an appraisal in

Marquette, Michigan, here about six, seven years ago,

and it came to this place that was built between 1902

and 1911.  It was owned by one of the eastern banker-

financier-type people.  There was probably seventy-five

or eighty rugs there.  Every one of 'em had a Herman

Schwietzer tag on it.  And it was just like somebody

that's been in this field a long time just got to

heaven.  These pieces were just unreal.  We fortunately

got to dispose of the entire Herman Schwietzer

collection.  It's been in the mid to late sixties.  But

to see what had been done....

   Now, the offices of the Traders Association and the

Ceremonial and all that, when they were in the hogans

down there, there was a railroad siding there, and of

course that was right next to the El Navajo Hotel,

which was the railroad Fred Harvey building there,

which in its own was just a spectacular place in the

early days.  They had a number of the rugs and things

that were done by Hosteen Claw.  These happen to be

here in Santa Fe at the Wheelwright Museum, which was

originally called the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art.

   Where was I goin' with that?  (pause)  I had a

thought there, and I've lost it.

   

   Underhill:  We were talking about the traders

getting together while you were on the exhibit

committee for the Ceremonial, and maybe the

relationship between traders?

   

   Woodard:  Well, they were very competitive then.

I've kind of lost where I was goin' with that one, but

maybe it'll come back around.  (laughter)  Let's just

slip right on here.

   

   Underhill:  When you were young, you mentioned that

you probably ran over a few of the United Indian

Traders Association members with your tricycle.  Who do

you remember as you were growing up?

   

   Woodard:  Well, there's quite a number of people:

the Hubbells, who were very good friends of my dad;

Bert Staples and his wife; Marshall Drolet.  Oh, there

was a number of the Foutzes that I've known for many,

many years.  (pause)  Frank McNitt has a whole book of

'em, and I think I know most of 'em!  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  And if you had to generalize, what

characteristics do traders have in common?

   

   Woodard:  Well, when you go to, like, Harry and Mike

Goulding, up in Monument Valley, which is really very

remote and away from everything--not so much today as

it was then--but it was I think at least a week-long

trip from anywhere where there was any other type of

civilization, and they would go out there by wagon.

They would have to freight in everything that they

traded with the Indians.  And of course they moved out

there as a young married couple, and they died out

there.  And no way would they leave.  They had sold, or

I believe they gave the property to a church back east,

which the church sold to some individuals later, and

Mrs. Goulding moved back out there and finally passed

away there.  But most of them have pretty much gotten

to really like that life, and you're with people of an

entirely different culture, and a very interesting

people.  Their values are so much different than you

see with a lot of other people.  But most of these

early people just loved what they were doing, and they

wouldn't leave it for anything, and many of them just

died there where they had worked.  And many of them,

who, say, worked for traders, people who worked as

employees for the people who owned the post, they would

go from post to post and work as they would change

hands and so forth, would go to different places.

   But what does a shoe salesman talk about when he

gets home from work?  I can tell you that we all talk

about trading, even after we get off work.  And we've

done it many a time 'til the wee hours of the morning.

Just some of the stories, it's really different, it's a

frontier-type life.  I think that you have to say that

many of these earlier traders were really pioneers of

the West, more than they get credit for.  And to be out

there with a group of people--in the early days, very

few of 'em even spoke English, so you were forced to

learn the language.  Then as many of them became

educated, [as] my dad taught me, "You don't learn their

language, or at least you don't let 'em know you know

it.  Then you won't have to listen to all their

troubles."  And there's a number of traders that have

said the same thing.  Of course many of them, they

would help the people out.  They had to listen to their

troubles because they were broke all the time, but they

were always helpin' 'em.  That's how they got to be

broke, I think.  But they loved the people and the life

out there, which was really different.

   

   Underhill:  And what are some of those stories that

stand out in your mind?

   

   Woodard:  I can't just come up with any of 'em real

quick like that, 'cause there's hundreds of 'em that

I've heard.  Well, a lot of 'em have to do with....

It's not a story--well, this would be a true story.  I

appraised Mrs. Goulding's estate, and I was like a kid

in a candy store, because she had kept guest books for

many of the years that they were out there.  There were

quite a number of movies, and here a few years back,

there wasn't one of those peaks at Monument Valley that

didn't have a brand new car on it.  Now there's no way

you could get the car on.  A little trick photography

there.  But the people who have been in that remote

area--which is still not on any beaten path--but the

names of the people who have been there, the artists,

the movie stars, the politicians--like Teddy Roosevelt

was very well-known by a number of the traders out in

this area.  When you get into some of the history

there, you get into a lot more of those stories.

   I met a fellah who was quite well-known, years ago

at a funeral.  I have thought very highly of the

individual and have had contact with him since that

date.  His name was Johnny Cash.  He appeared at a

funeral of a young Navajo girl who was killed in a car

accident.  Her husband was an artist and he was in art

school back in Chicago and they went to a concert--the

Indian people all like western music--and while sitting

there, he did kind of a pencil sketch of Johnny Cash,

and they knew there was no way you could get to him

after the concert, so his wife took the sketch and gave

it to one of the security people back there and said,

"Just give this to Mr. Cash.  We're not tryin' to get

in and see him or anything."  But she had written their

phone number and address on there.  A couple of days

later they got a phone call from Johnny Cash.  It

resulted in Johnny Cash bought a lot of his paintings,

and used a couple of his paintings for album covers.

And this happened to be at Crownpoint, which you just

don't expect to see someone of that....

   The next time I talked to Johnny Cash was trying to

help one of these people out of a problem.  I had to

talk to him in Israel--I think he was doing concerts

over there.  But this fellah, I think this was the only

person he would listen to at that time.  But he came to

that funeral as a mourner and as a very sincere person.

It really, really impressed me a great deal.

   I used to rodeo with a number of the Indian people

when I was a youngster, and I can remember going to--I

think we went out to Steamboat Springs one time.  Took

us about two, three days from Gallup, and it was

because of the roads.  And it was in August, I think,

and the muddy time of the year.  The two fellahs that I

had gone out with, we were the only Anglo people at the

rodeo, including spectators, and we just had a

wonderful time.  And of course we knew a lot of the

Indian cowboys.  We grew up with 'em.  The whole area,

they live very remotely, but somehow there is a "come

togetherness" that happens in that area.

   Okay, your turn!  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  So what were the Navajo people like who

were your customers as your dad had the store in the

late forties?  And then did you take over that store?

   

   Woodard:  Yes.  I think I'd rather do business with

Indian people than with Anglo people anytime.  They

really study what they want.  And of course we were in

the jewelry and rug business, and pottery and that type

of thing.  But just like when you need a plumber, not

everybody's a plumber.  So you call a plumber.  Well,

not every Indian is a silversmith, so they go to a

jewelry store and buy their material, or the things

that they'd like.  We did handle some religious items.

The peyote religion got to be very major among the

people out here.  It had been very popular in Oklahoma,

and that's the Native Church of North America, which is

an incorporated church.  And it really caught on with

the Navajos.  It just mushroomed over there.  Many of

the people who were in that religion were the tribal

officials, were the best family people, took good care

of their families.  Of course that religion did not

believe in drinking at all, which has always been a

problem with the Indian people.  And not just Indian

people, with a lot of other people too.

   Gallup, of course, has had the bad name of all the

drunk Indians in Gallup, which it does not deserve

that.  There is a Skid Row section of Every City USA,

and if the highway happens to go through there, that's

what they're gonna say about it, and that's where

Gallup's problem is.  You get the truckers that were

going through there on Front Street, and that happened

to be where the Indian bars were located.  So they'd

see these helpless individuals layin' around drunk.

