"In 1963, I could buy a rug that would fill the floor of this house," he said. In 1998, Malone talked about this aspect of the Indian trading business. The argument federal officials made was how could someone amass a collection of that value on a government salary?īut if someone had done any investigation before the raid - and no one apparently had - they would have learned something about the Indian trading business that was well known in the industry. The rugs and jewelry had been collected, piece by piece, over 56 years and was worth several hundred thousand dollars, if not millions. "They made a deal with the Park Service to take over my personal collection as a spoils of war."
"I was really blindsided by the WNPA," Malone said in a telephone interview Tuesday. Malone started in the Indian trading business in 1960, serving an apprenticeship of sorts at various trading posts on the reservation until 1980 when he was hired by a nonprofit corporation called the Western National Parks Association to run Hubbell's Trading Post.Įverything seemed to be going well and Malone was thinking or retiring from the job in a few years when on the morning of June 9, 2004, Malone was fired and then found federal agents at his doorstep with a warrant to confiscate his entire Indian arts and crafts collection, which consisted of hundreds of rugs and thousands of pieces of Indian jewelry.
But that's what Berkowitz's investigation did - give Malone back his life while at the same time pointing the finger of blame at those who were behind the movement to smear Malone's name.
"He was 100 percent cooperative," Berkowitz said, admitting that Malone took a chance since his job was to prove wrongdoing by Malone. Then he did something none of the other federal investigators had done - he called Malone to get his side of the story. He was a senior investigator for the NPS who was given the job in 2005 - 18 months after Malone's collection was confiscated - to prove that Malone had violated the government's trust and either stole or misappropriated his personal collection while he was running the trading post.īerkowitz, who retired from the NPS shortly after concluding the Malone investigation, said during a telephone interview from his home in Colorado that when he was first approached about the idea of getting involved in the investigation, he assumed that there was some validity to the accusations.
#Shush yaz trading co full
Probably no one other than Berkowitz could have written the full story of what happened to Malone than Berkowitz. The NPS was under orders from Congress to operate it as an authentic trading post under the supervision of a real Indian trader. It had been purchased some 40 years before by the NPS from the Hubbell family. Malone at the time was the manager of the Hubbell Trading Post, the oldest trading post on the reservation. The fact that it took place in Ganado, Ariz., less than a decade ago makes the story of the National Park Service's attempt to put Bill Malone behind bars and take control of his extensive personal collection of Navajo rugs and jewelry a tale that most people on the reservation can relate to. Berkowitz, the author of "The Case of the Indian Trader," describes his book as being about "the end of an era in the Old West."
0 kommentar(er)
