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son recalled, looking back from the vantage point of her Warrenton home on 50 years of learning and collecting. “Vivid pictures of that summer remain: the soft colors of the chamisa and sage, the red rock and the mesas, the smell of the pinon wood in our campfires, horse-drawn wagons clustered around the trading posts.”
Mrs. Stinson’s collection began with that first trip. She remembers trading for moccasins with a Navajo woman at her hogan, and trading with another for a necklace of green turquoise nuggets.
The beauty and spirit of the Southwest called her back again and again. Then, Indian art was little appreciated and little valued. For 50 cents, Mrs. Stinson bought drawings by young Indian artists who are now internationally famous, and for $1 or $2 she bought baskets which are now worth upward of $500.
First to her family home in Illinois, and later to Warrenton where she and her husband settled with their four children, she brought back Indian paintings and bronze sculptures, Navajo rugs and concho belts and Hopi dolls, pottery and baskets.
With their children, Dr. and Mrs. Stinson spent summers exploring the Southwest, and a second generation of collectors was born. “At the Indian market in Santa Fe, the children would go off on their own to barter and buy. Each of them developed their own field of interest — baskets, pottery, rugs, fetishes or kachina dolls — while maintaining a love for all of these crafts. And all of us had a special appreciation for the old jewelry which had become the backbone of the collection."
“One summer in Santa Fe we learned about the methods and tools used by early silversmiths. We were taught some of the ways to estimate the age of a piece and to unravel the history of a bracelet, belt or necklace by inspecting the stamps, leather, string and amount of wear,” she continued. “We began to understand what was involved in the creation of this jewelry and to associate the dedication of those who created these works of art.”
As she studied the collection, Mrs. Stinson began to realize the quality of all that she had gathered over 50 years. “I had always been a
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