They have changed the law a whole lot over there.  When

they catch an Indian drinking, they don't actually

arrest them, they put them in what's called protective

custody, and they keep them overnight to keep them from

the elements and freezing to death and going to sleep

on a railroad track and this type of thing.  Then they

release them about ten o'clock in the morning.  Well,

if you were to go out there, say, every day for two

weeks at ten o'clock in the morning and videotape who's

marching out of the jail, you would find that you have

just a handful of alcoholics, that that's a way of life

to them.  And it's the same people over and over.  It

is not....  You go to a doctors' convention in San

Diego, California, you get to see a whole bunch of

drunk doctors.  You go to Gallup, that's a trading

center, a convention center, say--sure, you'll get to

see some people that are drinkin' a little bit.  Some

of them can't handle it, some of them can.  But I think

our societies have had many more years to build up an

immunity than the Indian people.  And then I know early

on when Indian people were first allowed to drink--or

before they were allowed to drink--they would get ahold

of some bootleg wine or whatever and there would be a

cop running to get them, take it away from them, and

they knew that he couldn't take it away from them if it

was inside of 'em, so they'd drink the whole thing all

at once.  Well, anybody that does that is gonna have a

problem.  So I think they've been kind of misjudged

just because the highway happens to go through a

certain part of town there.

   And on the opposite side of that highway, of course,

is the railroad tracks, and the old Gallup Mercantile

building, the Gross-Kelly and Company building, which

were major sources to getting things into the Southwest

here, that would go out to the trading posts.  And they

also traded traders on the reservation rugs for

groceries, and they were a good outlet for the traders

on the reservation.  So they could move their

inventories of rugs and jewelry and that to a larger

market.

   

   Underhill:  How integrated was Gallup?

   Woodard:  Actually, Gallup got its name from a

railroad paymaster, George S. Gallup.  And of course

the early days of Gallup--Gallup was a coal-mining

town.  There is probably, I think they have maps of

over 300 miles of underground coal mines, going

underneath Gallup, and as a kid I played in a lot of

'em.  Not real safe, but many of those they've tried to

close off and all that.  But there was some major coal

mining going on there.  And the coal miners, there were

a lot of Slavic people.  With the railroad there they

had some Oriental people who worked on the railroads.

The makeup of Gallup was probably as diverse of any

area that I've ever been in my life.  And everybody

just got along together.  There was never any problems.

Growing up I never saw any of the racial problems that

I got to know about in later years.  The Indian people,

I've got a lot of very close Indian friends, and still

to this day quite a few Indian guests here all the

time--and even some of the old traders, too!

(chuckles)

   But I feel very bad that I wasn't born, say, thirty

years before I was; just as you feel that you wished

you'd have started this thirty years before you started

it.  (Underhill agrees)  But I was fortunate to have

been so close to it, and some of it rubbed off.  I wish

I would have become more interested much sooner than I

did.  And it's kind of like a kid that just found his

candy store, after I really got into it, and I've

really enjoyed it ever since.

   

   Underhill:  And what got you started in the arts and

crafts business?

   

   Woodard:  Well, the rodeo business wasn't really

doin' real well, and I was getting out of college and

getting married and I thought that I might better find

some source of income.  And so at that time I did open

an arts and crafts store in Tucson.

   

   [END TAPE 1, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]

   

   Woodard:  But I think once you get into this kind of

business, you just never get out of it.  It's

impossible to get out.  And you really don't want to.

(laughs)

   

   Cole:  I can imagine it's pretty neat.

   

   Woodard:  It's very interesting.  It's not the same

old, same old thing, you know.  There's always

something different going on.

   

   Underhill:  That's my favorite part.

   

   This is Tape 2 of an interview with Tom Woodard.

It's Monday, December 14.  We're in Santa Fe, and also

present are Brad Cole and Lew Steiger.  And this is

Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona University.

   Tom, when we stopped the tape just a bit ago, you

were starting to tell us about your first store in

Tucson.

   

   

   Woodard:  I decided that it was just before I had

finished college, that I had to do something a little

more creative than what I'd been doing.  And so I

started a store down there.  My dad helped me get that

started, and there were a couple of very good shops in

that town at the time--Tom Bahti being one of them, and

John Tanner at the Desert House Crafts there.  Clay

Lockett [phonetic spelling] had a shop at that time in

Tucson also.  And we were all very good friends over

the years.  So I found this old western town and I just

dreamed up this concoction that they gotta have a real

Indian store, and it was way out on another end of town

from where most of the other people were.  And so I put

the store in there and I really learned a whole lot

about it.  I started out and made my own showcases and

everything else.  It was kind of a shirt-tail operation

for a long time.  And then I did change locations, I

got down there on a much more heavily-trafficked area.

I think Clay Lockett and....  There was a fellah that

was gonna corner the market on Navajo rugs.  And this

was in, oh, say 1962, 1963, and maybe even into 1964.

But he was quite wealthy and he was gonna corner the

market on Navajo rugs.  And so there was a couple of

traders who were pretty much retired--Sue Bolen was one

of them.  She started runnin' back and forth to the

reservation, doin' it pretty regular.  Somebody asked

her the question, "I thought you were kind of retired.

Why are you really runnin' up to the reservation so

much?"  She said, "Well, this fellah's tryin' to corner

the market on Navajo rugs, and I'm just tryin' to help

him."  (laughter)  But he went on this for, oh, a

couple of years there, and then he decided that he

wasn't going to pull that one off.  So he brought in

all the rugs that he had, and I was to dispose of them

for him.  So there was people like Gil Maxwell, who at

that time was traveling on the road for Tobe Turpen,

and he had some rugs of his own.  But I think he was

selling Tobe Turpen's jewelry on the road at the time,

and he'd stop in, and he had written a book on Navajo

rugs.  And in the back of it were pictures of his rug

room many years ago where he had these big high stacks.

It just so happened that I had some pretty good stacks

there, so I got a stepladder and got him up on some of

the stacks and took his picture and put it along with

his book and said, "Well, my rug room is as good in

1960-something as his was in 1930-something."

   But anyhow, I kept tryin' to--I was selling a lot of

rugs at the time, and this fellah went in and bought

all of Clay Lockett's rugs, of which there were some

very nice pieces in there, and a couple of 'em I even

bought for my own personal collection.  He went to the

racetrack with Russell Foutz one day, and I had gone to

Gallup to pick up some things or something like that.

When I got back there was a stack of rugs in the store

that were all covered up.  Well, Russell and this

fellah had gone to the race track, and both of 'em were

involved pretty heavily in race horses.  Well, this

fellah traded (chuckles) Russell a race horse for a

bunch more rugs.  And I had to explain to him that we

could never get him out of the rug business if he kept

buyin' 'em.  So he finally quit, and we finally got rid

of most all of his rugs.

   And then I think in 1964 we closed that store.

There wasn't that much business, and of course Tucson

is very seasonal and all.  The store in Gallup was just

growing and growing, and so I came back up.  We closed

that one and moved everything back up to Gallup.  I was

there until, oh, in the late seventies I opened a

gallery down in Scottsdale.  Then in 1980 I think we

closed Gallup.  About 1981 I moved from Scottsdale up

here to Santa Fe and opened one.  And I decided I'd

seen all the tourists I needed to see by 1986, and we

shut her down for good.

   In Gallup--this was back in the mid-sixties, I

think, when the AIM movement was going pretty heavy.

They had threatened to burn down downtown Gallup, and

we had a very substantial museum in the basement part

of our store there, which was essentially my dad's

collection.  I was very concerned over what fire could

do to that material.  I don't think any of Gallup was

on top of the fire code, and many of those buildings

were built there many, many years ago.  And the one

that we were in at that time, actually was a restaurant

that had burned down probably four or five years before

that, and was rebuilt.  I had arranged with the

authorities at Fort Wingate to use one of the igloos

out there to store this material.  (phone rings, tape

paused)  I just wanted to protect this material,

because there was just no way that it would withstand

the fire.  So I started to pack things up, and in part

of our basement there we had poured a concrete floor

and it had concrete walls on the sides.  The part

closest to the street, I was lookin' up, and I saw that

it had a big concrete roof in it.  So we just got all

the silversmiths out of the shop and put 'em in the

construction business, and we built a cinder block wall

that was filled with rebar and concrete; sent a couple

of other silversmiths to Albuquerque for a big vault

door, and just moved the entire collection into that,

rather than try to move it out to Fort Wingate, because

a lot less packing, and it was much quicker and we were

kinda pushed for time there, 'cause it was like in

Ceremonial time, which was very busy also.

