Oral history interview with Joe McBride

Little Thunder: Today is Thursday, March 24, 2011, and I'm interviewing Mr. Joe McBride with the Gallery of Art, located in Anadarko. This interview is part of the Oklahoma Native Arts Project, sponsored by Oklahoma Oral History [Research] Program at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. Mr. McBride, you are the publisher of the Anadarko Daily News. You're an inductee of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, but you also wear another hat, which is owner of an Indian Art Gallery, which has been very important to many Southern Plains Indian artists in the area. Where were you born and where did you grow up?

McBride: Well, I was born in Oklahoma City, in 1929. I've lived in Clinton, Elk City, Hobart, Walters, and came to Anadarko in 1937. This has been home base 1:00ever since, even though I've served overseas in the military and worked in other newspapers here in Oklahoma. My father and his business partner, the late James C. Nance, owned between them the controlling interest in thirty-four Oklahoma newspapers, which Anadarko Daily News is a surviving side of the McBride properties. (Laughter) So, I've been here ever since.

Little Thunder: So, you went to middle school and high school here?

McBride: No, we moved here--I was in the third grade in the fall of 1937. I went to school here through sophomore year in high school. My folks wanted me to get 2:00a more thorough education, so they sent me to the Oklahoma Military Academy. I did volunteer to go. (Laughter) I wasn't forced to go. I enjoyed it, and it really changed my life.

Little Thunder: And that was in Claremore, Oklahoma.

McBride: In Claremore, and I was there four years, two years of high school, two years of junior college. I graduated in the upper 10 percent of my college graduating class, which there were just eighteen, so that's 1.8, 10 percent. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You mentioned it really changed your life.

McBride: Well, I, of course, was in those formative years. It made a tremendous 3:00impact on me in determination. For instance, I learned to study. Up until I went to OMA, I just coasted through school. I got pretty good grades. I wasn't a great scholar, by any means, even then, at OMA, although I made much better grades, I did have some as low as C. I did win an award for the highest grade in a college division in foreign language.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful. What was your first exposure to Indian culture, that you remember?

McBride: Well, of course, I was always fascinated by them, Indians. Really, the biggest impression made on me was an American Indian Exposition that I saw for the first time in August of 1938.

Little Thunder: And that was here in Anadarko?

McBride: It's been at Anadarko ever since--and before that as far as I can--I think it started in '31. But I just grew up with them.

Little Thunder: Do you remember when you saw your first painting by an Indian artist?

McBride: Not specifically, but we were exposed to it at all times. We got into the gallery business almost by default. We did an inventory for insurance purposes and found out we owned 165 Indian paintings that we'd acquired over the years. So, we started buying Indian paintings and artifacts and beadwork and 5:00things like that. Opened up the Gallery of Art in Anadarko in 1983 in another location. We were in two locations before we wound up here. We bought this building with the idea that we'd move the newspaper into it. I didn't know there was going to be a fire [that'd] burn the newspaper down and move us into it, anyways.

Little Thunder: And we'll talk about that. I'd like to hear a little more about how you began acquiring Indian art

McBride: Well, part of it, we ran ads in the newspaper and mostly [bought] at least 95 percent, maybe more, of these paintings here out of a fifty-mile circle. Very local artists for all practical purposes. Very few from somewhere 6:00else. Only [one] that I remember right off hand non-Indian painting in the whole collection. But, like I say, my last count was 165 paintings.

Little Thunder: You and your wife, were you both interested in collecting? Was it mainly you?

McBride: Well, she's interested in it, but not active, other than making some suggestions from time to time.

Little Thunder: So, you wouldn't run your purchases by her? You wouldn't say, "I like this one, do you?"

McBride: Well, I learned not to buy everything that came in and not to buy just things that I liked. Not that I'm a great expert on it. Most of what I--that's 7:00in here, I like. There's some of it that--I can remember one painting, which was half-human, half-skull, I didn't like it. Believe it or not, it sold. So, I don't know. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That was as a gallery owner, but before, when you were a collector, what type of work appealed to you?

