JOE TANNER, SR. INTERVIEW
   
   [BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE A]
   
   This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University.
It's March 30, 1999.  We're in Gallup, New Mexico
today, visiting with Joe Tanner.  Also in the room is
Gail Steiger running the camera equipment.  This is an
interview as part of the United Indian Traders
Association Oral History Project.  [Narrator's wife,
Cindy, is also present and makes a comment near the end
of the interview.]
   
   
   Cole:  Joe, let's just start with when and where you

were born.

   

   Tanner:  Well, it's Joseph Elwood Tanner, and I was

born August 14, 1938, at Farmington, New Mexico.  I'm a

great-grandson of Seth Tanner, one of the earliest, if

not the earliest of at least the Mormon pioneers, as

they came into the Indian country.  Seth was quite a

pioneer, and what a jewel to have in your family

history.  I've spent a lifetime just chasing Anglo

stories and Indian stories about him.  And then my

grandfather was Joseph Baldwin Tanner.  My mother and

dad are Rulel Lehi Tanner and Stella McGee Tanner.

They had eight children, and I'm child number five in

the play of things.  (chuckles)  I was primarily raised

at Kirtland, New Mexico, and Durango, Colorado.

   

   Cole:  You mentioned a little bit about Seth.  Was

he an Indian trader at all?

   

   Tanner:  Oh, I'll tell you a little.  Let's just

start with him.  I love his spirit and I just had a

great thirst all of my life to find out any and

everything I could about him and my grandpa Joe.  Seth

was born in Bolton, New York.  His father was converted

to the Mormon Church, and then Seth.  So he was

completely involved in the whole Mormon migration and

experience, from the very beginning.  He was born in

1829 in Bolton.  His father was a really important man,

but I won't go into him, because Seth is the first

trader among the American Indians from our family.  As

he came west with the whole family, he became a

reliable of Brigham Young.  He was a great fisher,

great hunter, great scout, pathfinder, and Brigham

relied on him a lot--as he did on everybody.  I'm not

trying to say that Seth was one of Brigham's favorites,

because Brigham certainly needed and relied on

everybody.  But he learned--Seth--as best as I can

figure out--he learned real early, as he went among the

Indians, about them, and began to understand them, and

began to understand the Indian's reverence for all of

nature and all of nature's characters.  And Seth

figured out at some juncture of time in his early life,

he figured out if he became the bear, that would award

him safe passage among the Indians.  It's kind of

like....  I was real intrigued with the movie Dances

with Wolves, and that language of movement and sign.

Well, Seth became the bear, and his whole history, as I

talked to all of the Indian community that knew bits

and pieces of him, he was "Mr. Bear," Hosteen Shash.

He was the bear.  And as I think about him, and kind of

translate the tidbits of information that I've

accumulated throughout my life about him.  I don't care

if he was among the Utes, he was a big man and a sound

man.  He was about six-foot-two, and in our family

that's big.  (laughs)  Tall.  Loved to ride a mule.

When he was among the Utes, he would wrestle with 'em,

growl like a bear, fight like a bear, and that's his

whole--that's the whole secret to--not everybody who

showed up in the West could peacefully coexist with the

Indians.  Well, Seth could.  He had no fear, because of

this great secret that he had.  I've studied somewhat

the Hopi and the kachina.  A Hopi, to be a really

successful male elder, if he has learned the complete

understanding of three of Mother Nature's other

characters, he's a great success.  Maybe he chose the

badger, maybe he chose the wolf, maybe he chose the

mouse.  But the Hopi get into those roles of that

character.  When you're being a bear kachina, you are a

bear.  So I can just close my eyes and think about Seth

as he was in situations, all across the frontier,

getting out of situations because of being "the bear,"

and being able to convey that to the Indian people that

he was among.

   He was somewhat of a loner.  He felt completely

comfortable being anywhere in the West by himself.  So

the Tanner Trail down into Grand Canyon, the Tanner

Crossing on the Little Colorado, the Tanner Springs was

one of his homesteads, are all named after him.  And

what that tells me, even though he didn't keep notes

and keep records, those things wouldn't have been

called after him--the Tanner Wash, and Tanner Mesa--

there's a lot of things that have his name attached to

it.  So that means to me old Tanner was there first.

(chuckles)He did some mining down in Grand Canyon, and

he and my grandfather did several mining operations,

chasing their needs, and trying to find silver, trying

to find....  And I don't know all of exactly what they

tried to mine in each of the different places in those

really early years.  I know quite a bit about what my

grandfather did--Grandfather Joseph Baldwin.  But I'll

get into him a little later.  Seth and his brother,

after the Mormons got to Salt Lake, left pretty early

and went to Barstow to mine coal.  And this was in the

1850s.  Seth was so familiar with that Outlaw Trail

where they'd bring the horses--I think he knew a lot

about it, and used that an awful lot.  I hosted

National Geographic a few years ago.  They were doing

an article on wool, and how wool was intertwined with

different peoples of the world.  And so the article was

not just on the Navajo, but the Navajo were chosen as

the people from the United States of America whose

lives were most intricately entwined with wool.  And

the first thing I wanted to do was find out, try to

guide them to people who really knew a lot about the

wool.  So I thought of R. C. Gorman's dad, Carl Gorman.

I wanted them to go out and talk to Carl.  And then I

wanted them to go out and talk to Annie Waneka

[phonetic spelling], Chee Dodge's daughter.  We had a

great session with Carl Gorman.  And then we got to

Annie Waneka's about four o'clock in the afternoon.

And of course the first thing Annie says is, "Well,

what in the world do you want to talk to me about wool

for?!  I've told my people from the very beginning 'get

those sheep hides out of their hogans, that's what's

bringing all the disease.'  I'm the champion of getting

rid of the disease on the reservation, and those

carriers of that disease were in those hides that my

people were sleeping on, on the floor.  What in the

world do you want to talk to...."  (laughs)  But then

we got past that.  We had a great session, National

Geographic and their people, and myself, with Annie.

But Annie Waneka--Chee Dodge, her father--their family

has been very intertwined with my family, from every

angle I could come at it.The National Geographic

people, we got them loaded up and they left, and Annie

and I got to talkin', and I said, "Annie, I want you to

tell me your whole history, about you.  I need and want

to know more about your father, Chee Dodge."  And she

says, "Well, Joe, I'll just start from the beginning,

with Chee Dodge.  We know who Chee Dodge's mother was."

And who was Chee Dodge's mother was a Jemez woman.  And

in the early beginnings of the Navajo way of life, they

used to steal people, "and there were these two Jemez

girls, twelve and thirteen years old"--and these are

Annie's words--"doing work in the fields at Jemez.

This Navajo war chief and his party come sweeping

through this field and stole these two Jemez girls.

And they took them to live with the Navajo, like was

the custom in those days.  It's one of these Jemez

girls who is Chee Dodge's mother."  And I said, "Well,

Annie, why don't you know who the father of Chee Dodge

was?"  And she said, "Well, Joe, what happened was

during one of the Navajo....  You have to understand,

these were very warring times among the Navajo.  And

during one of the wars, these two Jemez sisters fled

the war zone, down into the mouth of Grand Canyon."

Then it became more interesting to me, because that's

Seth Tanner's headquarters.  It's my belief that the

mother of Chee Dodge connected with Seth Tanner on one

of his adventure trips, and they became husband and

wife.  Then I think Seth brought her to what's known as

Tanner Springs and established a place there--a

homestead, a camp.  There's good water there, and I've

done a little study on that.Then Annie went on to--

those were my words--back to Annie.  Annie told me that

the reason they didn't know too much about Chee was

because this Jemez lady had a daughter and a son, Chee

Dodge.  During the Navajo--when Kit Carson rounded all

the Navajos up, these two Jemez sisters and these two

children were part of the group that took The Long

Walk.  Chee Dodge became known as "the boy

interpreter."  Here's a guy that spoke English, he

spoke Navajo, and he spoke this Tewa tongue.  On the

trail down, Chee Dodge's mother died, and his sister

died, so Chee Dodge and the aunt are the two that

survived.  They came back and Tanner Springs, to this

day, is in the Dodge family.  Annie Waneka went on to

say....  I told her my theory, and we talked about it,

and she said that was the best theory that she had ever

heard of, as far as who the father was.  She said,

"Well, Joe, I thought when my father--when George

Waneka and I got married--here we are at the wedding at

my father's home at Crystal--the grandest place on the

Navajo Reservation--and here's my father [who] says,

'Annie and George, now your job is to go take care of

Tanner Springs, because that's the most precious place

for me to preserve.'"  And she said, "Why was that,

with his choice of everything on the reservation, why

was that so precious?  And now, I agree with you, I

know that's probably the reason we have it in our

family, and why it's important to us."So I think Seth

Tanner was also....  I think my Grandfather Seth, we

know a lot about his Mormon history, but my family has

never talked at all about the Indian family.  But there

is a lot of information.  As my grandfather, Joseph

Baldwin, was growing up, all of the history that I knew

until I really became a detective on this, was from

that corner.  They used to say, "Well, my Grandpa Joe,

when he was growin' up, he just didn't like his

stepmother."  His mother had died, and Seth had taken

another wife that was raisin' him.  Grandpa Joe would

continually run away and live with the Indians.  There

was all those stories about Grandpa Joe and his running

away and living with the Indians.  Well, I know that

all he was doing was going and living with the Indian

family.

   

   Cole:  When you call them the Jemez girls, were they

Navajo?

   

   Tanner:  No, they were Jemez.  They were from the

Jemez Tribe, which is over near Santa Fe, and that's

where this war chief stole those two girls, brought 'em

back to this place and they were raised.  Now, the

aunt, Chee Dodge took care of her, even ended up

building her a great place at his place at Crystal, and

he took care of her.  Annie said, "Some day I'm gonna

take you up to Jemez and introduce you to all the rest

of the family," because I guess he had made those

connections.  So anyway, that's another facet of Seth

Tanner--and this is only my theory, but I've

substantiated it from so many directions, particularly

as I started really studying my Grandfather Joe.  And

that was the core of my....  My Grandpa Joe was the

greatest guy.  He could understand and talk most of the

[region's]....  he could speak something to communicate

with everyone he met.  He spoke English, of course.  He

spoke this language of the Tewa.  One of the

verifications....  I always thought he could speak

Hopi, and I always thought he could speak Zuni.  And

one of my most important early silversmiths that I

worked with was a guy by the name of Sol Ondolasi, and

I was talking to Sol one day, and I told Sol, "I'm

really wantin' to find out my grandfather's trading

among the Zunis."  "Oh, yes, my family," Sol said, "was

very involved in making things for Joe Tanner."  I

said, "Well, he spoke Zuni."  "Oh, no, he spoke the

language of the Tewa."  So as I have researched what I

have on Chee Dodge and what I have on Seth, and what I

have on Grandpa Joe, the languages that they were most

familiar with--my mom tells a story about when Chee

Dodge used to come out and spend a week with her and my

father at Tsaya, early in their marriage, and with my

Grandpa Joe, whose homestead was really close by.  She

said my dad would get so pissed at Chee Dodge and

Grandpa Joe because they wouldn't talk either Navajo--

which he understood and could talk--or English."  And

he'd [say], "Why the hell those two won't talk so I can

understand 'em, I don't know."  Well, they were just

talking this language of their mother.  So that was one

of the verifications there.  My Grandpa Joe--Joseph

Baldwin Tanner--when....  I'm equal parts Tanner--my

Grandpa Joe's wife was Foutz--and so I'm equal parts

Tanner, Foutz--and on my mother's side it's McGee and

Hunt.  So I can't do anything but be an Indian trader.

(laughs)  It's just in the roots, it's to the bone.

But my Grandpa Joe and his wife, when the government

discovered that all the settlers at Tuba City needed to

be--it's kind of like the Hopi-Navajo land dispute--

they all had to be removed because they said Chief Tuba

didn't have the right to allow them to settle there.

So the government bought all of the Mormon people out.

They gave 'em land exchanges and money, and my Grandpa

Joe obviously had the most valuable, most precious

place there at Tuba City, because he got the biggest

settlement of any of the other settlers.  So our first

trading post was established near Tuba City, and it was

Seth and Grandpa Joe's--they were equal partners in it.

And that was part of what ended there.

   

   Cole:  What time period did they start the trading

post?

   

   Tanner:  That would have been....  The Mormons

settled there in 1872, and I think they were forced to

leave about 1890.  I don't have those dates on the tip

of my tongue, but it was likely in the eighties.  I

comfortably say that my family has been continually

trading among the Navajos since 1872.  And I think I

could go earlier than that, but don't--that's the date

I use, is when they for sure settled there and started

their homestead.  Then my Grandpa Joe moved over to the

Mancos and Cortez area, and Shiprock.  He ultimately

ended up having a trading post at Mancos Creek.  Then

at Shiprock, he owned the Hogback place that the

Wheelers now own, that is one of the oldest places on

or near the Navajo Reservation.  At Hogback my Grandpa

Joe had made it so easy for… both he and Seth, but

particularly my Grandpa Joe-- he just has made it so

easy for all of us, all the family that has followed

him.  He loved to party, he loved to get together, he

loved to shindig.  I'll tell you what, this guy, when

he showed up at your house, it wouldn't be twenty

minutes until he'd say, "I believe that fat kid and

that long-legged kid....  I'll tell you what I'll do.