   It came to be nothing.  I know the night that they

were supposed to burn down downtown, there happened to

be a power failure downtown.  But Bill Cousins, who was

an old trader and friend of mine, we decided that we

weren't gonna be pushed around by those youngsters, and

we knew that the older Indian people didn't respect the

attitudes and ideals of some of these younger AIM

people.  So we decided that we'd stay there at my

store.  So we put a card table in the window and got a

bottle of whiskey and a couple of shotguns and said,

"Just go on ahead and start it!"  And that's the way

that....

   You know, the traders did not take punishment from

the Indians, they tried to treat 'em fairly, but they

would not allow themselves to be run over, which is

just natural, really.  I know one of these AIM fellahs

had been involved in this fracas up around Shiprock

where they lost that Fairchild Semiconductor Plant.

Those people found an opportunity to leave the area.

They weren't doing that well anyway.  This fellah came

into Bill Cousins' store there in Gallup, which he

being an old trader, he had a half a barrel there with

axe handles in it, 'cause the Indians--it's not the

type of thing you see in every hardware store, but the

Indians use a lot of the axes.  And so this fellah

asked him for a donation and told him he was with AIM.

Well, they weren't real popular anyway, so he got an

axe handle and he said, "I'm gonna give you a

donation!"  The fellow left quite rapidly and forgot

what he was there for.  But he was down there tryin' to

cause trouble among the people that lived there,

really.

   

   Underhill:  Why did AIM want to burn downtown

Gallup?

   

   Woodard:  Oh, they latched onto some of the

government type stories that the traders and all the

merchants were taking advantage of the Indians and

weren't being fair to 'em and all this and that.  And

that, I think, is really the main reason that the

Traders Association was formed.  You go back into the

early days, and you have the livestock regulations and

the pricing and the pawn.  And that has always....

   There was another big upsurge, I think, in the early

seventies, which was exactly a repeat performance of

what they had done in the early thirties.  And I think

that report I just gave you is 1945, and it's the same

old thing over and over, where some uninformed

government agent comes out and--well, we like to call

'em "do-gooders" out here, because you have a lot of

these church groups back east that give a lot of

clothing to the Indian people, and they used to come to

Gallup, and it was distributed from there.  And people

who really needed it, that came in, in the wagons,

well, it was all gone because the guys in the pickup

trucks already had it all.  But if you could see the

Indian people getting that, you'd see a formal dress

and some high-heeled shoes, and you'd see a couple of

Indian women over there just gigglin'.  They just got

the biggest kick out of that.  But you never saw one of

'em wear one--the shoes or the dresses.  But they would

use the material and make something else out of it.  It

was a good gesture, but the people who were giving the

material did not have any idea of the background of the

people that it was going to and all, which you can

understand that, too.  But it was really funny to watch

some of it.  (laughter)  You know, give 'em a nice old

TV set, and they didn't even have electricity, nor any

way to have a source on TV at all.  It wasn't always

here.  When I was younger, we didn't know what a TV set

was.  Radio was as good as we could do.

   

   Underhill:  What is it you think that government

officials or uninformed members of the public don't

understand about the Navajo economy and relationship

with traders?

   

   Woodard:  Well, they didn't understand the culture,

number one, nor what really that the traders did for

the people.  Now, they might have priced something in

Chicago, say, or Washington, and maybe found it to be

somewhat higher out here.  But if you go to how they

got it out here, in the early days....  Now, I was

probably seventeen or eighteen years old on that--oh,

maybe sixteen, seventeen, somethin' like that--when I

told you about goin' out to Steamboat.  It's on a major

highway now--not major highway, but it's all paved

roads out there now.  But this was all dirt roads, and

that had to be in, oh, like 1955.  So much of the

reservation was kind of hard to get to.  And then when

you go back earlier into the early 1900s up until, oh,

I would say maybe the beginning of the forties, the

mobility out there was kind of tough.  You had freight

costs to get things out there.  When it took you four

or five days to get from Gallup to just beyond Window

Rock, it's a lot more expensive to get things.  And

then you had all the middlemen in between.  So it

wasn't the traders that were doing all of this.

   I really don't know--I mean, I can think of a few

people over the years who have, I thought, taken

advantage of some of the Indians, but very, very few.

The ones that you read about, and the people who made

up the early Indian Traders Association, those people

were just very dedicated and were of more benefit to

the Indian people than anybody that's come along since,

including the government.  They were there to take care

of them all the time, and it was the trader who the

Indian people went to when they had a problem--not to

the government, or the do-gooder groups that were

misinformed about what was really going on there.  The

Indians are shocked, they have so many sheep or so many

cows, and then the government comes in and says, "You

have to get rid of 60 percent of these."  Well, the

Indians don't understand why.  Everything's been

workin' just fine now.  Sometimes what the government

does is questioned later also, as to why they did it.

But they were always trying to impose some type of

regulations.  And I know Dad would meet with all these

Washington lawyers and stuff like that.

   Now, he and Mr. Lee and a couple other people went

to Washington in around 1935, when they got that arts

and crafts legislation passed back there, but they also

were working with some very influential people in the

country who knew more about what the traders were all

about, and what they were doing.  These people were

very good supporters of the traders.  Glen Emmons

[phonetic spelling], who was a banker there in Gallup

was later, I think, the commissioner of Indian Affairs.

He was an old-timer in the Gallup area, had been in the

local bank there for a long time.  But he understood.

   I was the president of the New Mexico Retail

Association at one time, and we had members like Sears

and Wards and big stores like that, and some of the

Sears people came to me one time and told me they were

gonna locate a store in Gallup.  You know, it's the

lowest grade of their catalog store that they were

gonna put in, because it did not really have the

population.  So I sat them down and explained to them

about the trading things in Gallup, and they moved up

considerably higher when they found out really what was

going on.  But they just take, essentially, a

population figure and say, "It takes this many people

to support a store of this size in Gallup itself."  And

to go over there now, the residential areas, there are

so many Indian people that live in very modern homes in

Gallup, which when I was much younger there were very

few.  They own some of the finer homes up there now.

   You still have a very unique situation over there.

I mean, you take some of the Tanner family.  Ellis

Tanner out there has a very much Indian-oriented

operation.  He sells groceries and works with livestock

and arts and crafts and the whole thing.  But that's as

close as you're gonna see today.  But he is blanketing

the whole reservation with advertising and not just a

specific area, as the earlier people had to do.

   

   Underhill:  Did the Navajo Shopping Center impact

your store?

   

   Woodard:  No.  When they went into Gamerco there, I

didn't think it really made any difference to us at

all.  They were more in the livestock.  They later got

into a lot of pawn and stuff like that, but as far as

bein' in the jewelry business, it never made any

difference to us.  Our business there [in Gallup] just

continued to grow over the years--not a whole bunch,

but it was just a steady increase.  It was a very good

business there.

   

   Underhill:  How many silversmiths did you have

working for you?

   

   Woodard:  Up to 205.  During the seventies I think

we had something like 32 working in our shop itself.

We had 205 of them doing piecework for us, where we

would give them materials and orders to make things.

   That was not a real good time for the quality side

of the Indian jewelry business.  It was just too easy

to sell, and too many people became involved in it.  If

every Indian in the United States was a jeweler, they

could not have supplied the demand at that particular

time.  I mean, every country and western movie star,

every service station attendant, every schoolteacher--I

mean, there wasn't anybody that wasn't in the Indian

business somehow, sellin' jewelry.  It brought in the

manufacturing gang, it brought in the Arabs.  It was

just something that the people who were....  Well, in

1968, in McKinley County, there were nine people

registered with the Bureau of Revenue in the Indian

arts and crafts business.  And McKinley County goes

from essentially Grants to the state line, and from

just below Farmington to way down below Zuni--very

substantial area.  That's in 1968.  In 1978, there were

119 in the Gallup phone book.  So, I mean, that'll tell

you what happened in that timeframe.

   And I think at one point in time....  Well, up

until, say, the late sixties, you almost knew everybody

in the United States that was in the Indian arts and

crafts business.  I mean, you had a few odd number--

people had their own sources where you didn't know

them.  But a lot of the people that had the larger

stores would circulate and buy different things.  We

all got different things.  And there was room in there

for everybody.  There was never--I thought there was

always enough business to support everybody.  And of

course it really got away from us there, where there

was no way that....  I turned down accounts with Sears

and Penney's and places like that, and I'm very glad I

did, because they had some kind of a contract thing

that they wanted to have where they could have their

sales with it, and then they could bring it back.