McBride: Well, again, we just acquired paintings. Artists would come to us. We had a fairly high profile. And that's how we got that first 165 paintings. The cost was very competitive to what they cost today, I might add. I started way 8:00back in--I came back here in July, August of 1955. So, those paintings were collected in that period from 1955 to 1983. One thing about it, it's a gallery of original art. We have prints, but not many.

McBride: Original art is non-competitive. They like it or they don't like it, they want it or they don't want it. You have something they like or you don't. So, it's a simple decision. I will admit that over the years, I've looked at a 9:00lot of art galleries with some idea that we could get into an art gallery and not be competitive with the advertisers in the newspaper. See, that was a point that we wanted to make. There weren't any art galleries at that time, anyway.

Little Thunder: You mentioned that the prices were competitive with what they are now, and I wondered what you meant by that.

McBride: It's hard to explain. Minimum wage was a dollar. So, where a painting now might sell for--I purchase it wholesale. I tell them that I'm a low-dollar buyer, and we buy primarily from the artists themselves. Don't take the 10:00paintings off the wall and bring them down to us. Twenty dollars for a painting [then], that would be sixty or eighty dollars [now].

Little Thunder: So, proportionate to the income you were making, it was a little bit of a sacrifice?

McBride: Well, we use the standard markup. And, of course, the longer--it's an argument that I have with some insurance people about depreciation of art. Art doesn't depreciate, it appreciates. And curiously enough, the older it is, the more valuable. That's all art, not just Indian paintings. Back to those original 165 paintings, some of those came pretty reasonable, like ten or fifteen 11:00dollars. Some of them were pretty good paintings and some of them were not so good. They weren't large, most of them. They were small, relatively speaking.

Little Thunder: Were any of them by some of the better known artists?

McBride: A lot of them, even like that one over there, Larry Hood. Larry's dead, died in '95. (Gestures) I bought a lot of his paintings, sold a lot of them. He's Rance Hood's brother. We've sold all of our paintings that belonged to Rance, and he's still alive.

Little Thunder: So, [Rance] was already out of Oklahoma when you started your gallery. He hadn't been living in Oklahoma--?

McBride: No, he was living in Colorado.

Little Thunder: Did you ever come across any paintings by the Kiowa Five Painters?

McBride: We had a few, very few. Of course, Steve Mopope [was] still alive [until 1974], but not painting. So, we acquired some paintings. Part of that 165, quite a few of them were from the Kiowa Five. No particular reasons. They were the only ones working.

Little Thunder: Let's pick up a bit on your newspaper business, and then I'd like to come back to Anadarko and the Indian art scene in the gallery here. When you graduated then, from the Military Academy--

McBride: After OMA, I completed my college degree at OU [Oklahoma University] 13:00and graduated in the class of 1951.

Little Thunder: Did you take any art classes, by chance, or art history?

McBride: No, I majored in journalism and minored in business. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That was a useful background.

McBride: My dad, in spite of being part owner of thirty-four newspapers, never took a journalism course in his life. But he was a business school graduate. It is a business, and I've always treated it as such. The gallery--I have an argument with people at times, whether it's a hobby or a business--but it is a business. It's intended to pull its own weight. It's tricky. There in the '80s, 14:00it was really good. The boom, the oil boom was on, right around here. A lot of Indians sell paintings by size. That's not necessarily a good judgment of a good Indian painting. I've seen some that are palm size that are very valuable, as far as I'm concerned. And some large paintings aren't worth the canvas they're painted on.

Little Thunder: So, even though you started in the '80s, which was when the Indian art market was booming, there weren't any other Indian galleries in town? What were the places that sold Indian art here in town?

McBride: I think the Susan Peters Gallery was here, but it wasn't exclusively 15:00Indian paintings. It had all kinds of things. I may be wrong about that--I really don't know when they were established. But they were into more than just artwork.

Little Thunder: Was Southern Plains Indian Museum selling paintings?

McBride: Southern Plains, yes, they were. In fact, they were the principle place, and they just didn't buy much. They didn't have the display space. They encouraged it. Of course, they've been here since the '50s. But, again, they didn't have as much gallery space as we've got in this room.

Little Thunder: So, McKee's Indian Store was around at that time, too.

McBride: That I remember, yes. They were more into the Indian costumes and things of that nature. Artifacts more so than paintings, which we were primarily in the painting business. Still are.