Let's put the heavy-set boy about forty feet ahead of

the long-legged boy, and let's run 'em seventy-five

yards, and I'll bet on either of 'em."  (laughter)

Just to get some fun goin'.  And it was the same with

horse racing and chicken pulls.  I guess when he bought

the Hogback Trading Post, he hosted a huge party and

there were over a thousand Indian people who came for

that big shindig when he....  He owned that store a

shorter period than anybody, any owner ever did, but

had the biggest party (laughs) that ever happened on

the reservation.

   He was a linguist, just like Chee Dodge.  Both of

'em were very involved in the early politics of the

region.  When the Navajos had their big uprising on

Beautiful Mountain, it was Grandpa Joe Tanner that was

the liaison from the Army and Shelton at Shiprock

carried the message up to the top of Beautiful

Mountain.  There's a great story about when he was

goin' up the trail to talk to the Indians who were on

the warpath, he was on his horse and the Indians kept

telling him, "Stop, or we're gonna hafta shoot you."

And Grandpa just said, "It's in God's hands.  If this

horse keeps goin', I'm supposed to come talk to you.

If he turns around, then I'm not."  Uncle Wheeler, who

used to live with us, said that Grandpa told him all

the time he was spurrin' that horse on the side that

the Indians couldn't see.  But he got up there and he

talked 'em out and saved a lot of bloodshed.  So he

accomplished that.Grandpa Joe just really loved the

art.  He was instrumental--he was one of the earliest

guys....  The Navajos mostly had great silver by this

time, and were embracing it and enjoying it.  But it

was not added with turquoise.  I say all the time that

my Grandpa Joe Tanner was instrumental in the marriage

of silver and turquoise.

   

   Cole:  Approximately what time period was this?

   

   Tanner:  Well, his career was....  I think he was

born in 1868--Grandpa Joe was.  And he was at the

height of his career at that great opportunistic time,

when all of these early traders were trying to figure

out ways to--what were the goods of trade?  The obvious

one, the Navajos had the hottest commodity in America.

In the West, before the white man ever showed up, the

Comanches wanted their blankets, the Utes wanted their

blankets, the Mexicans wanted their blankets.  That

weaving art was the obvious most sought-after thing,

whether you were an army soldier, or whether you

were....  We found some of the greatest old wearing

blankets in some of the Spanish land grant estates

along the Rio Grande.  Some of the earliest and best

ones that have been found have come from there.  All of

these guys, whether it was my Grandpa Joe, or whether

it was Cotton in Gallup, or Moore at Crystal, or

Hubbell--they were all just trying to figure out ways

that these people could best make a living.  And

turquoise and silver became one of those important

things.  And my granddad was toe-to-toe with those--my

Grandpa Joe was toe-to-toe with Hubbell and Moore.

Back to lovin' the party, he was real involved in the

first Gallup Indian Ceremonials.  He was real involved

in the fair at Shiprock.  We've got great early

photographs of the booth those guys had.  This all

really happened fast.  They turned this whole thing

into a trade.  I'll tell you, the Navajos are such

enterprising, hard-working people.  They don't need the

government to do anything for them.  I think the

greatest hour of the Navajos, and these people that

worked with them, was those years from when they were

released from Fort Sumner and given a few head of sheep

and lots of bayeta trade cloth.  And that's what those

earliest and best blankets are....  You know, the

ravelled stuff, those are the pieces that are bringing

the mega-bucks, and so sought-after.  I'll show you a

little later, I've got a picture over here by Willis,

and I kiddingly say that this old Navajo war chief that

Willis painted, he's having a ceremonial smoke.  Right

beside him I've got this red coat soldier--an old

weather vane that's been made into a lamp--and I tell

people all the time, "This is how Navajo weaving really

got started.  This is the old trader's story.  This war

chief sittin' there thinkin', 'How in the world am I

gonna keep my little girl warm this winter?'  And then

he gets this great idea.  'I know, I'm gonna shoot me a

red coat soldier.  Have the old woman ravel up his

jacket and make her a blanket to keep her warm this

winter.'"  So I've got the ravelled bayeta trade cloth

rug there, and the weather vane, and Willis' picture.

[chuckles] That's how it all got started.  The

government gave Dr. Joe Ben Wheat [phonetic spelling],

from the University of Colorado, who's been one of my

great gurus to learning as much as this old cowboy can

learn about old Navajo weaving.  He's documented the

tons of bayeta trade cloth that was given to the

Navajos as part of what they were trying to do, both at

Fort Sumner, and then continued to be brought as an

important trade item by Hubbell and Moore and my

Grandpa Joe and anybody else that was involved at that

time, trying to put everybody to work.  Grandpa Joe

started mining turquoise down between Bisbee and

Morenci, and he had a really important turquoise mine

down there.  And what he would do is he would mine the

turquoise, then he would bring the turquoise up to the

bead makers.  And they were Navajo bead makers, Hopi

bead makers, Santa Domingo bead makers, and Zuni bead

makers.  The technique of trade was that half of what

was created out of the turquoise belonged to the bead

maker, and the other half belonged to Grandpa.  And so

he'd leave 'em an important stash of turquoise, and

when he came back at a designated point in time, he

would sit there and Grandpa got first pick, the bead

maker would get the next pick, and they would just

satisfy it that way.  And then of course Grandpa would

try to then buy the bead maker's piece, and sometimes

he had success and sometimes he didn't.  The Zuni, the

bead makers were always traders themselves.  And this

was a great commodity, a great jacla, the earring that

goes on the bottom of a necklace, a really good one of

those was fair trade for the best steer in the herd, or

thirty head of ewes.  So they've always had great

value.  The treated ones don't have that value today,

but the real ones still have great value. So Grandpa

Joe would take those then and everyone in his

experience knew that when they seen Old Joe Tanner

comin' down the lane, there was somethin' in his bag of

tricks that was a thrill for anybody to trade for.  And

so he made it so easy, because one, the languages that

he spoke, the rapports that he established.  He did

quite a lot of--he was an herbal medicine practitioner,

so there's great stories about Grandpa Joe.  One that I

love to tell is he left Shiprock one time and was

headed out to Crownpoint where his homestead was, and

this Navajo family had just married off one of their

daughters and they had moved out to near the same area.

And her family asked Grandpa Joe, "Please stop by and

check on the kids and see how they're doin'."  Nellie

Arviso [phonetic spelling] who was the daughter that

the parents were concerned about, said when Grandpa Joe

got to her front door, both her and her husband were

just deathly ill with the flu.  And she said, "That man

just came right in our door and stayed with us for two-

and-a-half weeks until he had us both nursed back to

health, and away he went."  So he was never too busy

not to care for the folks that he shared life with.And

they called him "Little Bear" or Shash Yaz.  And so if

you noticed, my son's poem to his dad that Cindy

brought for you to read last night, one of the things

that Jonathan thanked me for was teachin' him how to be

a bear.  (chuckles)  And so that's a family tradition

of ours.  We had a great reunion here a few years ago.

We took the whole family to all the different

homesteads, and that was a really great experience.But

Grandpa Joe hosted a lot of competitive--went to a lot

of the fairs and sold the goods.  But he was pretty....

The last thirty years of his life, he wasn't so much

involved in a trading post, as he was involved in this

turquoise mining and bringing it to market.  The

maddest that he ever got at my parents, my dad and mom

had gotten married and they'd started their marriage

down in Phoenix, Arizona, and Dad worked for a dairy

company down there, but he wasn't really happy.  They

had my oldest brother, J. B., down there.  They saved

enough money to buy 'em a good Model "T" and they

struck out from Phoenix to come up here--not

necessarily to stay, but to just come up.  Mom hadn't

got to see her mother since J. B. was born, and they

wanted to come, and Grandpa was here in Gallup,

trading.  He just talked 'til he was blue in the face

to try to talk them--my mom and dad--into goin' in the

Indian art business at that point in time.  But my dad

was a sheep man to the bone.  They talked to Grandpa,

Grandpa got upset with 'em, mad at 'em, and he didn't

even speak to 'em for....  (laughs)  His grand plan was

to have Dad and Mom go into the art business with him

here in Gallup, which they never did.  But they

continued the trip on over to Farmington to see her

parents, and Dad got involved in a trade and traded his

Model "T" for a down payment on a part-interest in

Montezuma Creek Trading Post.  So he got started in the

sheep business.  You have my mom's interview about most

of their career, so I'm not going to go too much into

what they did. I guess I'll start talkin' about my

early experience.  I was born at Farmington, and got to

know my Grandpa Joe pretty well, and go with him a

little bit.  I'm named after both of my grandpas.  My

Grandpa Joe was Joseph Baldwin Tanner, and my Grandpa

McGee was Elwood.  So that's where I got my Joseph, and

that's where I got my Elwood, named after both of my

grandpas.  I grew up pretty much at Kirtland, New

Mexico, and then going....  I just have always loved to

be involved in the trading.  From the time I was just a

child, if Grandpa was going someplace, I'd bawl and cry

to go with him.  After we lost him, my dad and his

brother had this idea to create a big sheep ranch at

Durango, Colorado.  My dad and uncle had Aneth Trading

Post at this point, and this big ranching property at

Durango.  My mom in her interview didn't talk a lot

about that part, so I will a little bit now. Dad's idea

was to buy the Navajo sheep.  There's always been a

problem with 'em, because in a batch of Navajo sheep

you'll have the little starving dogie lamb that weighed

30 pounds, and then you'll have the pet lamb that

weighed 120, and then everything in between.  Some of

'em's tails were cut, some of 'em's horns were cut.

You know, they needed to be groomed and fixed.  And so

my dad was a sheep man to the bone.  He loved the sheep

business.  That was his passion.  What he'd do is,

they'd buy the bulk of 'em, or as many as they could,

take 'em up to this big ranch, and start organizin' 'em

and cleanin' 'em up.  Then Dad bought a property right

over the mountain from the ranch, right along the old

narrow gauge railroad system.  And what they'd do is,

just clean those sheep up and shape 'em up.  My mom and

dad started their own highway.  They put in a service

station, and Stella's Cafe, and a little motel.  The

service station with the cheap cigarettes, and

Philips 66 gasoline.  And so I kind of grew up bein' a

gas jockey there at the service station.  But my dad

always stayed involved with a lot of Navajo families--

particularly down near and around his homestead and his

trading post at Tsaya, which he had sold by this time.

But they didn't buy the accounts receivable, so Dad

still had to go down to the reservation and trade.  But

there at Durango we had a hogan and this service

station, and mom's cafe and the little motel.  And Dad

would, in the summertime he'd always have a weaver

there weaving.  I just, from the very beginning, just

always loved the art.  I learned to appreciate Navajo

rugs in our home.  I was one of the best "keeps" marble

players that there was, and had one of the best

collections of marbles because we'd put....  This rug

here, we'd put the marbles in the center pattern of the

rug, and then we'd use the border as the border, and

then we'd play marbles for keeps.  But I guess that's

when my love for Navajo weaving really got started.  At

that point, whenever Dad....  Bein' the middle child, I

had the choice of all relationships with my dad,

because I was kind of the middle child.  The earlier

ones, he was so busy tryin' to make a livin', that he

didn't spend too much time with 'em.  But he could

never--on the day that he would go down to Indian

country--and it would usually be a two- or three-day

trip--he would say, "Well, I gotta go to Indian

country."  And he'd say goodbye to the family that

night.  Well, when he'd get out to get in his pickup,

there I'd be.  He could never tell me (laughs), "No,

you can't go."  So I got to go with him on all of those

trips that he made down to Indian country.  And we'd

just go, we stayed right with the Indian families that

we visited.  We'd just roll our bed out and stay right

there in the hogan as we were making the rounds and

doing our trading.  So that's when I really got a taste

for what I wanted to make my career.  And I've just

always known that I wanted to do this hands-on trading.

From the very beginning, I've had this great love

affair with Navajo weaving, and what it is.  As we

would take those pieces back that he would trade for

and sell 'em at the hogan, I got the hands-on

experience from there.  And then I got to thinking, I

really want to....  My dad being out of the trading

post, I think when I was in the eighth grade--the

summer between the eighth and ninth grades--I went down

and I worked the summer to learn the trading business

from Raymond Blair and Pappy Whit [phonetic spelling]

that owned....  My older brother, Bob, was working for

them, and so I hired on as a summertime helper.  That

was my first trading post experience, is when I went

down there that summer and worked for them.  I learned

a bunch about trading, a little more about fishin', and

a little bit more about table tennis.  (laughs) At the

end of that summer, my folks sold the place at Durango

and we moved to Phoenix for Dad's health--he had

emphysema.  And he thought that if he got down to that

lower country it would help his health.  And so he sold

our place at Durango and we moved down to Phoenix.  I

went [to school] one year in Phoenix, and that didn't

help Dad at all.  They only leased this motel, so they

got out of their lease and we moved back to Cortez, and

my father bought Montezuma Creek Trading Post again.