   I kinda laughed at 'em when Penney's came to me and

they wanted to buy jewelry for a hundred stores.  And I

said, "Well, I've only got one store.  How could I

supply you with that kind of quantity?!"  There's no

way I could do it.  And we had a number of customers

who I felt that....  I mean, like Al Packard.  Our best

accounts were in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, our

wholesale accounts.  These people would come over to

Gallup because that was predominantly the jewelry

production area.  Albuquerque has got a lot of people

producing down there now--some good, some bad, some

Native American, some not.  I think there's a number of

Vietnamese people down there that are making Indian

jewelry in one shop.  It's kind of taking advantage of

the law that we have, and it's not doing anything for

the benefit of the Indian people, who all along, this

is what we've thought about.

   I said I was glad that I turned some of these people

down, because I think the Navajo Arts and Crafts Guild

at Window Rock had taken on Sears.  And, well, the boom

kinda slowed down a little bit, and Sears brings 'em a

ton of stuff back.  Well, they needed a ton of stuff,

so they were just grabbing everything they could get

their hands on, trading off some of the good material

that they had produced over the years out there.  And

Mark Bahti and I were hired to go out there and kind of

sort out and give 'em a recommendation of what they

should do.  We were sittin' there throwin' rings in 55-

gallon drums:  Melt this up and start over, and let's

go back to real and stay back with the quality that got

us here in the first place.  That is kind of the

direction that we always took.

   A few of us, we started an organization in the state

of New Mexico where there got to be a bunch of armed

robberies and this type of thing.  Indian jewelry, just

couldn't get enough of it, so you had to stick somebody

up, I guess.  Then if you had some, you were really

wide open to robbery, 'cause it was the thing to sell

at that time.  And we started--there were a number of

us working on the statewide organization here, and a

couple other people got involved, and we formed a

national organization, strictly to do with the Indian

arts and crafts.  We really had a nice organization

going, and some real good gold.  A number of people who

have been in the trading business were involved in it

originally.  The organization got marketing involved in

it, and that was the end of that organization.  It's

still in existence, but it's really teeter-tottering as

to I don't know whether it'll be here a year from now.

They just canceled a big market in Denver--that's the

Indian Arts and Crafts Association.

   

   Underhill:  What was your specialty in your store?

   

   Woodard:  Good question!  We were kinda like the

traders on the reservation:  we were a jack of all

trades and a master of none.  I mean, we handled rugs,

paintings, jewelry, pottery, curios--every art and

craft that the Indians do.  We handled them.  We dealt

pretty much directly with the Indian people on this, as

far as sources and that.  And we had a number of

silversmiths, a number of different tribes.  We were

very large in the painting business, also.  There

weren't too many people involved in that.  And if you

know of anybody that needs about 1,200-1,500 of 'em,

I've got a few left.  (all chuckle)

   

   Underhill:  What do you think caused the interest in

the 1970s in Indian arts and crafts--the boom?

   

   Woodard:  That's easy!  That was a Revlon ad.  There

was a gal wearin' a concho belt.  We sold to the

Department of Interior shop in Washington, and American

Indian Art Center in New York.  Those were accounts

that we had.  And this Vogue magazine came out, and

there was a gal wearin' a squash blossom necklace,

another wearin' a concho belt.  And I bet there hadn't

been two squash blossom necklaces sold in New York in

the preceding ten years.  But they ordered ten of them.

We asked them if they were sober and sure.  "What are

you gonna do with ten squash blossom necklaces in New

York?!"  And before they got them, they had ordered

some, like ten to twenty more.  It just started and it

really mushroomed.  I mean, that's what I kind of

attribute it to.  It was some national publicity.  It

had absolutely nothing to do with Indian jewelry.  They

were selling cosmetics, but it was just a fashion

statement.

   Pretty soon it just went wild.  It was way over what

we in the business could control.  There was just no

way.  And I refused to take on new accounts, because I

felt obligated to the people who had purchased from us

for a number of years before.  And then, of course

(chuckles) right after that, every one of these people

sold their stores to one of these other guys.  Well,

you never knew that was gonna happen.  And I don't

regret doing it the way that I did it.  We still kept a

good reputation and had good quality merchandise all

the time, which is more of the angle that we were....

   And we worked very close with the Ceremonial, as did

many of the traders and the Navajo Arts and Crafts

Guild, the Hopi Guild, any other organizations in the

area--everybody is--and from all over the United

States, too.

   

   Underhill:  Were you a member of the United Indian

Traders Association in your own right as an arts and

crafts dealer?

   

   Woodard:  Yes.  I don't recall how many years that I

was actually a member, but there wasn't really a whole

lot going on at the time that I was involved in it.  I

was so involved in the early seventies in this other

organization, and just taking care of our own business,

that I really was not that involved in some of the

problems that they had in that timeframe.  I mean, it

started out with some national publicity.  One of the

news media was saying that the Indians were being taken

advantage of.  He uncovered a 1945 report.  "Let's stir

that up again!" or somethin'.  But it hadn't changed.

There were still a few of the further-out posts that

were....  But the whole makeup of the trader has

changed.  And then the government would also get the

Navajo Tribe irritated, "Well, they're takin' advantage

of your people!"  Still, the tribal government and the

tribe itself are also two different set-ups.  Some of

'em listen to the tribal government, some of 'em don't.

But when they live in a certain area, they know who the

trader is, and over the years....  I still see it.  I

was out at Ganado this summer, and Bill Young, who's

actually running the National Monument Hubbell Trading

Post, is still treating that exactly like it was an old

post, and he's running it that way.  And you see it

very much like it used to be.  I did part of the

appraisal for Dorothy Hubbell when the Park Service

took it over.  That place I remember bein' identical to

the way it was last September when I was there.  And

it's just really good to see that, because there's a

number of posts out there that I remember that there's

not even ruins left.

   And then the tribe has also tried to help some of

their people.  I think in the case of Wide Ruins

Trading Post, the Lippincotts had it, and I think Bill

and Jean Cousins ran it for them for a while there.

Then the tribe bought them out.  Something happened

along those lines, and they got an Indian to run it for

the tribe.  Well, it didn't do very well.  And they

wanted Cousins to come back in the next year and run

it.  He said he would if he could have the same

privileges as the last guy did.  They said, "Well, what

are those?"  "Stealing privileges!"  (laughter)  Said

he could do pretty well there if he could do that.  But

he never did go back in it.

   

   Underhill:  You mentioned that traders had changed

in those years when you were a member of the United

Indian Traders Association.  (Woodard:  Uh-huh.)  How

had traders changed from the time when you were young?

   

   Woodard:  Well, the makeup of the Traders

Association, in the early days it was predominantly

people who were on the reservation, or in, say, the

Gallup area, heavily trading with the Indian people.

And then it branched out and you had more arts and

crafts dealers.  But there's some lists in here of

certain years of the different traders and so forth.

And most of those, I think even in the forties, were

out on the reservation, that type of trader.  But like

Packard's was never on the reservation, they were

always just over here in Santa Fe.  And you got more

people in there that, "Well, it's the thing to be a

member of the United Indian Traders Association."  I

don't know that that really ever carried a whole lot of

weight.  I knew more of the inside of the organization,

and why are they pickin' on us for our pawn rate or

livestock or something on that order.  Well, we're not

takin' advantage of the Indians, and we get called on

to prove it all these different times, just over and

over, the same thing.

   And one of the earlier traders, Barry Goldwater,

I've got a letter over here that my dad wrote him.  A

number of us had kind of fought this eagle feather law

in 1964.  We had tried to work with the politicians--

everything became endangered species.  But the Indian

people have--there seems to be eagle around here, where

all the Indians are, and to them, it's a very religious

thing.  So we were just trying to get the law not to

apply to the Indian people, because of freedom of

religion and this type of thing.  Well, Dad wrote Barry

Goldwater a letter that started out, it said, "Dear

Barry, do you realize that you're living in sin and

you're subject to fine and imprisonment for the

feathers on the kachina dolls in your collection?"