Little Thunder: When you said that you were careful, you didn't want to encroach on someone else's territory that was an advertiser in the paper?

McBride: Yes, we didn't want to interfere with--we wanted to bring something to the community and create something. Something that was needed, really.

Little Thunder: So, what was the reception like by the townspeople? How did they receive the gallery?

McBride: Well, I think that we were well received, particularly as a place to 17:00come look. But then, they had the same access to Indian artwork we do.

Little Thunder: From the individual painters?

McBride: Oh, yeah. A lot of people have paintings of their own that are quite valuable.

Little Thunder: Your first pieces of Indian art you sold from the gallery, were they equally divided between locals and out-of-towners? Or between dealers?

McBride: Well, I usually say the fifty-mile circle. That would take in Lawton. The KCA Reservation. Yes, some of them, they have roots here. The Hood brothers 18:00did, for instance. Most of them--we just bought what walked through the front door.

Little Thunder: But in terms of your buyers, people who[were] coming in to buy from you, were most of them locals? Or did most of them come from other places?

McBride: It didn't seem that way. Of course, Anadarko itself is a tourism town. It has had a strong tourism base over the years. So, a lot of the buyers--I'm not talking about the lookers--a lot of the buyers were from somewhere else. We've sold paintings all across the United States and even into Europe.

Little Thunder: People who happened to be coming through town or had heard about you?

McBride: Mostly they'd come through here. I don't recall anybody just calling up 19:00and saying, "I hear you have some Indian paintings, and I'd like to buy one." Again, we were a tourist draw here, and the gallery complemented that.

Little Thunder: My friend who's Kiowa did not grow up here, just came back summers to stay with her grandma in Anadarko, said that in like, the '60s and '70s, it was a thriving town. A number of movie theaters, lots going on.

McBride: Television changed a lot of things. (Laughter) We still have one movie theater that shows one picture a night. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: When you opened the gallery and you thought it would provide a 20:00service to the town, complement the existing businesses that were here, what was the focus of the gallery as you saw it? What media was it going to focus on?

McBride: Well, we were principally Indian art, like I mentioned. We've only got, right now, one non-Indian artist in the gallery, and he painted a battleship, so it's not relevant to the Indian art in any way. (Laughter) It just kind of seemed to lend itself that way. Like I say, we had the 165 painting base to begin with. And I might add, most of those are gone.

Little Thunder: Did you pick up sculptures right away, too?

McBride: Sculptures kind of came along. There were some artists working on it.

Little Thunder: Who were some of the artists that were sculpting?

McBride: Well, take Sherman Chaddlesone, for instance. Sherman did both, 21:00paintings and sculpture. And a number of painters--Mirac Creepingbear was the same way. He did both.

Little Thunder: Parker Boyiddle, did you handle any of his works?

McBride: Had several of Parker's works. Once we got it started, we kind of became the first choice stop. Some of them would bring a work in that wasn't finished and want to sell it, want to draw some money against it. But there's a discipline that goes with that buying. You can only buy completed works. The local people occasionally bring us things that we put on consignment. Rarely 22:00ever buy their work. We agree on price, if it sells. Most of them want to sell it right now. They'd like turn it back into money, whatever reason they had. But, again, Anadarko has always been a good sales point for Indian art. And crafts.

Little Thunder: How much did you sell to other gallery owners or dealers?

McBride: They got the maximum discount, which is close to a wholesale price. It 23:00went primarily to start up galleries. We've got some people--I have at least one buyer who's bought thousands of dollars' worth of art, that he's accumulated. He probably has more artwork than we have, yet that's not his field. He's an engineer, but he's always liked Indian art. So, we see him frequently.

Little Thunder: With the dealers, you're not really making very much money, but you're helping them open another venue?

McBride: Even with our markup, we're not overpriced. We price so that we can 24:00discount. At the same time, we are competitive in the general marketplace, very competitive. Part of it is because we're close to the source. And, again, we don't extend out. We experimented with a few shows and things, and it's difficult because you just can't display the whole thing, [all the rest of the art you have]. Very little results [from that]. I think [the galleries] attracted people to come to Anadarko, which was the point of the whole thing to begin with.