At that point in time, I had finished my sophomore year

of high school.  I married a girl by the name of JoAnn

Barkley [phonetic spelling].  We left there and went

down to Montezuma Creek Trading Post and worked there a

short while.  I wanted to really learn the whole story

of trading, and Jewel McGee had worked for my father at

the very beginning of his career at one point in time,

and so Jewel agreed to bring me out to Red Rock.  And

Troy Kennedy was just, at that point, kind of Jewel's

apprentice trader.  And I went out there and that

marriage didn't last at all.  JoAnn and I separated and

that marriage was annulled quickly, but I stayed at Red

Rock.  I was just spellbound by Jewel McGee.  Jewel

McGee was, in my opinion, and still is, just the

perfect Navajo Indian trader.  And a great trader is

like a great banker in a community.  If he's

successful, not only is he successful, but all the

people he touches are equally successful.  And of all

the trading characters that I've ever met, Jewel McGee

was and is the fairest, most straight-shootin' trader

that I've ever met.  He helped upgrade the livestock

business.  So I worked for Jewel along with Troy.  I

kept telling Jewel, "Jewel, I need a trading post.  I

want to get in the business."  "Well, you're doin' just

fine."  See, I'm the ripe old age of seventeen here.

(laughter)  I'd been there for about a year, and

Jewel's brother, Melvin McGee, had Tosito Trading Post.

Tosito, they had the trading post, and then the

brothers Roscoe and Melvin and Jewel had a whole series

of trading posts over on that side.  Well, Melvin was

working at their cattle ranch.  They had a collective

cattle ranch where they'd buy the stock.  Melvin was

haulin' a load of water, but got run over by the truck

and killed.  And a few days after the funeral, Jewel

came out to Red Rock.  I was cookin' breakfast--I never

will forget.  He came in and he threw a set of store

keys on the table and he said, "Well, kid, I bought you

a tradin' post."  (laughter)I went out to Tosito.

   

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

   

   Tanner:  So I think it'll just be too small a

company for her.  (laughter)

   

   Cole:  This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona

University.  It's March 30, 1999.  We're in Gallup, New

Mexico, visiting with Joe Tanner.  Also present in the

room is Gail Steiger on the sound and camera equipment.

Joe's wife, Cindy, is listening in, too.  Just when the

other tape ended, Joe, you were telling us about being

seventeen years old and taking over a trading post.

Tell us what was that like.  Were you scared, or was it

exciting?

   

   Tanner:  Well, it was, like I say, Jewel came out to

Red Rock and he said, "Well, here's the keys to Tosito,

here's how to get there.  Go get started.  You've

learned a lot, and we'll make sure that you...."  And

so I went there on a working interest.  I got over to

Tosito, and there were some Mormon missionaries that

lived there at the trading post--not right in the

trading post, but they had their trailer there.  So I

had some pals to go with.  I'm not sure Jewel even came

out.  He was that kind of guy.  He just knew who to

place his bet on, and you knew you'd better hold up the

confidence.  I got out there, and I was scared to

death.  But between the Mormon missionaries and my

neighboring trader, Charlie Herring [phonetic

spelling], who had the Toadlena place up above....  It

seems to me one of the first things that happened was

somebody brought a steer in, and at Red Rock I had

shipped the lambs.  For sure my job there was....I'm

going to regress back a little bit to Red Rock in just

a minute, because a couple of significant things

happened while I was there.  But Charlie Herring, I

called Charlie and he gave me some ball park things,

and I bought the steer.  That was the first nervous

purchase that I made.  Tosito was a good store, and I'm

going to go back there in just a minute, but I want to

talk a little bit more about Red Rock when I was there.

That's one of the places that I really cut my teeth on

Navajo weaving.  I really appreciated the weavers that

were there.  They were mostly weavers of the pictorial,

the sand paintings.  There were several really great

weavers that Troy and Edith Kennedy, along with Russell

Foutz, took to that whole museum of another

Mr. Kennedy.  The collection was coordinated by Russell

Foutz--Troy and Edith Kennedy.  Most of those weavings

in that big collection that they built a whole museum

around, I think somewhere--I forget where that's at.

But I met and learned and knew those weavers really

well, and I was very interested in that, and I knew a

little bit about how to load sheep. Really funny, Cindy

and I took a trip the other day.  I don't remember if I

told her this story or not, but it was right after my

then wife JoAnn and I got to Red Rock.  It was lamb

season, and we handled a lot of lambs.  Jewel had a big

livestock business.  I never will forget, it was my job

to load the lambs, and there were two semi-truckloads

of lambs that needed to be loaded.  I went out and

loaded one load, and the other truck wasn't there.

Man, I was the stinkiest cuss in the world!  So I had

to go in and I changed all my clothes and took a

shower.  Then the other truck showed up!  I did it all

again and showered again.  But while I was at Red

Rock....  Navajo trading has gone through such

incredible--I still think of myself as a teenager--but

thinking of the things that have happened, while I have

been in this business, it just--the changes that have

taken place!  My brother J. B. and I were talking one

day and he said, "Damn, Joe, you really know a lot

about the trading history."  And I said, "Hell, J. B.,

we've lived half of it!  All we have to do is be a

little bit of a student as to what happened the other

numbers of years."But while I was workin' at Red Rock

Trading Post, we sold a number of old Studebaker

wagons, that it was my job to put 'em together.  That

was the mode of transportation, and that was just in

the fifties, but there wasn't a lot of pickups.

Everybody had their wagon and their team and that was

the mode of transportation.  But while I was there, we

decided to change the trading post from the bullpen

counter, where all of the things for sale were behind

the counter, and you would wait on three or four people

at the same time, and you had a pad in front of each of

the people makin' their choices, because that was the

big social occasion, was to come to the trading post

and do your buying.  Well, while was there, we made

that change of converting it to help yourself grocery

store.  And I've got great pictures.  I've got two

shots to share with you:  before we remodeled it, and

then several shots after we remodeled it.  So that'll

be good for your archives, to have that immediate

history.  And there's a good picture there, too, of one

of the Navajo weavings that I have on the wall behind

the couch when we redid the....

   

   Cole:  How did the customers react to that change?

   

   Tanner:  They loved it, they liked it, and took to

it like a duck to water, and it worked out real well.

We kept the dry goods....  What we did was, the old

trading post, and then Jewel and Troy built an

extension on the front of the--it was a long narrow

building anyway, and they doubled the size.  And where

we went out in front, we put in the dry goods, and then

we put an auto supply department in with all the

supplies there, as well.  But that's the thing I wanted

to go back to Red Rock with.  I was there when that

change took place, and when I went over to Tosito, that

was still a behind-the-counter mode of trading.  It

stayed there....  I didn't end up staying there too

long.  We immediately--you know, Charlie--and then

Jewel was as close as the telephone, for sure.  The

store took right off real good and we did well with it.

We got into the railroad sign-up where we were

furnishing workers, the workers would go out and work

and send their checks back.  Even while I was still at

Red Rock, I began to start doing some tax work for the

Indians that were making significant money.  We had a

guy at Red Rock by the name of Kato Sales [phonetic

spelling] that was one of the Navajo uranium miners

that made some good money, and then a couple of the

husbands of two of the important weavers were miners.

Kato Sales had his own mining operation, and then these

other two fellows.  So I did their tax returns for

them.  And that was one of the things that has really

become a giant in my career, is this income tax

preparation service.  And I'll get into that more as we

talk about Navajo Shopping Center and other businesses

that I've been involved in.  But there at Tosito I

bought a few rugs.  The store was growing and

expanding.  My brother, J. B., had this idea that he

wanted to try in Gallup.  He had leased the old sales

barn at Gamerco at Gallup, which was what we made into

what's then and now known as Navajo Shopping Center.

We started that as a family business.  J. B. and Don

started it.  They had just been going, up and running,

and starting to get some things done at my first visit.

I came over and they'd bought a couple of Navajo rugs,

and I bought them from them, and took them and sold

them to Don Watson at Cortez, Colorado.  And I just

couldn't get it out of my mind.  And they had offered

me a deal to come be a partner in Navajo Shopping

Center, and do it as a family business.  I went and

talked to Jewel about it, and he said, "Well, son, I've

never been one to stand in anybody's way.  I hate to

see you go, but I just wish you good luck."  So I'd

saved a little bit of money and had a little bit that I

had earned, and I invested that in Navajo Shopping

Center.  So I left Tosito and we started Navajo

Shopping Center.  By this time I'm nineteen years old.

(chuckles)

   

   Steiger:  What were some of the ways you could fail

in the trading business?  You said you were worried

about how you would do there.  What were the pitfalls,

what did you have to look out for?

   

   Tanner:  Well, you always had to be concerned about

stealing.  The Navajo is the greatest gambler, the

greatest....  And I shouldn't speak for them, but it's

my understanding that from that vantage point, it's not

a sin to steal--it's a sin to get caught.  And it's a

challenge to tricks.  Martin Link [phonetic spelling]

tells a great story about the Navajos when they were

rounded up and were at Fort Sumner.  That's some of the

beginning of the first silversmithing or metalsmithing.

They were issued copper coins to get their allotment

for food.  Well, it didn't take the Navajos long to

figure out how to make those copper coins to double

their rations.  They kept wondering how come they kept

running out of supplies, since they had figured out if

they gave everybody so much, they would have enough to

go around, and this is what each....  But then they

would run out before the tokens were all in.  That's

because the Navajos were knocking off the coins.  So

you had to always be careful with that.My dad--one of

the stories that he tells, he kept wool for the weavers

in the back room.  Wool was worth so much a pound that

you were selling it for.  And he would, just for fun,

put other things that weren't worth as much per pound

as the wool, back in the warehouse with the wool.  And

the Navajo would go back there and they would pick out

the wool that they wanted, and they would put a few of

the other things in, and my dad would just simply weigh

them and collect in that way.  But everybody was--it

was a win-win situation, and I think that conveys a

little bit of understanding.  It was more fun to take

it and have a secret, even though you were paying for

it.  And maybe both people knew what was going on, it

was just the game.  (laughs)You had to be careful not

to overextend people.  And it's back to this perfect

banker situation.  You had to know when credit is an

ally or when it's the enemy.  I think that was the most

important thing.  And just the stewardships, the

safekeeping of things--not to have too much of it, or

not to have too little of it, the balance.  Never mind

that it's a small business, the choices are even more

important as you make them, because a mistake in a

small operation is harder to absorb than a mistake in a

bigger operation.  So those were the pitfalls.And then

I think the other thing for a youngster like I was....

I got most of my growth really early.  I was almost

this big when I was that age.  I didn't grow much from

the time I was fifteen.  I got all my growth real

early.  One of the challenges was they'd try to make

fun of you and challenge you in that way, so you had to

learn how to be a people relations type of person real

early.  So that was one of the things that you had to

be very careful of.  But the rapport with people is the

one that's all important--the respect one for another.

And I think that's been my great secret weapon all of

my career, is I like to say there's a hole that needs

to be dug, and it's my job to get the hole dug, but I

can get some help.  And I've always said I don't know

how to hold a shovel, but I know how a man should look

when he holds a shovel.  (laughter)  And that has been

the great secret to the art that I've handled

throughout my career.

   

   Cole:  Do you have any favorite customers or

anything from that period when you were at Red Rock and

Tosito?

   

   Tanner:  Oh, I have great Indian friends from all of

those years.  When I learned how to talk Navajo at Red

Rock, we did have tape recorders, and I just simply--

Jewel and Troy had this wonderful old Navajo guy--his

name was Louis King.  How I really learned my Navajo--I

don't talk as good Navajo as my older brother, J. B.,

but I talk good show business Navajo or trading Navajo.

But when you get into religious discussions and

gambling discussions and politics, I can't measure up

to him.  But this Louis King taught me a lot of my

Navajo.  And then the weavers.  I've just been

spellbound by the Navajo weavers.  These great weavers:

you give them a challenge and an assurance that their

efforts will be rewarded, and they go on that fast to

get that picture in their mind's eye as to what they're

gonna weave.  And when they get that lock onto that

image that's going to come through them, and start at

it and achieve it, I've just been in awe all of my life

of that great talent.  So I have many, many really good

weaver friends, and a number in the livestock business,

too.  That's the wonderful thing about my business as I

look back on it, is this rapport with human people.  On

the one hand, I experience the great zeal of the

creation of the piece and have a part in that, and then

to take that piece to the collector that's going to

embrace it, and the things that those people do.  You

know, the common denominator between our friendship is

the creation with the person that's making it.  And

then embracing it.  The person that ends up owning the

piece of course wants to know as much about that piece

as he or she can, so when you can be that bridge....

But the icing on the cake is you get to know the way

the people who collect, have enough money to collect,

and how'd they earn that money and what do they do.  So

this friendship starts just with the media that you

trade in.

   

   Cole:  What were the living conditions like for the

Navajo when you were starting out?

   

   Tanner:  Almost without exception, no running water,

no electricity, just a fine hogan, and usually a winter

place and a summer place that they would have.  Most of

their lives were very entwined with their livestock.

Just absolutely one with the earth, in that setting:

the dirt floor hogan, the traditional open roof, and

you roll out the bedroll and you stay right there in

the hogan.  It's a really efficient home center.But

just all of the trailer houses, the non-hogan modes of

living, they have all evolved since 1950, for the most

part, and that's all been within my career.