(all chuckle)  I mean, my dad, I told you earlier that

he was a diplomat, but he could go on like that.  I'll

show you a couple of those after a while.

   It was something that we were trying to do for the

benefit of the [people].  It could really make a whole

lot of difference to us, 'cause we really didn't

traffic in eagle feathers.  Now, they arrested some

rancher up in Montana or somethin', that had something

like 300 eagle pelts.  Well, yeah, go ahead and get

him, but we didn't have time to go killing birds, we

were not actually....  If someone brought some feathers

in to us that were feathers that were wanted by the

Indian people, we would be a middleman there.  And

then, of course, it got to where you couldn't name or

do anything with almost any feather that came in.  It

almost had to be a chicken feather.  I understand some

pigeons are even now protected.  You could take a down

pillow that you bought at J. C. Penney's, and if you

took the feathers out of that, you're in violation of

the law.  If it broke open on you and you put 'em on a

kachina doll, 'cause you're not the one that has a

permit to put those feathers commercially raised....  I

mean, it's gotten to the point of ridiculous.

   In the case of eagle feathers, the golden eagle was

not protected until 1964, and if you happened to have

an eagle feather war bonnet that was made in 1920, you

actually had to stand there and eat it, because you

couldn't transport it, you couldn't trade it, you

couldn't sell it.  The grandfather clause did not apply

to any of these laws that are Indian-related, really.

To something else, if you had something and it was

later outlawed, you had the right to sell out the ones

that you already had--which we did not have that.  And

it's another--when I keep running the government down

for the way they've treated the Indian people, it's

just another one of those things that was exactly the

same thing.

   I joke about it a little bit too, I say that they

were arguin' about takin' peyote away from the Indian

people.  Would you get any reaction if you took the

wine away from the Catholics?  It's a little different

ball game, isn't it?  But peyote is a sacrament of

their church, where wine is a sacrament of many other

churches.  So it's just kind of two different sets of

rules.  And their culture is definitely different, but

people don't understand that.

   And a lot of the Indian arts--Schwietzer had the

foresight in the early 1900s--I've got some letters

over there where he purchased a Marianos chief blanket.

He purchased that from a cavalry person who was at Fort

Wingate in 1911.  I mean, it was a documented piece

that I think he had purchased it in the 1870s,

something like that.  And our interest in getting rid

of Schwietzer's rugs was to put them in the right

places.  And we thought that the Navajo Tribe would be

the place for a  documented piece.  We did this just

before rugs went really wild.  And so the tribe

actually paid, I think, $2,000 for this documented

chief blanket from 1870.  There's been chief blankets

not nearly as good as this one--or documented--sold at

Sotherby's in New York for a half-million dollars.

   So that all of a sudden made rugs where all the

traders and all the people really interested in 'em.

"This is a work of art.  This gal gets twenty cents an

hour or ten cents an hour for weaving this rug.  Takes

her a year to do it."  Well, now, some of those are

trader stories, too.  She's not workin' on it eight

hours a day.  That makes an entirely different story.

But if you do any knitting, you sit down and you knit a

sweater.  You sit down and keep track of the time it

takes you, pay yourself a nickel an hour, and you'll

find out you could go buy a sweater a hell of a lot

cheaper than you can do it yourself.  So the weaving

essentially with the Indian people was more on that

basis--it's between other chores that they do.

   I know one girl that actually worked for the

government, was bringing us a rug in every two weeks--

like a three-by-five rug, and very well woven.  So it's

not--it sounds better if you say that, "Oh, it took

this old lady a hundred years to weave this."  But

that's a little romantic story, and there have been

some very romantic stories that have been created by,

let's say, the less scrupulous traders, or some of the

wannabe traders.

   The Mazel [phonetic spelling] Company in their stamp

designs, they had the crossed arrows and all these

different designs, and they put out a printed sheet

that said what all these mean--all the meanings to the

Indian people.  And Tom Bahti down in Tucson, he'd

print these little cards with some little joke on 'em,

and you'd see people very serious--he had a real high-

quality shop--and people would be looking through

there, and they'd all of a sudden hit one of these

signs and they'd just break out laughin'.  They're

lookin' at some real serious stuff, but he had a

baloney ad that he had cut out and pasted on the bottom

of this crossed arrows and all this, what the Indian

signs "mean."  You probably never knew him.

   

   Underhill:  I knew Mark.  I've met Mark a couple of

times.

   

   Woodard:  Right.  Well, I took a labor newspaper

once, because Tom wrote kind of a humorous column on

the eagle feather issue.  Morris Udall, who just passed

away this weekend, was Arizona congressman back then,

and he and Tom Bahti were very good friends.  I don't

know where Tom got 'em, but he got all this eagle

fluffs--could have been chicken or turkey--whatever--

but the little fluffy feathers.  And he stuffed an

envelope for weeks, and he sent it back to Mo.  Or

maybe it was....  I think it was to Mo Udall.  They

were personal friends, and he put, "personal" on the

envelope.  I guess when Morris opened it, they said it

took over two months to get all the eagle fluffs out of

his office.  And Tom was very specific about his

writing.  He'd send you what would take most people two

pages, and it was about a third of a line.  There was

nothing--he was right to the point.  And his point

there was, "This is what I think of your eagle feather

law!"  (laughs)  I got a kick out of that.

   But Tom had a wonderful sense of humor.  I judged

with him on a couple of occasions, and boy, he'd go

through things very rapidly, but he had an eye.  And I

kind of started learnin' to do that.  You don't stutter

on something and go back to it.  That's when you make

your mistakes.  You just go through with an educated

eye--you just look at it and go through it real

rapidly, and don't have time to argue with yourself

about something.  I really enjoyed working with him.

   

   Underhill:  Now, judging--was that at the

Ceremonials?

   

   Woodard:  This, particularly the first time I judged

with him, was at Scottsdale National.  Now, I have

judged at Arizona State Fair, the Scottsdale National,

the Heard Museum, Philbrook Art Center in Oklahoma, Red

Cloud in South Dakota, New Mexico State Fair,

Ceremonial--just about every Indian show in the

country.

   

   Cole:  When you moved back to Gallup, did you move

to your own store, or did you go back with your dad?

   

   Woodard:  Went back in with my dad.

   

   Cole:  And then you eventually took over?

   

   Woodard:  Well, when my dad passed away, he died in

1967.  After that, this silver supply thing that he got

going with the traders, that was eventually sold to a

fellow by the name of Slim Brazier [phonetic spelling],

I think.  And we had purchased that, one of my brothers

had gone into that.  It's a major operation now.  And

that's a very, very competitive business here.  He has

a branch in Albuquerque, as do a couple of the other

firms.  Thunderbird Supply there in Gallup is one of

the competitors.  They've got the competition down

there to where they're tryin' to cut each other's

throats all the time, and you can't buy any jewelry

manufacturing materials cheaper than you can buy 'em

right here in this area.  And then there was an outfit

in Albuquerque--we used to deal with 'em years ago--Rio

Grande Wholesale Jewelers.  We bought just watchband

centers, when they started using the expansion centers.

And they were essentially selling screws and watch

parts to watch repair people in fine jewelry stores

when they were in a little place over there on South

Edith--a few tools and things.  Their business was

predominantly fine jewelry stores.  And they got

involved in this, and they had--I mean, even refinery

there in Albuquerque--open to a much larger....  They

built their own building out there, and all of the

youngsters in the family went into the business, and

one of 'em was in advertising, one of 'em was the head

of the supply house itself.  They also started handling

silver and things like that, and were competitors of

ours, of my younger brother.  But they have since kind

of branched out, and they're selling predominantly to

hobbyists and jewelers on the east coast.  They have

kind of like on the Internet, you know.

   And you'd be surprised at what the computer has

done.  You go up to some of the Indian pueblo shows up

here.  Instead of Joe Toledo [phonetic spelling] at San

Felipe Pueblo, it's WWW.TOLEDO.COM.  And the Indian

people are very heavily into the computers now.  Not

all of them, but a lot of them are.  Tobe Turpen had a

web page until he closed his operation here just a

while back, and quite a number of others have them.

