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 av�rer 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]