   

   Cole:  One more quick question about this period,

and then we move on.  You talked about playing games

and tricks.  Were there any good tricks that were

played on you when you were....

   

   Tanner:  Well, I think the biggest challenge was

when I first went down to Montezuma Creek.  There was

this great big guy....  I'm a nonviolent man.  I was a

nonviolent boy.  I was a nonviolent child.  (laughter)

And there was this big smart aleck kid that was just

bound and determined to make a fool of me down there at

Montezuma Creek when I was first getting started.  He

would ask for....  And there was a whole storeful of

people.  He would ask for the little sack of potatoes

just over there on the right.  And I would get that,

and he would say, "No, I didn't mean that one, I mean

the other one."  And then he'd ask for the can of Pet

milk, and he didn't want the one in front, he wanted

the one in back.  Just bein' a jerk.  The first thing

he got was this bag of potatoes, and I exchanged three

different little bags of potatoes before I got the one

that he wanted, and it's sitting up on the counter in

front of him.  This went on and on and on.  I'm waiting

on--like I told you earlier, you don't just wait on

one, when you're behind the counter, you have this

little pad and you've got about six or seven different

tabs running at a time.  So I'm down here, waiting on

this gal, get her what she wants, and I come back down

here, and I'm about three steps away from him, and he

just has my blood boiling anyway.  I get this lady I'm

waiting on, a box of matches.  And I look over there,

and he's over the counter, trying to reach another bag

of potatoes.  That was something you just couldn't

tolerate.  (chuckles)  So I was reaching for the

matches and seeing him, so I'm already in a windup

position, and I hit him with a haymaker and knocked him

out into the bullpen and he knocked over the stove in

the middle, it was goin'.  I'm in the middle of him,

and I have him outside.  And he's bigger than I was.

And that's the only time in my whole trading career

that I hit anybody or even had that kind of....  And we

became real pals after that.  He just was testing me, I

guess.  (laughs)  I remember that.  I guess I don't

remember any other real tricks that were played on me.

(laughs)

   

   Cole:  Do you have a Navajo nickname?

   

   Tanner:  Yeah.  My brother J. B., when we started

Navajo Shopping Center, he was known as "the ladies'

man."  It just kind of become a family tradition, and I

got dubbed....  J. B. was the absolute ladies' man, I

was the tall ladies' man, and then I've got a brother,

Ellis, that they called him the short....  My name is

‘Ayéhé Nééz,  or "the tall in-law."  And Ellis' is "the

little short in-law."  And boy, he advertises a lot,

and I used to.  I'll get into that a little bit as I

talk about my Gallup career here.  But "the tall thin

in-law."  I'm not so thin anymore.  "The tall thin in-

law."So we're at Tosito and I have gotten out of

Tosito.  I brought my money to Navajo Shopping Center,

and my brother J. B.'s idea was to create, for the

first time, a marketplace for the Navajo, and any other

tribe that might want to come--a place where you could

sell anything that you produced, for cash.  And then on

the other hand, we'd put the other hat on and try to

sell them anything that they bought, for cash.  And

this was one of the most successful, the biggest

operation of its kind that had ever been done.  We

started that thing out on a wing and a prayer, but

everybody--my mom and dad, all my brothers, myself, my

Uncle Don that had the flour mill--put money into it.

We split the pie.  J. B. was the largest stockholder.

My brother Don and my mom and dad were the next-

largest, and then I owned 10 percent of it.We started

this place out, buying lambs, steers, rugs, pinons--but

everything they produced, we tried to create a market

for, and find a willing buyer.  And so it was a

brokering thing, to keep up with it.  Took a lot of

money, but this thing took off just like a house afire.

We did so much business so quick, made so much money so

fast--didn't manage it very well.  My brother J. B. had

a drinking problem and a gambling problem, and so did

my brother Bob.  We made lots of money, we spent lots

of money.But what happened was just dynamic.  And I've

got some great pictures of that to share with you, too--

that, in its infancy.  We would take and....  Like in

the grocery department of it, we would butcher our own

sheep, right there at the facility.  There wasn't any

government laws then.  And this old sales barn had a

big corral, like most sale barns do.  And we'd buy

these butcher ewes, and then like on a Saturday--just

to give you an idea of the volume of this place--we

would bring thirty head of sheep down at a time, into a

little corral just outside the....  Here's the meat

case in the store.  The back door was this corral where

these sheep were.  I struck a deal with the Navajo

ladies that would come and butcher.  They got to keep

the insides and the head.  I'd bring the mutton in and

I had days there that when I was runnin' the meat

department when we first started, where I would cut and

wrap and sell a hundred head of sheep on one busy

Saturday--with no help.  It was mostly just....  You

know, it's hot.  We had a walk-in, but it was mostly

just quartering them.  I'd cut off the arms, sometimes

the ribs, you know.  But I have cut and wrapped and

sold a hundred [sheep in] a one-person operation in a

day.  In the meantime, we had one of those chicken

rotisseries, and we would cook the chicken on those

rotisseries and sell them, and that was all gone.  I

did have a little Navajo gal that would wrap.  It's

really funny, we had two checking stands in that old

help-yourself trading post, and this place is just full

of merchandise.  You'll love the pictures when I show

you, and they can be a part of what we're showing.  But

that operation.And then the other thing was the pawn

business in Gallup.  We started loaning money on

jewelry pawn.  We started taking saddles.  But we had

$150,000 worth of pawn loans before you could blink

your eye.  And ever since that operation, there's just

never been enough money in Gallup to keep up with the

pawn business--that is the banking system in our town.

Ours was the first huge big operation, that one where

we really had the volume.  Now the father of the pawn

business in Gallup is Bill Richardson.  He has a

huge....  There's several other operations that are

very close to Bill, but Bill's definitely the biggest

pawn dealer today.  But the pawn business was really

interesting.The facet of that business that I really

got involved in, of course, because of my passion, is

the art part, the Navajo weaving.  I stuck a deal with

Gil Maxwell, with Dude Kirk, the old Kirk Trading

Company, that they would tell me what they could pay,

and I would try to buy the pieces where we could just

roll 'em and make a 10 percent margin.  I remember days

in Navajo Shopping Center that I would have as many as

thirty women standing in line, all day long, bringing

their rugs up to sell to me.

   

   Cole:  And you were paying cash?

   

   Tanner:  Paying cash.  We paid cash for everything.

And what I would do, I would take it out of the sack,

look at it, say "howdy," put it up on the counter, and

put the cash right beside it.  And I'd tell them this

was my offer, this is what I could do, and they'd

either take it--and mostly they would take it--and we

just bought literally tons, I think.  I don't know

anybody that's bought and sold any more Navajo rugs

than we did there at Navajo Shopping Center, and then

collectively, the group that kind of spun off from

there has done since.

   

   Cole:  What kinds of prices were you paying? if you

don't mind.

   

   Tanner:  The big volume was--we bought Gallup

throws, which is a cotton warp tourist rug--we bought

those for $2.00 to $2.50.  We bought single saddle

blankets for $5.00, double saddle blankets for $10.00.

And it was just really unusual to have a rug come in

that we would pay....  And you have to understand, we

were buying them, so we were obviously paying as much

or more than anybody else, because we had the volume

coming.  And thank heavens for the market that we'd

created to keep the money rolling.  But $250 would be

about the outside for the best piece that came in.

   

   Cole:  What kind of a piece was that?

   

   Tanner:  Oh, I remember a particular piece that

Clara Sherman, who was a Two Grey Hills weaver, brought

in.  That piece is four feet by six feet, and it's a

classic Two Grey Hills, and we paid $250 for it.  I

remember that one, because that's one that we kept.

But the saddle blankets and throws--well, there's just

a good balance of everything that came.And then the

dead pawn began to happen.  These beads that my

grandfather had traded, all of a sudden they weren't

worth much.  They were going dead on us by the boxful.

That was the one place we weren't keeping up with it.

[I] always remember, I went down to Tucson.  Armand

Ortega had a big successful operation down in Tucson,

and I took a boxful of that stuff down and told him,

"Armand, I just need to leave these with you.  Just

help me get all that I can get.  Half of it, we'll

split it.  Just get the best you can."  So it was that

bad.  A set of jaclas that my grandfather sold for the

best steer in the herd, all of a sudden it wasn't

bringin' fifty dollars, and it should have been

bringin' a lot more--it was worth a lot more.  But it

was just one of those unfortunate times.  I wish I

could have kept it all!  (laughter)  'Cause now they

are worth the best steer in the herd, because they've

become so hard to find.  And unfortunately, that's

where a lot of the wealth of the individual Indians

has--the stash of important jewelry that they had, a

lot of it is gone, and/or buried with them.  The

personal jewelry that Navajos have at this point isn't

what it was at one point, because of the [disciplines?]

on treated turquoise and phony stuff.  They're like so

many other people--they'd rather have the cubic than

the diamond, if they have to pay for it.  They've gotta

wear something, so that's what they can afford, and so

that's what they have now.  But that was a really

important part of that, the pinon business.  But it's

right at that point in Navajo Shopping Center that....

I have a cousin by the name of Len Tanner.  He was into

the tax preparation a little bit for some of the

operations he'd been involved in, and I had been

involved in that before I came to town.  We had this

brainchild that we would file the tax--Len Tanner and

myself--we filed a tax return and then give the Indians

credit because we knew the refund was right behind it.

And that has just become a huge business.  So we became

the H&R Block of Navajo country.  And today that's a

huge, huge operation.  Gallup is a community of 20,000

people, and we file 35,000 sets of income tax here.

And what that means is people from a lot of places--for

a town of 20,000 people, you probably normally would

have 6,000 tax returns filed, or maybe 8,000 tax

returns at the most.  Well, here it's almost double the

number of people that live here.  So it's become a

really big, important, multimillion dollar business in

Gallup, and two of my family are very involved in it

today.  One of 'em is my brother Ellis, and the other

one is my cousin at T&R Market, that file most of these

returns.  And Dave Elkins at Navajo Shopping Center is

a significant player in it too.  So that's a brainchild

that evolved from those early years at Navajo Shopping

Center.

   

   Cole:  What was the time span that you were involved

__________.

   

   Tanner:  It was a very short time….  1958 to 1985 in

the tax program at Gallup and Farmington…. [but] we

started Navajo Shopping Center about 1959, I believe--

1958 or 1959--and I sold out in 1962.  So it all

happened really fast.  Probably the biggest deal in my

experience that never happened was my brothers J. B.

and Bob were guilty of some misuse of funds because of

the drinking and the gambling.  We were in some

financial trouble, and so we called this big meeting.

I had the creditors all talked into taking stock in the

corporation for the debt owed.  And the creditors were

all just an amazing group of people.  We had someone

involved who knew a lot about the livestock business.

We had someone involved as a creditor--all these are

creditors that I'm talking about.  We had someone in

the accounting business.  We had someone in the

insurance business.  We had two people in the livestock

business.  We had three people in the food production

business.  These are people that we had scrambled to

borrow money from.  Well, if my deal would have been

accepted that week, we would have had the biggest

business ever to hit this town that didn't owe a cent,

and I had all this talent at the table.  But the loyal

opposition, one of my brothers, jumped ship, and the

Elkins Group that now has it, they threatened J. B. and

Bob with jail time.  So they folded, and they offered a

settlement to the creditors, and the creditors took it.

And then we all left town and scattered.  If I could

have held it all together, it would have been a great

coup.  (chuckles)  But we all went our separate

directions.I sold out of Navajo Shopping Center then

and leased a property on the Zuni Road.  But while I

was still at Navajo Shopping Center, and I'm nineteen-

and-a-half or twenty at this point, not old enough to

drink in a bar, but I'm big and I look like I should be

able to.  So I'm down at Pete's Club, drinkin' beer and

tryin' to loosen up my arm from wrappin' that hundred

head of sheep (laughs) or whatever it was that I had

done that day, and I was havin' a beer and I had a nice

turquoise ring on.  This is while I'm still at Navajo

Shopping Center.  And this old boy sat down next to me,

and he said, "You kinda like that turquoise, huh,

partner?"  And I said, "Boy, I love turquoise.  My

grandfather used to mine turquoise.  I just wish that I

would have been my dad and I'd been a generation

sooner."  He said, "Well, I know where there's some

turquoise.  I shoe horses for the horse racing circuit.

I get out to Nevada, I've done some prospectin' out

there, and I have found an outcropping of really good

turquoise out there in Nevada, and I'd partner with you

on it."  I said, "Well, what does this take?"  And he

said, "Well, if you'd give me a little money, the next

time I'm through that country, I'll take a couple of

days off and go mine a little of it, and I'll bring it

to you and show you."  So I'm a hotshot kid, you know.

I reached in my pocket and gave him (laughs) a hundred-

dollar bill and I said, "Well, just see what you can do

with this."  He said, "Oh!  Fifty would have done.

This hundred will do me just great."  So away he went.

