Dig It - 6/1/26

Recollections, Ep. 1:

Hey Fellow Seekers, this is a new miniseries on collecting and dealing in antique Southwestern jewelry that I will be churning out this summer. It is based on my memories, which are usually pretty accurate, but take them with a grain of salt.

I first came out to the Southwest in the summer of 1968 with an outfit called the Cottonwood Gulch Foundation. We camped out all summer in tents, cooked over open fires, and went to some of the wildest places in the Southwest. Back then non-Indigenous men wore Indian buckles and rings, but not bracelets. I wore a Ketoh, but I was kind of crazy. I’m trying to remember if any of the old Traders wore them. I knew Tobe Turpen a little. I can’t remember if he wore a bracelet every day, but I think not. I do remember Anglo men wearing decorated silver watch bands and bolo ties, but bracelets were mostly for Anglo women.

I also remember back then there was very little “old pawn” stuff for sale. Trading posts would occasionally open up their pawn vaults, but the pawn system was still in full swing, and most was not for sale, or at least I did not know to ask if it was. Most Posts had little "museums" with collections of older pieces and some ceremonial material, but for me the term "museum" meant it was sacrosanct and not for sale. I learned later that was not the case. Tom Woodard’s shop in Gallup, NM, had a display case of early Navajo jewelry, mostly buttons, on the wall as you descended down the stairs to the art gallery. The only other classic jewelry I can remember seeing was early silver buttons on the moccasins worn by one of the Gulch counselors, Mark Udall, who later became a U.S. Senator for Colorado.

One big event for antique/vintage Native American jewelry was the Sotheby’s sale of the C.G. Wallace collection in November of 1975, which introduced the material to a much wider audience. So to recap, at the time few Anglo men wore bracelets, and most early Navajo jewelry was not that accessible. Stay tuned for Ep. 2: "Then the Hippies Appeared."