   Are you familiar with the Elkis [phonetic spelling]

collection?  The Elkises were a family, a lawyer from

San Francisco.  There were a couple of lawyers out

there, Elkis and Denmon [phonetic spelling].  They

became very interested in the Indian things in, I

think, the late twenties, and started coming out here.

They got to be very good friends with a number of the

Indian people, starting with the Hopis, the Navajos,

and then worked the Rio Grande pueblos, and really

interested in the Indian arts and crafts.  And they

would buy things from them and come and stay with the

Indian people.  When they were out here, they'd spend

the summers out here.  And Mr. Elkis was always looking

for--and when I spoke earlier of very heavy-weight

people would come in and try to help--well, he got

really no fees for this, but anything that he could do

politically and legally, he would, at no charge to the

Indian people, kind of get these things together, and

they were all guests of the Elkis family out there.

And the Denmon family were in the same boat.  And they

would buy, say, some paintings, and they would go have

one of these paintings reproduced in a Christmas card,

and that was their Christmas card that year.  I have a

collection of those that my dad got from them.  You

know, you don't see that anymore, people going to that

effort.  And of course he made his living as being a

lawyer out there, and probably representing big

corporations, things like that.  But he had this other

interest that he really dedicated a lot of time to.

And their papers are all on a website.  I'll give you

the address on that.  It's California Academy of

Sciences.

   Now, the family tried to give all of that material

that they had to a museum out here where it was all

collected.  But at the time the Navajo Tribal Museum

was in that prefab building down there, that could go

up in smoke at any time.  Gallup couldn't get it

together to have any kind of a facility to be able to

take care of it.  So I think it wound up going to the

California Academy of Sciences.

   Now, let me grab a book here.  (tape paused)

Denmon?  Yes.

   

   Cole:  Is she the lady from San Francisco?

   

   Woodard:  Uh-huh.  Her husband, he and Charlie Elkis

were the two people out there who were really

interested in the Indian people.  And then their

offsprings....  I mean, I've seen this go through....

It's in like the third generation that I've seen now.

Those families, the older Elkises first met out here,

their grandchildren are friends with the grandchildren

of those families.  It's district judge, Carol Vehill

[phonetic spelling], who is at Tesuque out here, first

Pueblo Indian woman lawyer, and she's now a local

judge.  Their family has been connected with the Elkis

family for many, many years.  And a lot of the Elkis

family has passed on, but it was just something to see

that.  They were always so helpful with the traders,

and there's letters from the Traders Association that

go back quite a while back, that you'll be able to find

on that website.

   But, I mean, there's people who have come in.  You

have the do-gooder who doesn't know what's going on,

and you have someone like the Elkises and the Denmons

who really knew, and knew what the people needed, and

they tried to work from that approach.

   

   Underhill:  What do you think the future of the

Indian arts and crafts business will be?

   

   Woodard:  I feel very strongly about that question.

(chuckles)  In New Mexico--I know Colorado has a very

similar law, Arizona is starting to get concerned--we

have had the lousiest attorney generals in the state of

New Mexico.  Tony Anaya, who was the attorney general

when we got the law first in, did a wonderful job with

it.  Jeff Bingaman [phonetic spelling], Paul Barniky

[phonetic spelling], [Tom] Udall, who just made a

statement that 40 percent of you [who] buy Indian

jewelry in New Mexico are gonna get screwed.  Well, the

reason you're goin' to is 'cause he's not doin' his

job, which is called enforcing the law.  And I have

given every one of these attorney generals money up

front--you know, while they're campaigning--with the

promise that they will enforce the Indian Arts and

Crafts Law.  It's history.  It's there, but nothing's

been done with it.  We went to them, a couple of us

individually and a couple of associations, went to

them, I think, like in about 1986, and we met with one

of their delegates who was the attorney that was gonna

handle this part of it.  We said, "We can raise over

three times the attorney general's salary in less than

three hours--his annual salary--just in fines alone.

And you don't have to go over five blocks from where

we're sitting now.  Just go out and pick up liquid

silver," which was all machine made, except for one

store here in town that had one fellow makin' it

handmade, and we told 'em about that one.  But the rest

of it....  "Well, we don't have the expertise to tell

it."  Have you seen these blue lapis whirls in the Arab

Indian stores?  It doesn't take much of an expert to

know that that's not Indian.  And then so much of the

other material in there, they have....

   Tobe and I went in one day and he hadn't really been

shoppin' in any of these places.  We had lunch down

here at a restaurant downtown, and so we went in there,

and I said, "Let's pretend like we're tourists."  They

had a Zuni necklace there that I said, "I sure like

that one.  How much is it?"  The guy said, "It's

$2,700, but today, I'm gonna let you have it for $750."

Boy, I thought I was really gettin' a deal!  So I

looked at it and looked at it and just egged him on a

little bit.  Tobe was gettin' kind of a kick out of

this.  I said, "But let me look at some more stuff here

first.  I really like that necklace."  And we had

discussed before going in there, "I want you to look at

these things, some Hopi material that there was some

real Hopi, but then the majority of it in there was

phony."  And then you get into opal bracelets that are

like so wide, opal from here to here, and they're $250.

Well, real good-quality opal stone that's smaller than

your fingernail costs you more than that, wholesale--so

it's got to be junk.

   

   [END TAPE 1, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A]

   

   Underhill:  This is Tape 3 of an interview with Tom

Woodard.  We're in his home in Santa Fe, and it is

Monday, December 14, 1998.  In the room are also Brad

Cole and Lew Steiger.  This is Karen Underhill with

Northern Arizona University.

   You were just in the middle of your story with Tobe,

and he was looking at Hopi material.

   

   Woodard:  And so we went ahead and we kind of looked

at everything in the store, and there's a few things

that are real.  Anytime we asked a question, we got

very bad information.  So we were getting closer to the

front door and this necklace that came down from $2,700

to $700, he said, "I really haven't had any sales all

day, and I'll let you have that necklace for $350."

Well, if I had had that necklace in my store, it would

have never sold, full retail, for over $275.  So this

is the game that is going on.

   This family ... (tape goes blank for a second) ...

by the attorney general for phony pricing.  I'm willing

to bet the attorney general $1,000 that he can go in

and bust 'em, collect the fine.  I’ll go in with him,

and I'll walk out and get a discount before we all get

out of the store.  I mean, it's that blatant.  Well,

the Arabs had all moved into Zuni and just took that

over.  They really destroyed what went on at Zuni.

   A lot of the material that's being made in the

Philippines and different places, I have done a couple

of seminars, gone out and bought samples of what's

being made today and misrepresented as Indian.  I've

tried to be kind of a martyr in that area, because the

Indian people have been very good to me, and the Indian

jewelry has been very good, and there is a very big

opening for--now that it's getting known, many of the

areas you have rugs--when that one rug sold for over a

half-million dollars.  That made so many people more

aware of what Navajo rugs are.

   And of course they have a big problem with imported

rugs, also, copying Indian designs.  And they're good.

Some of the traders who live on the reservation have

bought those imported rugs directly from weavers.  The

Indian people have a wonderful sense of humor, and

they're doin' it more to trick the trader and seein' if

they can pull somethin' off on him, and he's got to be

on his toes.  But there is a camaraderie there that

they're tryin' to pull a fast one on ya', and they'll

really get a kick out of it if they can.  And you're

tryin' to stop 'em, but that's part of the way that you

do business with those people.  Sometimes they get you

... (tape goes blank for a second) ... 'em.  But it's

not a question of trying to ... (tape goes blank for a

second) ... it's more of a joke than it is anything

else.  But a couple of the traders out there were

buyin' these saddle blankets from these gals and they

weren't payin' a whole lot of attention--just a saddle

blanket, it's no big deal.  Someone came out and

pointed out to them that these were Mexican saddle

blankets.  They watched 'em a little closer after that.

But you have so much of that going on.

   And then pottery:  there's some Indian pottery

that's sold in the $30,000-$50,000 area.  You never

heard of those prices before.  Beadwork:  there's some

beadwork that's up in the half-million-dollar area.