I don't think I even asked him his name.  About six

months later, he showed up with a coffee can with some

of the nicest turquoise that I'd ever seen.  I still

have a ring that I wear sometimes out of one of the

stones.  It was a nice spider web.So I sent my brother

Jerry--I bought a little caterpillar compressor, just a

little unit--it wasn't three yards.  A cubic three

yards was about the size of the whole unit.  I think I

paid $5,000.  It had a little jackhammer with it, and

it was a poor boy operation.  Mining turquoise is a

tough way to make a living, but that was my first

partnership in a turquoise mine.  They went out there,

we made the claims and started mining and we got some

really good turquoise out.  And so I started making

some jewelry.  There was a guy by the name of Sol

Ondolasi, and he was Zuni, and he was married to a

Navajo lady by the name of Catherine Wilson.  As kind

of a sidebar from my job at Navajo Shopping Center, I

started making a few pieces of jewelry with the two of

them with some of my....  We'd better stop.  (tape

turned off and on)

   

   Steiger:  Two silversmiths that you were working

with?

   

   Cole:  Catherine....

   

   Tanner:  Yeah, okay.  I took some of this turquoise,

and Catherine Wilson and Sol Ondolasi were married and

good friends of mine--friends of my grandpa's as a

matter of fact, Sol was.  A lot of my information on my

Grandpa Joe I got from Sol throughout his lifetime.

But we started makin' a few pieces of mostly silver

jewelry.  Trimmed it with a little bit of gold.  I got

involved in the Navajo Fair at Window Rock, and while

all this was happening is when I sold out of Navajo

Shopping Center, as well.  I actually traded out.  I

wanted a price....  They had already forced J. B. and

Bob out, and my mom got out at that first juncture of

time.  I wasn't ready to strike a deal, but I was

handling the art part of the business, and so I offered

to take weavings and rugs and stuff that I had traded

for, in trade for my stock.  And so I actually traded

out of Navajo Shopping Center and got out, but

immediately leased this building out on the Zuni Road,

and was already involved with the turquoise trade.  And

because of Sol and his introduction at Zuni, had an

entry there, and that's why I selected the building on

the Zuni Road.  And Sol and Catherine and I immediately

made entries for all of the categories for the Navajo

Fair, the competitive awards.  We had eighteen entries

in that first competition that we went to, and won

seventeen blue ribbons and one red.  And we thought,

"Well, this'll work!"I started going to Zuni.  Because

by this time I had some turquoise coming in from this

mining operation, and it was pretty darned-good stuff.

And then there was a mining operation out in Nevada

that was called one of the oldest continually operated

mines in the history of turquoise mining.  It was a

mine called Lone Mountain Turquoise.  Well, a guy by

the name of Rocky Wilson owned that mine, and he hadn't

operated it for about three years, and this mountain

was a honeycomb of old workings.  This property has

work on it from prehistoric times.  My brother Jerry

was disenchanted with the mining and he didn't want to

do it, so he left and I still had this partner of mine

out in Nevada.  When I went out to check on the

turquoise, well, then we went over and I met Rocky

Wilson.  And we went over and looked at the Lone

Mountain operation.  Rocky didn't want much to lease

it, so as I was out there, I was looking through the

dump.  As I looked through the dump, it looked to me

like there was a lot of small turquoise that was never

salvaged.  So instead of deep digging and deep mining,

I opted to have my partner, Lyn Odison [phonetic

spelling], we just took cement mixers and screens and

completely reworked all of the old operation, and it

was the absolute perfect stone for the Zunis to use,

because they don't like big stones anyway.  And so we

started mining this--or salvaging this, I guess I

should say--and I started going to Zuni as part of my

grocery....  I had a miniature Navajo Shopping Center

on the Zuni Road.  It was a convenience store, and I

took a little pawn, and I had a meat department.  I

bought livestock.  I did all the same things, I just

didn't do as much of it as we did collectively at

Navajo Shopping Center.But the Zunis kept coming in

with stuff that they couldn't sell.  They were making

all the wrong kinds of jewelry.  And I had, by this

time, gotten to know a lot of shakers and movers in the

art world.  My best friend and best customer at Navajo

Shopping Center was a guy by the name of Al Packard

from Santa Fe, that always had one of the most

successful Indian stores in the Indian art business.  I

talked to Al Packard, I knew the Fred Harvey people,

knew Manny Goodman in Old Town Albuquerque, and I have

an uncle, Bill McGee, that had a great store in the

Scottsdale area.  And then this Armand Ortega down in

Tucson, and several other people in Tucson.  I just

went and asked all of them, "Well, if the Zunis made

something....  They're apparently making the wrong

stuff.  You don't want this.  What do you want?"  I had

stuff with me that I had traded for and that wasn't

what they wanted.  So they began to show me what they

thought would sell.  And then I began to do sketches of

what the Zunis could make and had made.  So I would

take these sketches on my next trip, and I started

getting orders for Zuni jewelry.  What I would do then,

is have Phil Woodard, [who] has Indian Jewelers Supply--

he would cut up the silver just the way I needed it.  I

would get the orders for all the different kinds of

things that the market wanted, and then I had this

little profit and loss statement that I gave each one

of the Zunis.  So I literally started door-to-door.

Instead of having a place at Zuni, I would work at my

store in Gallup 'til noon, and then what I would do is

go from there, pick up the silver orders from Phil, and

take the turquoise to Zuni, and give the Zunis, I'd

say, "If you'd make twenty of these and ten of these

and five of these and four of these, I'm going to pay

you $150 for these items.  And the materials, the

silver and the turquoise and the shell cost you $80,

and you're going to make a net of $70."  And they were

just tickled to have the work.  So I'd give 'em a

profit and loss on each one, and I started doin' that.

My pattern became, what I was doing was, I was spending

until midnight or two or three in the morning,

sometimes, at Zuni, getting the things made.  And then

I would take it to these buyers and sell it to them.

And this thing just took off.  I was doing just an

incredible volume, but I was eatin', sleepin', and

drinkin' it.

   

   [END TAPE 1, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A]

   

   Cole:  ... 30, 1999.  We're visiting with Joe Tanner

in Gallup, New Mexico, and this is Tape 3 of an

interview for the United Indian Traders Association

Oral History Project.Joe, you were just talking about

your....

   

   Tanner:  The focus was Zuni, but Catherine Wilson is

Navajo.  Sol Ondolasi is Zuni.  What I was getting

with....  I think I felt the need was greater with the

Zuni, and I focused more there in these first years,

because I was just all consumed by it.  I had found a

group of people that had incredible talent, incredible

willingness to work hard.  They wanted it.  And I think

that's always the secret to great success, is you have

to be motivated to an end.  My focus, as I talked to

all of these buyers was yes, they wanted some things,

but they wanted quality things, and they wanted good

materials.  Well, my secret was I've always had a great

feel for design and simplicity and elegance.  What I

did is I first defined what the talent was, what they

could do, and then on the other hand I went and found

what the need was.  And we just started the energy

going.  About this time I hired my kid brother, Rick,

and we opened up an arts and crafts--just arts and

crafts--location down by John Kennedy's old place.  His

place was called Gallup Indian Trading.  I rented the

little building right next door to him.  The way I

handled the Navajo was I started hiring some Navajos to

work in my shop and do frames--like bracelet frames,

earring frames--of the silverwork, and then a lot of

that I would take to Zuni and have it inlaid because of

this market that I had developed.  And it was things

that were really selling.  I had a great episode with

my uncle, Bill McGee.  I was depending on him for about

$30,000 every two months.  I'm a shoestring operation,

and he was one of my most important customers, with his

operation in Scottsdale.  I went breezin' in there one

day with my group of things that we had created, and he

said, "Joe, I just can't buy a thing today."  And I

said, "Bill!  Why not?!"  He said, "Well, Zachary was

just here"--he was another jewelry maker, and had made

a lot of real big, showy Navajo stuff that didn't sell.

I said, "Uncle Bill McGee, you just come with me for

five minutes here, and we're gonna walk out in your

store, and we're gonna go around.  I have sold you no

less than $80,000 worth of jewelry in the last few

months.  We're going to go out to your cases and see

how much of that $80,000 worth of stuff that I have

sold you is here, and how much of it's gone."  Well, we

went out into his big, wonderful showroom, and we

couldn't find $8,000 worth of my stuff.  I said, "If I

walk out of here, I'm never walkin' in your door again.

But I'm depending on you to buy from me.  If you don't

have the money, you'd better go get it from the bank,

because (chuckles) I've got what you're selling!"

Well, he never faltered after that, because I convinced

him that what we were creating was what was selling.

So that's what we had going.  As an underlying part of

this, this great competitive success that I had enjoyed

with Sol and Catherine Ondolasi at that first Navajo

Fair, of winning all those awards, and then I started

getting a booth at the Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial,

and I started--really exciting--the artists, to

create....  One, I had great turquoise, and two, I had

great talent.  There were all these categories that we

could create things especially to garner that award.

And gosh, we just took the whole competitive facet of

the business by storm.  We won a huge percent of the

awards given.  One of the first things that I

accomplished was in 1965 I was at the Heard Museum, and

their gift shop had become a real important seller of

what I was doing.  I told them I'd like to create a

special Zuni show for the Heard Museum.  And it'd take

me about a year to get the group of things together for

that.  And they went for the deal and in 1966 I had my

first Zuni show at the Heard Museum, and it was just a

huge success.  And then we did it again in 1967.  That

was so good, I decided, along with my brother Rick, to

create a store in Scottsdale.  So we created Tanners'

Indian Art in Scottsdale, and really did some of the

most wonderful shows on American Indian art that have

ever been done. And as we start in a little while

talking about the different artists that I've had a

great experience with, we'll go to each of them as we

go on with the story.  But that Heard Museum show was

just wonderful, and it kind of set the whole stage for

a lot of what has evolved since then.  My store in

Scottsdale I kept until about 1982, and got out of

there. The door-to-door Zuni was really an experience.

I learned more about Zuni and more about making jewelry

with that group of people, and that secret of taking

them everything they needed to create what they wanted

to create, and have a sure market for the energy spent

was just a great, great, great success.  And then to

get involved in these competitive shows that fed all of

our egos and all of our collectors, was just a

fabulous, fabulous time in my life when I was involved

in that.  (tape turned off and on)... the best possible

representative of each idea, so we don't forget it.

What's been important is to fetch and find and get the

best example of that idea.  And the person who did it.

If the person who did it first did it best, that's the

one I want.  That isn't necessarily always the one that

happened.  I'll tell a couple stories here about a

couple of the artists.  (aside about tape)Where we cut

off before was talking about going to Zuni daily, each

night, and I had just done my first Heard show.  Well,

one of the things that I did just about that time, I

was going to Zuni, taking care of this trade that I'd

built up with my Uncle Bill, Al Packard, Fred Harvey,

Covered Wagon in Albuquerque.  Charlie Eagle Plume was

the grandest old guy.  It would make a great book, I

think, to do a book on these second-owner characters

that complemented the Indian art business so much.  One

of the most interesting of these characters was a guy

by the name of Charlie Eagle Plume in Estes Park,

Colorado.  Charlie was part Indian, and he had great

choices.  He made wonderful choices of anything that he

would sell.  And this was strictly a summertime

operation.  And I furnished much of his inventory for

many years.  But in the summertime, what Charlie Eagle

Plume would do would be to sit there, eat, sleep, and

drink his business, and sell these things that he had

selected the rest of the year.  But how he made his

money the other times of the year was talking at "knife

and fork" club dinners all across America about the

contributions the American Indians have made to the

America that we all call our own today.  And, oh, I

wish we would have had the opportunity to video tape

one of Charlie's talks on where corn came from, where

all the things in our Constitution, in our government,

all the things that the American Indian has brought to

our attention, and brought us to know.  And their

contribution to what America is, as we embrace and

think it's only ours.  But it is all ours--that's the

great secret to America, is it belongs to all of us.

Charlie Eagle Plume was one of these characters.  And

Manny and Ann Goodman in Albuquerque.  Al Packard at

Santa Fe.  Frank Petanya [phonetic spelling] in Tucson.

The whole Fred Harvey group, the energy they brought to

this new market.  And just a book of a focus on what

those people did for this market.  Well, it was my

rapport at that point in time to be one of their

suppliers, these people that I talk of.  And they have

a great love affair for the American Indian things, the

art that the Native Americans create.  As we supplied

those people with what they needed, and then as we got

creative and tried to garner all the awards we could at

the competitive shows, it's been my excitement to be

one of the first people that insisted that all the

artists sign their own work, and always represented it

as just theirs, not mine.  I think I've been really

instrumental in helping some of those people become who

they are through their art.  One of the first ones that

I started dealing with in those years was a guy by the

name of Preston Monongye.  Preston was about 300 pounds

of man, about as round as he was tall, and I seen one

of his pieces that Tobe Turpen had bought, and Tobe had

entered into Ceremonial, and it won a blue ribbon.  And

I seen that bolo tie, it was a Hopi Shalako, and it was

just sterling silver, but it was layered, and I could

just see this guy's a great artist.  I had to meet him.