Kachina dolls:  there was one sold just the other day

for $273,000.  This is changing the picture.  These old

Indian souvenir things that these traders have been

foolin' with for years are objects of art.  And the

reason that they have not caught on faster than this is

because people are ignorant as to what they're looking

at, and the art form.  We even have some writers out

here that say that Indian art is all--there never was

such a thing, that it's all European influence.  This

same individual that wrote this, and has said this in

many lectures, I asked him if he knew about the nuclear

sub that was developed a little before Columbus got

here--because those European dudes had to get over here

and teach 'em how to do those petroglyphs, if his

theory is so.  He argues with me all the time.

(laughter)  I don't think much of him as an author,

either.

   You need to get the information out there for people

to know what they're looking at.  The American Indian,

to a lot of people in this country, lives in a teepee

and rides a paint horse and has always got feathers on

his head.  So many people today look at a western

movie, and that's what the Indians should look like.  I

was asked as late as 1980 in Gallup if it was safe to

cross the reservation.  We were getting ready to close

the store, and I went ahead and let go that time.  I

said, "Well, you know, you're real fortunate, 'cause we

just had a meeting with the war chiefs, and we can

guarantee you safe passage.  You go up through Window

Rock and Ganado and clear to Grand Canyon, and we'll

get up there and send smoke signals ahead of you, so

I'll guarantee you clear passage all the way."  "Oh,

thank you, sir!"  I thought, "I wish somebody would

catch this idiot and surround him!"  But, you know,

those of us that live out here....  But there are

people that live in this country that have no idea that

the Indians are not these bands that are running around

riding horses and living in teepees with paint all over

theirselves.  These teeny boppers got a lot more paint

on their faces than the Indians do!  (laughter)

   

   Underhill:  What are some of your favorite moments

in your career working with various Indian groups?

   

   Woodard:  Well, I think I'm still experiencing 'em.

When I see something finally being recognized for what

I've always thought it was, then all of this work has

been for some reason.  It just makes you feel good to

see things like that happen; seeing the different

artists that we've worked with to become highly

recognized.  One artist, this Bee-et-naz [phonetic

spelling], for instance, he's quite well known.  He's

not one of the high-dollar people, but the book that's

been written about him that's been in Silver Dollar

that was written about him out at Wide Ruins when the

Lippincotts were out there.  That book is in its

sixteenth, seventeenth printing.  It's been done in

Europe.  And you get something like that, and of course

it's kind of sad now that he is blind.  There's

virtually nothing he can do now.  Now, all his kids--

well, there's a couple of paintings up there by his

children.  They're gettin' a lot more money than he

ever got.  Of course, times have changed and the

marketing has changed and the art form has changed a

whole lot too.  I mean, it's more recognized than it

was back then.

   Many of the artists can....  Well, I know a lot of

artists making a whole lot more than some of the

traders are making.  You take R. C. Gorman, who's done

super well, and he's had a very good manager, and has

handled it properly.  But you can buy his work in a

dime store or a real expensive art gallery in New York.

You can go full circle--his cookbook or whatever.  I

mean, the lady that's managed him has done a very good

job.

   But many of the offsprings of artists that I worked

with are really coming into their own now.  I'm using

Bee-et-naz's grandson--he's my agent.  Now, he can sell

his grandfather's stuff for a lot more than I can get

for it!  To see the whole thing progress as it has.

But then it upsets me tremendously to see what we just

discussed just before then, about what's being done to

it.  Now, my mother said that before my dad passed

away, he was hoping that the arts and crafts business

would last until we decided to--he was hoping it would

last throughout our lifetime.  So this was--he had a

lot more foresight than I did.  My sons are not

interested in it at all, but I don't look for it to

last much longer--especially if something is not really

done now.  It's gotta be done big-time, because it's

too far out of control with the Arabs going in and

taking over Zuni, essentially.  And they have just

multiplied here in Santa Fe in the last three years

like a cancer downtown, is what it is.  There's only

about four shops in Santa Fe that I can send people to.

And there's probably over a hundred shops here that

sell Indian material.

   

   Underhill:  Just for the tape, can we get your

father's name?

   

   Woodard:  Oh, it was M. L. Woodard, and he was

called "Woody," but his real name was Marion Leonard

Woodard.

   

   Underhill:  And your mother's name?

   

   Woodard:  Ann.

   

   Steiger:  While we're on that subject, you mentioned

the four things that he did and all that stuff, but

were we taping then?  I'm not sure that we were.  Were

we?

   

   Woodard:  Yeah, we did.  I did mention that also,

after we started.

   

   Cole:  We should ask about how your dad ended up in

Gallup.

   

   Woodard:  He originally went there and opened the

newspaper, The Southwest Tourist News.

   

   Cole:  That's right, I guess you did.

   

   Underhill:  And where did he come from?

   

   Woodard:  He went to school in Nebraska, and I think

Iowa.  He was from up in that country.  And his father,

I think, was a card dealer in Denver.

   

   Underhill:  And how did he meet your mom?

   

   Woodard:  She came from Germany.  She had an uncle

who had a cleaning establishment there in Gallup, and

she and her sister had come over from Germany.  I think

her father lived in Detroit.  They went out to visit

the uncle in Gallup.  Remember, this is all....  I-40

was dirt.  (chuckles)  Kind of like a reservation road.

And they went to visit this uncle of theirs and my

father met her there in Gallup.  And they lived happily

ever after.

   

   Underhill:  Where did you go to college?

   

   Woodard:  I first went to college at Colorado State,

because I was thinking of the rodeo business, and they

had a good rodeo team at that time.  And then I later

went to the University of Arizona in Tucson and

finished there.  In fact, most of my college was in

Tucson.

   

   Underhill:  And is that where you met your wife?

   

   Woodard:  Yes.

   

   Underhill:  And what is your wife's name?

   

   Woodard:  Virginia.  (pause)  Ex-wife's name.

   

   Cole:  You also mentioned you had a couple of

brothers.

   

   Woodard:  Yes.

   

   Cole:  And who are they?

   

   Woodard:  I had four brothers.  My brother, Don

Woodard, who had a store up in Cortez, he just passed

away around the first of August.  I was doing a seminar

over in Gallup for Ceremonial when that took place.

And then I have a brother, Phil, that's in Gallup that

runs Indian Jewelers Supply there, which essentially

was the original offshoot of the Indian Traders' silver

business.  Then I have a brother David, here, that's in

the real estate business.

   

   Underhill:  If there were anything that you could go

back and change throughout your career or life, would

you do that?  What would it be?

   

   Woodard:  Well, I'd build a fence around New Mexico

and the reservation and all that to keep it the same as

it used to be (laughter) when it was really enjoyable.

No, I've really enjoyed my whole life, and I don't know

that I could say I'd want to see anything change, other

than to have what's going on now out of it, and not

have to worry about things like that, and go back to

the real thing.

   I was visiting with Lige Blair when this fellah

reestablished Toadlena Trading Post here a couple of

years ago.  And Lige, of course that was the first

place that he was when he came out here, and I've known

Lige, oh, for a number of years.  When I was learning

to fly, this Joe Danhoff [phonetic spelling] taught me

how to fly.  He was always interested in flying and

all.  Of course he also was a trader out on the

reservation, which many of them--Blair flies also.

It's just really the best way in the world to get in

and out of there.  So I'd go out to Joe to his trading

post and learn to land on all the roads.

   And Lige Blair's place, we were out there one time

and learned how to take off goin' around a curve over a

bridge!  Well, that's all three all rolled up into one,

and that was kinda new then, and that was very

exciting.  But that wouldn't bother me now.  And then

Hopi, there's an airport there at Oraibi, but that's

the dumbest place in the world to land, that great big

wide highway up there by the cultural center.  And

that's where you're goin' anyway.  That's the place to

land, but a couple of Hopis started learnin' to fly,

and they were both landing, but going a different

direction, so they kind of stopped that.  (chuckles)

It kind of ended our little airstrip there.  But that

road's gotta be nine miles long and just as wide as it

can be.  And the airport down there, you're always

[dealing with] real tricky winds and a wash right at

the end of it.

   But over the years a lot of the traders have been

pilots.  Both the LaFont [phonetic spelling] boys fly a

lot.  Oh, there've been a number of them.

   

   Cole:  I was curious:  You mentioned a couple of

times the events, what's happening at Zuni.  What is

happening?

   

   Woodard:  Well, when the Arabs first came out here--

in fact, it was Al Zuni--he's one of the Kalif

[phonetic spelling] brothers.  I've forgotten what his

first name was, but their father is a wholesale grocer

in Denver.  Well, he was the first one to come down

here, and they--it was in the early seventies--and they

must have caught on that there was something really

happening on this jewelry thing, and they came down and

they just started--a whole bunch of 'em started comin',

and they essentially built a fence around Zuni.  They

would stand on the roads there, and they wouldn't allow

the Zuni to carry any jewelry out of there.  They were

in there workin' with briefcases full of hundred-dollar

bills, and apparently no record keeping of any kind.  I

don't know why the IRS hasn't gotten involved, because

everybody knows that their transactions are very

questionable.  Well, they would pay 'em a little more

than we were payin' 'em, so that was the original

enticement.  And then they just got it, and then they

cut 'em back after they had pretty well got control

over it.

   So they all went somewhere for Christmas one year--

all the Arabs left at once--and the Indians not being

good money managers, needed to get some Christmas money

up.  So they were bringin' their things to town, and we

knew what was gonna happen:  "As soon as those guys

came back, we're out of business again."  So we'd help

'em out now, "but we're buying at our price, not yours.

We supported you for years, and you haven't brought us

a thing."  And we felt sorry for 'em, and we knew that

they couldn't bring us a thing, 'cause those guys would

actually break a windshield out of a car if they

thought that they had some jewelry.

   We couldn't understand, the Zuni bein' a pueblo and

closely controlled, a trader would never have thought

of takin' over a place like that.  I mean, even C. G.

Wallace who was there forever, and always had these big

thoughts of controllin' the whole thing, he wouldn't

have even thought of somethin' like that.  But these

guys have no scruples whatsoever and they came in and

essentially took it all over.  Now, he has been busted

for check kiting in the couple-million-dollar area down

in Phoenix; runnin' guns to Khadafi [phonetic

spelling].  Nice fellah.  And those are the people that

are monkeyin'-up this business now--or the arts and

crafts side of it.  And of course I gotta say that Wal-

Mart and all those big grocery stores and Thriftway are

messin' up the other end of the trading business.  (all

chuckle)

   I mean, it's not the same, but I am very happy to

have lived in that time and gotten to know some of

those people and seen that way of life.  I feel very

fortunate to....  I just wished I would have taken the

bait or caught the bait long before I did, because I

really missed out on a whole lot that I could have.

   And then another story that I have to tell.  This

newspaper that my dad did in the late twenties, and

then I think he also did it part-time while he was

working with these other organizations--he had saved

all the papers, and at some point in time I was gonna

become a little Indian, I guess, a little tyke like

this, I got a bow and arrow.  And he had these

[newspapers] stored out in the garage behind the house.

And this box was a prime candidate for a target, it was

good and heavy and the arrows wouldn't go right through

it.  Right now I have a couple of copies, or partial

copies of that newspaper.  And to know that I had

destroyed all of them makes me sick.  And I couldn't

understand why my dad was upset about me shooting into

that box of old newspapers.

   I hate myself for that one.  Just the copies that I

have been able to obtain since then, it's blown my

mind.  I understand why he kept 'em.  A lot of that

stuff, and a lot of the information you guys are

lookin' for, has somehow slipped through the cracks.

We're all hopin' that....  And Kennedy could be pullin'

your leg, and also he might have gotten mad at him and

gotten a whole bunch of those things at one time.  You

never know what can come up.

   A lawyer called me in Gallup--Don Smouse [phonetic

spelling], I think, had a son--and there was something

to do with the estate, or he had inherited some things

from there.  He wanted to know if I would appraise 'em

for the guy.  Well, I was really looking forward to

talking to him and trying to get some information.  I

understood that he really didn't care anything about

it, but there might have been the possibility that he

had an old file on the Traders Association, which to

me, today, would be "just leave me alone, I'm tied up

for the week until I get through memorizing all of

this, and I find a website."

   I met some people who were French, but he's an

instructor in a university back east this summer.  And

this set of Kletsoh Dedman [phonetic spelling] dolls up

here....  They had collected a few what we're going to

call sand painting rugs, and gotten interested in some

Indian things.  And they're clear east coast, and

university which is not Indian-oriented at all.  And I

was out at the fellah that bought Toadlena Trading Post

and reopened it--I was out at a party that he has

around the Indian Market time.  Someone knew that I had

this partial set of dolls, and they had just purchased

one in Albuquerque, which I had seen down there.  I met

up with 'em up there, and we talked, and they came out

to the house and I showed 'em this.

   And then there was an award ceremony.  The French

government recognized a number of Indian artists.  I've

got the dates in there, but it was back in the early

forties, I think.  The French consulate was also the

director at Bandolier Monument up here.  And then some

of his things were he carved some kachinas that were in

Arizona Highways.  It was quite interesting, when you

put the whole show together.

   And then Barton and I got this photograph and we

were trying to identify the people in it.  So Barton is

quite an artist also, so he kind of sketched over the

photograph, and we found out who everybody was:  Maria

Aguasera [phonetic spelling], Alan Howser, and all the

people who were being awarded this thing by the French

government.  So it just goes full circle, I tell ya'.

   It's been a very interesting life to me.  And I have

just started learning.  I don't know it yet.  An

expert's somebody's that been in this for less than two

weeks.  Then you find out how much you don't know, and

you get quieter and quieter as the years go by, because

you realize how much you don't know.  But it's really

been fun for me.

   

   Underhill:  So what else have we not asked you

that's important to know?

   Woodard:  I don't know, I feel like I've been

talkin' a long time.  (laughter)  I do better in the

show-and-tell area.  I've got some other things here to

dig out and show you.

   

   Underhill:  Want to do some of that?  Brad or Lew,

did you have anything?

   

   Steiger:  I just have one [question].  It's not

really germane.  Just out of curiosity, what was your

rodeo specialty?  Were you a bronc rider or somethin'

like that?

   

   Woodard:  I worked all the riding events and the

bull-doggin'.  First rodeo I was ever in bull-doggin'

was the first time I ever bull-dogged, and they didn't

have enough bull-doggers at the college rodeo in

Tucson, so I volunteered to be one of 'em.  I'd never

done it before in my life.  I liked it!  (laughs)  And

I went to two national college finals rodeos, too.  And

actually, Tucson is where college rodeo started.  And

when I started school down there, it was not even a

recognized sport anymore, and we got it back to a

letter sport.  I went to a reunion with a bunch of the

people that I was there with, oh, seven, eight years

ago.  It was held down at Old Tucson.

   I used to get--these buddies of mine and I would go

out and tell a bunch of these Indians that we were

buckin' horse buyers, and that we were payin' big money

for these buckin' horses, and wondered if they'd round

up anything that they'd have that might be a buckin'

horse and we'd be through in a couple of weeks and we'd

try it out.  "If you got somethin' really good, we'll

pay you big money for it."  So they'd round up all

these horses that they had and we'd make a specified

day that we'd come back through.  Well, we were gettin'

'em to round 'em up so we could practice on theirs.

Some of the arenas that we rode in, two sides of it are

a sixty-foot drop-off in a wash, no fence on that side.

They figured the horses were smart enough not to jump

off there.  But it was a little testy.  And we did that

for a couple of years, but about the second time

through, they remembered who we were (laughter) and

they had talked with their friends and nobody was ever

known to sell a horse to this bunch.  So we played

games, too.

   

   Underhill:  Well, thanks so much.

   

   Woodard:  That's all right.  I really don't feel

like we've just barely scratched it.  But to try to

tell everything and have it organized in just a little

while is not possible.

   

   Underhill:  You can be part of the website.

   

   Woodard:  Oh, yeah.  I'm anxious to find that out.

And I'll also get....  I wasn't havin' a whole lot of

luck ________.  Are we through?

                       Steiger:  Yeah.       [END OF

                    INTERVIEW]