I asked questions everywhere, where I could find him,

where the heck he was, and it ended up he was....  At

that time we had in Santa Fe, the hippie community had

taken over a place in Santa Fe called Seton Village,

and I heard that Preston was in Santa Fe, selling his

work, doing a lot of tufa castwork--and by this time

I'd seen some of his tufa cast pieces--so off to Santa

Fe I go.  I need a silversmith for my shop on Front

Street in Gallup.  I ask around Santa Fe, and sure

enough, Preston was out at Seton Village.  I show up at

Seton Village, and here's Preston Monongye, speaking to

the hippies.  And he's standing on this wooden platform

block, and his garment is two American flags--one in

front and one in back--and he's talking about the

solstice and he's talking about the Indian, the whole

thing, and he goes on and on and finally finishes, and

everybody kind of goes their way, and I go up to him

and I say, "Preston, my name's Joe Tanner."  "Oh, I

know who you are," he said.  I said, "Well, Preston, I

want you to come to Gallup, and I want you to be my

lead silversmith.  I want you to work in my front

window."  "I'm tired of this shit!  Let's go!" he said.

(laughter)  And off to Gallup he came with me--actually

rode home with me.  This was a great coup.  Preston

Monongye, as I got to know him, and as I watched his

talent, as I helped fortify his talent, and helped make

him the most creative he could possibly be--I call him

"the great warehouse of ideas."  He was just an

absolute genius.  Craziest son of a gun.  I always said

the greatest movie that could possibly be made....  He

had no money sense at all, and he loved tools.  This

guy was just insane.  I said the great movie would be

to have a $3 million budget.  The first thing you would

do is you would get your camera, get your crew, and

then you would hand Preston $1 million of the

$3 million and just follow him around spending it.

(laughter)  It would have made a great, great movie,

because the money would have all been gone in six

weeks, but he'd have sure had an interesting--we'd have

sure had an interesting story.

   

   Cole:  How would he have spent it?

   

   Tanner:  Well, God knows!  (laughter)  But by the

end it would have all been gone, the million would be

gone.  He would have owed ten, and no way to pay it.

But a businessman he was not--an artist he was.  He was

just a fabulous artist.  He was a painter, he was a

potter, he was a sculptor, but most of all he was a

jeweler.  He had the tufa sandcasting, the oldest style

of Indian silversmithing there is, is tufa or sandcast

jewelry.  And he had that down to a virtual science.

And then through our efforts, what my idea was, was to

take this tufa texture that came onto the silver, and

mix it with some sophisticated Zuni inlay, and before I

did those Heard shows--and Preston was a very important

part of those Heard shows that we did, and a very

important part of all the awards that we won at all the

competitions--Preston would design the jewelry, he'd

make the silverwork, he would dictate the color, and I

hired a compliment to him right away.  The guy that we

hired was an illustrator, his name was Ted Klaus

[phonetic spelling].  He was a full-blooded German who

was just enamored with "Indianism."  There was some

writer, I guess, in Germany, who wrote children's

fiction stories, and he made every German child love

the American Indian.  And Ted Klaus was one of these

children.  And he was a really fine painter in his own

right, but was also a great, great illustrator.  And we

would have these jam sessions where we designed

jewelry, and we had Preston's input, we had visitors

such as Charles Loloma and other contemporaries at the

time that would come and give us two cents.  Ted would

always illustrate.  And I've always been an idea man

myself.  We literally, in my archives I probably have a

couple of thousand jewelry illustrations of things that

we want to make someday that we haven't had time to do

yet, so there's plenty of projects to come to.  So we

took Preston Monongye, we took Ted Klaus as an

illustrator, and Ted would do color charts for all the

people at Zuni.  And then I hired the Yazzie family at

my Gallup store.  By this time, my brother Rick had

come to work for me, and I think I touched on that a

minute ago, and we started what we called the Indian

Arts and Crafts Center.  And just about the same time,

Dude Kirk--John Kirk, Jr.--the famous Kirk trading

family in Gallup that was kind of the shakers and

movers from the thirties and forties....  Cotton was

the greatest from 1890 to the 1920s.  The Kirks kind of

outshined him beyond that.  But Dude Kirk got killed,

and I was from Navajo Shopping Center, and from what I

was doing at Zuni, Dude Kirk's mother, Ruth Kirk,

literally invented the Zuni fetish necklace, and the

Kirk family was very important to the trade.  What Dude

evolved to, after Kirk Trading Company went out of

business in Gallup, he moved to Albuquerque and just

simply supplied rugs, primarily Navajo saddle blankets,

to Montgomery Ward and Sears and every western store in

America.  I incidentally have all of those old records,

if we want to do something with them in the archives,

we can probably work that out, Brad.  But when Dude got

killed, I bought Kirk Trading Company from his widow,

Lucille.  Before that, Dude did a lot of business with

guys like Old Man Leekya [phonetic spelling] and some

of the people at Zuni, and that was part of my

introduction to Zuni, was I was buying also for Kirk

Trading Company, Old Man Leekya's fetishes.  He was

real close to all the cluster jewelry makers at Zuni,

and I would buy all of that stuff for Dude Kirk for

10 percent over.  So it was a way for me to have a

quick customer and to also have an artist that I

wouldn't have had otherwise, and also have a great sale

for my turquoise that we were getting from Lone

Mountain, as a source for stone for those artists.  So

we were just trying to put everybody to work.  But when

Dude got killed, I bought the company and started

dealing direct and just automatically handled all the

things that he handled, direct to those customers.  So

I kind of made a bridge from being a jobber on those

things to a wholesaler, with all those companies,

through that connection.  And then my rapport with

these other people that I've mentioned.  And then I had

this opening to do the retail show for the Heard Museum

where they took a very small percent off of the retail

market.  So that was a big raise in margin for me as I

did that, as were these competitive shows where we

would have the opportunity to sell the pieces at retail

at the show.  So with Kirk Trading and Preston Monongye

and that crew and these Heard shows, we really started

doin' a lot of business, quick.[I] talked with Joe

Stacey from Arizona Highways magazine, and we talked

Joe Stacey into doing this first issue of Arizona

Highways, and Preston Monongye wrote the article.  This

was the June 1972 issue of Arizona Highways, and

Preston Monongye did this article that we called "The

New Indian Jewelry Art of the Southwest."  And that was

just a great business-getter.  And this is about the

time....  By the time we got the Arizona Highways first

issue, I and my kid brother Rick had established our

first retail store and gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona.

This is 1972 when this article came out, and that was a

big boost to us, and a big boost to Preston and all the

artists that we were touching.  We were then dealing in

not just the jewelry, but when we opened the gallery we

got into pottery and all the kachinas and all the other

things that go with a fine retail gallery.  So I want

to cover that.

   

   Cole:  Maybe I'm jumpin' the gun a bit about the

shows you did in Scottsdale, where there were just

invited artists, the paintings ___________.

   

   Tanner:  Pretty good.  Well, we started having a

competition in Scottsdale that we just called Tanners'

Indian Art Show, and it was a competitive show, just

like the Intertribal Ceremonial, and the Santa Fe

Indian Market.  What we would do is we would do it just

from the same format that I gathered up all the things

for the Heard Show, only this was shows that showcased

all of the arts--the baskets, the weavings, the

pottery, the kachinas--just the whole works.  We had

categories for everything, and we would bring in the

most knowledgeable people as judges.  The winners of

the different categories, the big winners of all those

different categories, then the next show that evolved

for each season, we did these shows every season.  We

would have this big show that we showcased anything

that came to the table that we went and sought out and

found.  We didn't just accept everything.  We would

actually go.  I would go all through all of the Indian

country, and my kid brother would go through a lot of

the Arizona places, and we would pick what we thought

were the best pieces.  And what we were doing is we

were introducing a lot of newcomers to American Indian

things.  And these shows were very important, one, to

make sales, but they were just absolutely important to

the name recognition of all of these artists that were

budding from this.  But the winners of the best awards

for that show got the opportunity to come to what we

called Tanners' Invitational Show.  And there, you got

your invitation to be there through winning those other

competitive awards.  And it became like a "Who's Who In

Indian Art" to even take part in that show.  And each

year we would do a different invitation of just those

artists.  And usually we hosted about twelve different

very important artists.  It became very important to

us.  And some of those shows, like even the people from

the Heard Museum, Helen Harden, always will remember.

She had won our show with one of her paintings, and the

invitational was there.  The show was gonna open at

five o'clock that evening, and Helen Harden had done

one of her career best pieces for the invitational

show.  I went to work at seven at that morning, and

there was a representative from the Heard Museum

standing in line so they'd have first chance to buy

that piece, and they did.  So it's become a really

important show for everybody to go to. Those shows were

just an enormous success, and kind of was the starting

point of all of the people who really became famous.

I've got another issue of Arizona Highways here that we

did.  The Museum in Kansas City was doing one of the

most important American Indian art shows that had ever

been done.  They were borrowing back as many of the

great fragile pieces from all the museums of Europe

that got most of the things as we were settling the

West, and hadn't ever revisited America from the time

that they left to go to those museums.  And it was a

show called Sacred Circles.  Wonderful, wonderful

museum show.  But Mr. Hall from the Hallmark Card

Company, he was on their board, and he said, "I think

we need to do a show at the same time, and I'll host it

at my downtown new store.  We'll say at the same time,

'Yes, American Indian art was fabulous before the white

man, or before the white man's association with the

Indians, but it's just as alive and just as well and

just as available to collect now.'  And I want Joe

Tanner to coordinate this show."  My brother Ellis

Tanner was selling them pawn jewelry, so Ellis and I

did this as a joint venture for Mr. Hall of Hallmark

Cards Company.  But the part of it that I took care of

and that was my baby, PBS had done a documentary on

what they considered the most important American Indian

artists that were at the time.  And they are and were

Allan Howser [phonetic spelling], who's a sculptor;

Joseph Lone Wolf and Grace Medicine Flower; Fritz

Shoulder; R. C. Gorman; Charles Loloma; and Helen

Harden.  These were the six people.  Well, these six

people never in their careers before this or since

then--no one but old Joe Tanner could ever get all

these egos in one room, showing their wares together.

And that show was just a riot.  We had the best time.

It was a six-week showing, and the first week of that

show, that went along the same time....  It's the

biggest effort that I ever put into any show, because

the first week we wanted to showcase these six artists,

and we did.  The next week was kachinas, and then

jewelry, and then pottery, and so on and so forth.

Each week was a different show, and a tear down at this

big space the Halls had.  But I want to talk just a

little bit about each of these people that we did this

show on.  Allen Howser, he's the grand old man of

sculpture.  He's the king of all the American Indian

artists--just has a grandeur and a class all his own.

And then little Helen Harden is one of my ceremonial

children.  Her mother, Pablita Vallarte [phonetic

spelling], and I have been friends since I started.

And Helen got her recognition both at Ceremonial,

through different efforts and energies with Ceremonial

and with myself, and then these invitational shows that

we did in Scottsdale.  She garnered a lot of her

reputation.  So I call her one of my babies.  And then

Joseph and Grace Medicine Flower.  When we published

the book on--Dan Dick [phonetic spelling] Publishing

Company published the book on Joseph Lone Wolf's work,

but all of the items that are featured in the book are

pieces that we had in their show at our gallery in

Scottsdale.  So Dan Dick Company photographed

everything, and then we hosted the show to offer

everything for sale.  And so all the items that are in

here were for sale, along with some other things that

the family had produced.  And this show sold out in

Scottsdale in seven minutes.  We sold everything in the

group in seven minutes.  One of our all-time best shows

that ever happened.  So that was Joseph Lone Wolf and

Grace Medicine Flower.  Fritz Shoulder, my only

association with him was this one show that I talked

him into coming and joining everyone else.  I never had

any of his art, never represented him in any way.  I've

been very close to Charles Loloma.  You and I, Brad,

talked some about the traders and the Indian traders.

Well, I believe Charles Loloma--he's dead now--but of

all of the American Indian artists that I ever hosted

at a show, this guy was the greatest trader, the

greatest showman, the greatest of all of 'em.  To start

with, he loved women.  He loved fat women, skinny

women, tall women, short women--he just loved women,

and it was a genuine love.  And he loved his art, and

he loved to communicate with people through his art.

We hosted him for years in my La Jolla store.  We

expanded from Scottsdale and put a store in La Jolla

about a year after we opened Scottsdale.  And Charles

had a commitment in Scottsdale, but he didn't have a

commitment in La Jolla, so we always hosted his shows

over in La Jolla.  He was always so wonderful as a

trader and as a salesman.  He would breeze into town,

we did three shows a year with him, and he would breeze

into town with about $50,000 worth of his wonderful

jewelry, and we'd generally sell anywhere from $15,000

to $25,000 of it in the three-day showing.  But he was

so wonderful because he was right there on the line, he

met everybody that came in, talked with them.  And then

for the next six or eight weeks or ten weeks, until his

next show, every week there would be a package that

would come in the mail--and we didn't have an order.

And there'd be a little note in there, and it would

say....  Margaret Zyler [phonetic spelling] was my

manager in La Jolla, and the note would say, "Margaret,

I was thinking about Mrs. Fielding this morning as I

was looking across the mesa at Hopi, and I just made

this pair of earrings.  She didn't order 'em, but I

made them with her in mind.  And if she doesn't want

'em, well, just send 'em back to me."  (chuckles)  Or a

bracelet, or a ring.  He just loved these women, and he

wanted to do something for them.  But the biggest dutch

he ever got in--my Charles Loloma story--is that at

this Kansas City show, he had done this wonderful gold

bracelet that was just a killer.  It had just stacked,

webbed, raised-up turquoise, and it was just a great,

great piece.  Well, Mrs. Hall decided that she wanted

to have that bracelet, and I think it was $11,000,

which is a heck of a lot of money in 1972 or 1970,

whatever it was.  Well, she bought the bracelet, and

Charles was thrilled.  Charles goes over and, "Oh! you

bought my bracelet!" and he gives her a big hug.  She

was so willing, she decided to give him a kiss, and he

thought, "Oh, even so!"  Well, he decided to make it a

wet one.  Boy!  Mrs. Hall threw her head back and away.

She wouldn't come within a hundred yards of Loloma the

rest of the time!  But she still took the bracelet.  He

was a character.  And then R. C. Gorman, I hosted a

show for him one time in Scottsdale that was just a

great show.  I didn't have a whole lot to do with R. C.

Gorman either, but I did do this one great show for him

in Scottsdale, and he showed up and we had The Arizona

Republic right there to interview him.  R. C. Gorman's

probably the most famous Indian name in the world.

There's probably more people out there that know who he

is than any other artist that there is.  Well, Maggie

Wilson from The Arizona Republic, we're havin' coffee,

and there's the three of us there.  Maggie says,

"R. C., tell us about the Navajo."  And R. C. says,

"Well, the first thing you have to understand about us

Navajos is that we're all thieves.  We've stolen

everything we have.  But, Maggie, what you have to

understand, if we're good Navajos, we improve on the

idea that we stole."  So I think that's my great R. C.

Gorman quote. The other one, they were interviewing him

one time in Albuquerque and the microphone was thrust

in his face.  It was about the time that there was all

of this, "Are the Indians all being exploited?" and the

reporter said, "R. C., are all Indians being

exploited?"  And R. C. said, "Well, only if they're not

charging enough."  (laughter)  He was always a

character.  Back to this time of the Heard shows and

our new start-up and the retail business and the

competitive shows that we were having.  What became

really important to us is turquoise.  I was mining what

we called the Tanner Claims out in Nevada.  We had

mined the Lone Mountain dump and we had taken out

several thousand pounds of small pieces that the Zunis

just loved that they were using.  We were buying quite

a bit of Morenci turquoise from Lucky Brown who had the

franchise to pick off of the belts any turquoise that

came along with the copper material.  And then some of

the workers would also lunchbox some of it, and we

bought a little of that through the years.  I was

sitting at my Tanner's Market Store one day, and this

Mexican kid drove up and his name was Robin Reuben

Rodriguez.  He said, "Mr. Tanner, I understand you buy

turquoise."  I said, "I sure do."  I went out to his

pickup and he had an almost pickupload of the dirtiest

Bisbee turquoise that you've ever seen.  I looked at

it, and I've had enough experience working with

turquoise right out of the ground to realize that there

was some really good stuff in it.  But I'd never been

broker in my life.  He quoted me a price that he wanted

for this turquoise and I said, "Oh, I just can't do it.

I just can't pay that."  And he said, "Well, I'm gonna

go see what I can do around town."  Well, he took that

turquoise and he made the whole rounds.  He went down

and saw John Kennedy, and went over to see the

Woodards, and I don't know who else he talked to.  But

anyway, he ended up back in my yard.  In the

meantime....  All Pepsi-Cola dealers are millionaires.

It's a great business, and in Indian country, it's the

best business because we drink a lot of soda pop.  Just

in case he'd come back, I went down and asked Fred

Kaveejee [phonetic spelling] if he'd loan me a little

money if this guy came back.  Sure enough, he did, so I

bought that first batch of Bisbee turquoise from Robin

Reuben Rodriguez, which has always been kind of a fun

name to say.  And so I started buying Bisbee, and

Bisbee became very important to me, and to the whole

marketplace.  It's some of the best turquoise that's

ever come out of the ground.  It's probably the bluest

natural blue turquoise that's ever come out of the

ground.  So Bisbee's turquoise has become very

important to us.  I was very involved in that, and I

was buying, for a while, almost everything that came

out.  And then I was keeping the low-grade, because I

couldn't sell it, and the extreme high-grade, and I was

using the middle-grade and doing an awful lot with

that.  And so that turquoise became very important to

us.  And then Minlas Winfield, who mined the Villa

Grove turquoise mine up in Colorado, was one of my big

suppliers for turquoise as we were selling it to the

Zunis.  By this time we had expanded the shop in Gallup

to include as many as fifteen Navajo silversmiths, and

then I've always been a big believer in the home

workshop orders to different people.  So we were doing

a lot of that.  About the time we really got Zuni just

at its peak is about the time the Arab traders showed

up at Gallup.  And here I am, going to Zuni every day,

except most....  Well, every day, and just calling on a

different group of families every different day.  I'd

leave Gallup about two o'clock in the afternoon and

heaven knows the Zunis like to work late at night.

They're night people, so that worked out good for me,

because we were getting all that.  But my system was

always, "All right, here's what we're gonna make."  And

I had a lot of input both with what Preston was doing,

what we were doing in illustrations, what they had

already showed me the different things that they could

do, and I was saying, "All right, I need this $500

worth of things.  The materials for this is gonna run

you $200 and you're gonna make $300."Well, when the

Arabs started coming to Zuni, they started following

me, and they would go into the home and offer--if I was

paying $500 for this group of things, they Arabs would

offer 'em $100 more, and they would buy them.  And I

was real stubborn about not getting into a bidding war.

So there I sat, then, trying to collect a bad account

for the $300 worth of material.  So that's when I left

Zuni.  When 60 percent of the deals that I was causing

to happen--and I've always been a very creative person

and had a lot of influence in the design and what got

made, and even to how their jewelry....  Like I said

before, I've always been an idea man, and I just got

pissed and walked away from Zuni--have never been back.

You know, I'll go out there, and I had a lot of

accounts receivable.

   When I first started going to Zuni, the tribal

government, I had to have a trader permit out there.

And the tribal government approached me one day and

gave me an actual citation as to why I should be

allowed to continue to operate on the Zuni Reservation.

Well, that upset me a lot.  So I wrote 'em this great

letter, and I told 'em all of the services that I

provided to all of these people, and all of the things

that I was doing.  And then I had to point out in my

letter, of course, that they had had in my count, nine

episodes of trying to put a Zuni guild in business, and

had spent something like $450,000 at that point, trying

to create a competitor for me, and I was doing all my

services free of charge.  I said, "If you guys would

just give me half of the money that you've given the

guild, I'd create work for the Zuni tribal members for

the next 500 years.  Just give me half of what you're

givin' them, and we'll put it to real work."  So I was

upset about that.  They, of course, after I served 'em

with my letter--and at the same time I wrote the

letter, I had a petition signed by all of the people

that I was dealing with, that they would protest--so we

settled the issue.  That wasn't the issue. The whole

issue was the Arabs technique to do business, and the

Zuni's inability to say no.  So they have equal

responsibilities.  The Zunis come to me today and say,

"Oh, I wish the Arabs would never have been allowed

into Zuni, because they've just ruined it, because

they've turned it into a dog-eat-dog world."I always

did the Zuni Fair, and I did a big barbecue, furnished

everything.  I had six of the cooks from the school

that would always volunteer to help me cook it, but I

furnished everything and fed everybody.  The last year,

after I had left Zuni, the last year that I put on the

barbecue, after the barbecue I burned all the accounts

receivable and just told 'em that if they made

something great, to bring it to me, and I'd be glad to

try to do business and buy it.  But not a lot of that

happened.  We still have Zuni friends that come in, and

there's some of the people that I really was close to,

that we of course continue to do business with for

years, such as Edith Tsabetsya is one of my great

friends from out there.  Lee and Mary Webothee, Morris

and Sadie Lah-hah-tee [phonetic spelling], the fetish

carvers have always been… and [I] continue to be, close

to many of the fetish carvers.  So I had my real close

group of friends that I still....  For the whole, at my

peak at Zuni, I was dealing with 60 percent of the Zuni

production.  So that was my exit from Zuni at that

point in time.And I guess the next thing I want to talk

about is Kirk Trading Company--talk a little bit about

it, and how it worked.  They were the supply house for

all of the--primarily the saddle blankets and throws--

for Montgomery Ward and Sears and every western store

all across the country.  And that was an important

business that stayed active for a number of years,

until the Navajos kind of slowed down in making saddle

blankets, and went on to making more important

weavings.  Navajo weaving will always be, because

Navajo women simply have to weave to fulfill their

soul.  Everyone always asks me, every time we have a

show, "Is Navajo weaving disappearing?"  Well, there's

at least 30,000 women on the reservation that are

weavers, and their soul is just not complete if they

don't weave.  And they are, and it's a very important,

viable business.And then with regard to the Navajo

weaving, I've always brokered wool and mohair, and

always bought it direct from the Indians.  But when I

was going through my divorce a number of years ago--

this has been about twenty years ago--I didn't have

enough money to make all the settlement, and I had to

pay off a huge mortgage.  This friend of mine from El

Dorado, Texas, told me, "Well, Joe, I'll loan you the

money that you need, if you'll do one thing.  What I

need you to do is I need you to buy everybody's wool

and mohair that you can buy up in Indian country.  I'd

like you to buy the Navajo clip, I'd like you to buy

the Zuni clip, and the Laguna-Acama clip."  His partner

was a man from Spain that was really well-connected

with the wool and mohair users in Spain and England.

So the deal was, there's the three of us.  I'm to buy

it as efficiently and as good as can possibly be done.

The partner from Texas takes care of the shipping and

the overseeing, and then the partner in Spain sells it

the best possible way.  Well, the first year....  And

they promised me that if I would work hard at it, that

alone would pay back my debt in three years, if we

could do as well as they anticipated.  My part of the

one-third of what we were gonna make would do that.  So

I got off to this start on that project, and it really

went well.  We did just about buy everything.  I struck

deals with everybody that I knew, and went out and

started taking delivery.  Well, the first year I

shipped all of the wool to them, and they said it was

about 90 percent okay, but the contaminant in the wool

and mohair was just almost intolerable.  So we were

using a big scouring plant down in San Antonio.  I

said, "Well, I'm gonna drive down and take a look at

what the problem is."  Well, I got down there, and we

really got into lookin' at what they didn't like, and

they began to show me what they didn't like.  And so

the next year as I approached the market, I was a

little more careful about what I bought, looked at it

even closer, and started sorting out what they were

bitchin' and moanin' about, and accumulating it.  And

it sat there for most of that year--that stuff, "the

contaminant," we'll call it--and I shipped the

92 percent of what I bought.  I personally just ate the

6 to 8 percent of it.  But I got more for the

92 percent than I got for the 100 percent, percentage-

wise, to what we were paying.  So this was a lot of

work to get, but a freebie, as it turned out.  And then

I got to really lookin' at it, and I got real

involved....

   [END TAPE 2, SIDE A; BEGIN SIDE B]

    I've always collected and loved Navajo weaving, but

then I got really involved in the different spins and

the different dyes and the different types of wool that

was perfect.  Well, as we looked at what that was, it

was the choro [phonetic spelling] wool, and it was the

Lincoln....  (original tape changed)

   

   Cole:  This is Brad Cole from Northern Arizona

University, it's March 30, 1999.  We've visiting with

Joe Tanner in Gallup, New Mexico, and this is Tape 4 of

an interview for the United Indian Traders Association

Oral History Project.  Joe, you were just telling us

about your wool and mohair brokering and extracting the

contaminant out of it, and you were telling us what the

contaminant was.

   

   Tanner:  Yeah, it primarily consisted of choro wool

that everybody thought was extinct.  Choro has never

been a threat to be lost completely, because there's

all those wonderful weavers who knew what it did for

their piece that was keeping that pet group of choro

sheep in isolated spots all over the reservation.  And

then the Lincoln is another long, sound-fibered wool

that's very mohair-like.  Then the other thing is the

colored goods--all of the browns and tans and greys and

all of that stuff.  That was the rest that they didn't

want to give anything for.  And so I started

accumulating it.  And then the other facet of what we

do is we deal a lot in historic Navajo weaving--pieces

that have been totally polished.  I tell people all of

the time, they come in my places and I always have

Navajo rugs on the floor.  They always say, "Oh, I

shouldn't be walking on this!"  I said, "Please!  I

should give you a penny."  And I usually give 'em a

penny and say, "Here, let me pay you, you're polishin'

'em!"  When a Navajo rug gets more than polished, when

you can see the warp start showing through, the polish

has been overdone, and it should then go up on the

wall.  But through that facet of what I sell in the art

business, and because I've always been such a student

of those early entrepreneurs who were such an influence

in Navajo weaving in the very beginning--J. B. Moore,

Cotton, Hubbell, my Grandpa Joe, the Wetherills at

Chaco Canyon--all of those people who were such a big

influence in getting what we enjoy today, going to such

a degree, and getting the collecting all started.  I

chase and find the earliest and best examples of each

regional weaving that I can find.  And many of 'em

oftentimes are damaged in some way and need some

restoration.  Well, I made it my business to become

friends with, and get acquainted with a lot of the

people around America that do restoration work.  They

were my biggest ally, along with a Navajo weaver from

Two Grey Hills by the name of Roseann Lee, who

unfortunately got killed this last couple of years.

She was such a big help in helping me decide, as I get

on down the line with this a little bit.  But these

restoration people understood and needed wools to use

in their restoration work, and they weren't being able

to find them.  And so I began to tell them, "Well, I

have this big stash of wool.  Come and look at it."

And one thing led to another.  And then on the other

hand, I met some people who could wash a fleece at a

time, because it needed to be kept very isolated and

separate, because they're all different, and there's a

lot of sorting that goes along.Well, I just happened to

have been blessed with knowing all the right people to

help do this--someone to wash it, someone to spin it

where it was very homespun-like.  I found that, and

then the greatest restoration person in the group that

I know so well, was just a genius at dying.  Her and I

worked out our color scheme, and what we did is--our

wools have a blend--it's not pure choro, it's not pure

Lincoln--it's a mix of all of those things that were

the same color that got thrown in the same pile,

including mohair.  So every bit of every type that we

have, and when we would spin it, we would keep all that

color together.  And in some cases, to get different

hues for the Two Grey Hills mix that we were doing, we

actually combed a couple of the colors together to

achieve those colors.  But it was very much like--our

little line of wool was very much like handspun,

because we do so much of all the same things.  And then

one of our other secrets is how we dye and what we dye

to kind of give it that aubrush [phonetic spelling] or

"twinkle-twinkle" look that looks so well in a rug.

But we've worked all that out, and it's a very, small,

small quantity.  At best--washed, combed, carded, spun

and dyed--we may have 10,000 pounds of wool, which

doesn't go very far when you think of all that gets

used by all of the weavers on all fronts.  So all my

objective is with this line of wool that we do, is to

just help enable a few great weavers to be as good as

their grandmother.  The Navajos had the hottest

commodity in America before the white man, with their

wearing blankets.  We tried to do our yarns and our

wools to get that blanketty wonderful feel to it.

That's basically our wool project.  And our turquoise

project, we've always wanted to do the same thing

there, to have the very best materials.  It's been my

experience that turquoise by itself is worth so much

money.  Talent by itself is worth so much money.

Silver by itself is worth so much money.  But if you

have the vision to put all three of those in the best

project, everybody's better off.  The artist makes more

money, the collector gets a better piece for what he

buys, and you get the best price for the piece of

turquoise that was used the smartest that it could be

used.  So what our plan is, is to in the back of our

store here, is to have our turquoise and wool trading

post.  We're getting closer all the time to getting

ready for that.  So that's our turquoise story, and the

wool facet.  The other thing I want to talk about is

the pinon business.  That happened about the same time.

One of my greatest triumphs was this same Fred Kaveejee

that I talked about earlier, always had plenty of

money, and he always had a willingness....  He's

different than a lot of people that have made a lot of

money in Gallup.  He fed it back to the community and

he's always been willing to help people get along.  I

figured out one year--I think it was 1966--that there

was a limited crop of pinons, and the price has always

been controlled by Syrian dealers in New York, Los

Angeles, and the Azars from El Paso, Texas, were always

right in cahoots with these Syrian fellows who

controlled the market.  I told Fred--and I forget who

was the Navajo tribal chairman--but I told him, and I

thought between what I could buy direct from the

Indians, and what J. B., my brother, could buy at Yah-

Tah-Hey, we could buy a big part of the crop.  And the

Indians had never got a guarantee of a flat dollar a

pound at that point.  And so I went out and really

looked at all the crop in the field, and I thought,

"You know what I think?  I think 200,000 pounds, tops,

we'll have 'em all bought."  So I talked Fred Kaveejee

into loanin' us the money, along with what we had, to

buy virtually the whole crop.  Everybody thought we'd

go broke, because they didn't know we'd arranged for

the money, and everybody thought, well, we'd never see

it through.  Well, 385,000 pounds later, we had 'em all

bought, and we had Fred Kaveejee's soda pop warehouse

full of pinons.  (laughs)  We had these buyers in New

York and San Francisco thumbin' their noses at us

sayin', "We're ready to give you sixty cents a pound

for 'em."  And they just were tryin' to freeze us out,

'cause they thought they totally controlled the market.

Well, the first thing I had to do then, because we had

a lot of the government looking at the pure foods

pressure, I had to fly back and buy--I found a machine

that would air clean the pinons to where we could get

across state lines without having a contaminated

product.  So Fred loaned me a few thousand dollars

more.  (chuckles)  So then I called New York and nobody

would even talk to me.  And that was the principal

user, was New York.  So I said, "Well, the only way

we're gonna do this...."  I just loaded a car of

pinons, 40,000 pounds, on the railroad, shipped it to

New York, and I had this guy from Hollander Trading

Company that said he would receive it.  I got to New

York, and those guys literally laughed at me, the

traditional dealers.  They said, "You're a dead duck.

You can't do anything here."  So I went to the guy from

Hollander Trading Company and he said, "Joe, I can't

buy 'em, these guys are too strong.  But if you can

prove to me that I can sell 'em, I'll play the game."

So I was doin' a lot of business with this gal at the

American Indian Art Center.  What in the world was her

name?  Nora, I think, was her name.  I went over and I

took her to dinner and we got to talkin', and she said,

"Joe, people want those.  All the vending machines all

around town.  All the little stores, everybody's

begging for pinons, and there just isn't any."  So

before I left, I had this letter from the Navajo tribal

chairman--I think it was Raymond Nakai, I forget who it

was--but I had a letter from him, of support, saying it

was the first time the Navajos had been guaranteed that

dollar a pound--because usually they'd force the price

down to where they got as little as ten cents.  So we

had a buck a pound in this, plus the shrink, and we're

in 'em probably at $1.35 at this point, and we've got a

sixty-cent offer.  So she says, "Why don't we start

doin' some phone calls?"  So we figured out this spiel

to give all of these people.  We made 350 phone calls

to different people.  After about a ten-day program of

this, of her and I makin' these calls with this spiel,

my friend from Hollander called up and he said, "Joe, I

never got so damned many phone calls in all my life!

Come on over, I've got a check for you for this load,

and a surprise."  When I got over there, he not only

had a check for the first carload--we even gave him the

price, and he was paying us $2.10 a pound, which gave

us a nice profit.  He was adding on some for himself,

of course, which we had arranged in our telephone

campaign when we were givin' 'em their price.  And when

I got over there, he had my check, and he had two

tickets to Funny Girl, and that was when Barbra

Steisand first was getting her start as an entertainer.

So I got to see Barbra Steisand in her first major

production of Funny Girl, which was great fun.  Before

I even left New York, Los Angeles called, Azar called,

and I flew from New York to Los Angeles, and then from

Los Angeles to El Paso.  Within six months we had the

whole crop sold, and Fred back to breathing normal!

(laughter)And then since then, the brokering business--

that's why I've been so successful in the wool and

mohair thing, is the buyers have to really trust who's

shipping it.  So it's very important that you inspect

it, and that what they're getting is what you're

sending.  So you have to look at it.  It's the hands-on

part of the business that's very important to the whole

economics of Indian country.  So that's the pinon deal.

   

   Steiger:  What made you think....  It was just

guaranteeing the suppliers, the pickers, that dollar a

pound.  You thought if you could do that....  You had

to corner the market in order to be able to do good?

   

   Tanner:  Well, and if you've ever went out and

picked pinons, a dollar's not enough!  (laughs)  But

the Navajos love anything that's a gimmick.  And

they'll always pick the pinons, because it's so much

fun.  The greatest lovers of pinons, as the whole thing

evolves, are the Navajo and the Mexican community.

Like this year, there was over a million pounds, and

they were all sold within this region.  I bet

10 percent of 'em didn't go to those other markets.

Anywhere there's a big Hispanic population, there's a

pinon market that just won't quit.  Pinons are our

hobby.  We just love 'em.  We're developing a pinon

shelling machine.  We're there, we've got it all done.

We're making it out of stainless steel, and it's a

beautiful machine.  We're working on our patent,

because we have a unique way of doing it.  As far as I

know, no one's figured out how to do quantities of 'em.

They must know how to do it some way in China, because

we see all those Chinese pignolias, but there's no

patents on any of it, it's all open, and we're working

on that.  So that's one of the things that we do and

we're very involved in.  My family's been involved in

the pinon business since Grandpa Joe.  I still get

stories of him buying pinons when I talk to people down

south.  His son was in the flour milling business, and

Grandpa would buy 'em, and the son would pick 'em up,

and they would ship 'em.  Pinons are so important to

these Mexican people and these Indian people because

it's one of the commodities in the West that has saved

the people.  When stored cool and dry in a nice cool

and dry cave, [pinons] will keep for years, literally

years--maybe as much as twenty.  And our pinons from

this country are just so much tastier than the ones

from anywhere else in the world.  They come from all

over, but they're so good.  Let's see, now, where do we

want to go from here?

   

   Cole:  What traits do you think makes a good trader?

   

   Tanner:  Well, I think the great traits of a good

trader are fairness.  I think it's very important

to....  I don't care whether you're dealing in

livestock, or whether you're dealing in the arts.  The

great secret to being a good trader is knowing what you

want and being willing to convey to the person that's

going to provide it, that you'll be there for that

piece or that item when he needs to sell it.  Same

thing with the pawn facet of the banking among the

Indian community.  So much of what gets put into

pawn....  The trader always gets a rap of charging so

much interest.  But oftentimes, he'll have a customer

that comes in that has a $1,000 concho belt and wants

to borrow $25 on it.  And he's gonna charge him $2.50

to make that loan.  Well, what he's doing is, he's

really caretaking that $1,000 piece of art in a safe

place, and that's pretty darned cheap storage.  And

nobody ever hears that part of what the--quote,

unquote--"loan shark" is charging.  I think that

reliability and honesty and vision of what's needed....

I think the great entrepreneurs in this business, the

greatest....  I don't think any of us have measured up,

to this point, to Joseph Baldwin Tanner, J. B. Moore,

C. N. Cotton.  These guys were a piece of work.  They

had great vision, great ambition, and great care, great

love, for the people they were dealing with.  They were

great traders.  I would like to see us come up with--

and I think the Indian community will, or we will, or

some great trader will--I'd like to see a better

banking system than the pawn business, because so much

of the worthwhile collateral is gone anyway.  And I

think it's all being replaced in one way or another--

the credit union.  But I think that's the one facet of

trading that the people who do it haven't measured up

as well as some of the other people that do some of the

other services for them.

   

   Cole:  What do you think you've learned from being a

trader, and also learned from the Indian people you've

dealt with?

   

   Tanner:  Well, I think the greatest thing that I

have learned....  My idols have always been my

ancestors:  Seth Benjamin Tanner, my Grandpa Joe, my

dad Chunky, my siblings, Jewel McGee.  The things that

they have taught me about being a great trader, the

things the Indians have taught me, I kind of have

realized through the envy of Chee Dodge and my Grandpa

Joe.  Chee Dodge's name that he was known among the

Indians for was Hastiin Adiits’a’ii, "the man who

understands," or "the language expert."  He was the

great interpreter, as my Grandfather Joe was.  I think

anytime you learn a new language, you learn a new way

to think.  I kind of feel and hope that at this point

in time....  I figure if I'm lucky, my career will max

out when I'm eighty, and then I'll start doin' my

memoirs (chuckles) and my writing.  But as I think

about, and as I envy them knowing these languages,

because each time you learn a new language you learn a

new way to think--but I realized recently that the

language that I understand, and the language that I'm

learning to understand more and more each day I

breathe, is the language of the art of the American

Indian.  And that's the universal art, the universal

language, of all of the American Indians.  Their art is

their real communication.  And the more we can

understand that, and the more we can interpret it and

embrace it, the wiser we become.  And the more I learn,

the more I realize how little everybody else learns,

and how much I know.  The potential to that

understanding, I think we're just in the infancy of.

It's like our dogs trying to communicate with us, and

if we could only understand what they're trying to tell

us, we would be much wiser human beings.  They know

when an earthquake's coming, they know when the

weather's changing.  They know all of this. C. G.

Wallace, in his interview with Arizona Highways, in his

article, he was talking about Old Man Lake-yah

[phonetic spelling], and he said, "That old man could

just look in that stone and see what was there."  And

C. G., I could just read into C. G.'s thought process,

because he was trying to realize whether he had picked

the right time or not to sell his collection.  And he

was thinkin', "I wish I could be as wise as Old Man

Lake-yah, and I could see into this market to realize

that this is the time for me to be selling."  And he

had already committed to do it.  And as it turns out,

the prices garnered at the C. G. Wallace collection

sale, in many cases have never been equalled anywhere

else.  And that's been almost twenty years ago.  So I

think that's what I'm learning and what I hope to

learn, is an understanding of this language of the

arts.  That's my passion, that's my love.  I never will

be able to know enough about [it].

   

   Cole:  What should the Anglo understand about Navajo

culture or Indian culture?

   

   Tanner:  Well, I think the greatest bridge of

understanding that the Native Americans, one and all,

can teach each of us is their reverence for everything

around them, their reverence for their Mother Earth,

and all of the things and all of the creatures that are

in it.  And then of course what I think we can all do

to best help them....  I think the greatest successes

among the American Indians are the artists themselves.

And I think when we as outsiders look at what they

create, I think it's one of America's last real things

where you can buy something that people