Little Thunder: So, in the early '80s, you had a couple of group shows?

McBride: Well, I don't recall right off hand. We'd go to things that were--like 25:00Oklahoma City, we'd go to a show, things put on by the tourism department, the Oklahoma Arts Council.

Little Thunder: Did you go to Imogene Mugg's Indian shows?

McBride: Not that I recall, no. Individual art shows, we didn't go to those. And we weren't really finding people that were interested in Indian art, or that's the way it seemed. We haven't done that in years.

Little Thunder: You dealt with Doris Littrell. Doris and Bob McCabe. Do you remember when you first met? Did you meet the two of them together?

McBride: Well, Doris is down the road, at Apache, southwest of here. So, we got 26:00acquainted with her early on.

Little Thunder: When she was in her early twenties or teens?

McBride: No, she'd been pretty well established in Oklahoma City when we started doing business with her. We took her framing, we traded out. She bought a lot of stuff from us, too. She'd come on a buying trip and--

Little Thunder: By herself or with Bob?

McBride: Both. It's been a good relationship. Again, original art's not competitive. It's strictly a matter of whether you like it, and is it priced to suit you.

Little Thunder: One of the nice things about that for the artist is that the work is getting out to other places It's being seen by other people.

McBride: It's kind of slowed down, but I think that there's still a curiosity about it. The world changes. Indians, per se, are not the same attraction they were a few years ago. That circles around, comes and goes. The American Indian Exposition--used to be we'd do a third of a year's business in that week of the American Indian Exposition. Now, Christmas, graduation and things like that, they buy different things. We keep some crafts and things here. A lot of times, 28:00that's the only sales we have. We don't sell the artworks, we sell the crafts.

Little Thunder: When Doris was coming to buy from you, who were some of the artists that she would typically look for?

McBride: Mirac Creepingbear, in particular, that I can think of. We had a lot of Mirac's works.

Little Thunder: What attracted you to his work?

McBride: He was close by. He had art to sell. He was a very prolific artist. Unfortunately, his death, early death, was quite a shock to us. But he was very prolific. And excellent work. We have a few things of his left, but not many.

Little Thunder: In your personal collection? Or here, in the gallery?

McBride: In the gallery. In fact, the main attraction in my home is a painting by Mirac Creepingbear. It's a large painting, about eight-by-ten feet. (Laughs) Put a price on it of $12,000 dollars. (Laughs) Of course, it can't be replaced. There won't be any more of those.

Little Thunder: Did he used to explain images when he came in with something to sell?

McBride: He did. We try to put a name on every painting. Sometimes we ask the artist to name it. It's hard to not get into a pattern of, "Here's another one."

Little Thunder: And Mirac, did he title his paintings beforehand?

McBride: A lot of them. A lot of them. And signed them. He was a very popular artist, too. But, again, he worked at it.

Little Thunder: Doris told me a story she had been told by another collector. She tried to buy work from Rance Hood at different points, and spoke with him, but [according to the story], Rance sort of liked the excitement of haggling.

McBride: Well, I didn't deal with Rance all that much because he really wasn't here anymore, whereas Larry was. Larry lived in Lawton. They'd come up wanting 31:00to sell. Rance--my typical approach was, "Well, how much do you want for it?" And if it was more than I wanted to pay, I'd said, "That's too much. I'll pay such and so." (Laughter) And we worked from there.

Little Thunder: Did you ever get visited by [people] with paintings that were Dick West's or Blackbear Bosin's or [Woogie] Wachetaker's?

McBride: No.

Little Thunder: Doc Tate Nevaquaya?

McBride: Oh, yes, we had Doc Tates. In fact, the Comanche Nation Museum cleaned us out of Doc Tates. Bought them all at once, everything we had. We've got Tim 32:00Nevaquaya here, Doc's son. But all [Doc's] paintings are gone. They took every one of them and put them in their museum.

Little Thunder: What was your relationship with Southern Plains Indian Museum? Did they ever buy pieces from you or did they ask you to help with shows?

McBride: Well, I don't know how I describe that. We got along real well. They didn't sell to us, we didn't sell to them.

Little Thunder: Did they ever borrow pieces for a retrospective?

McBride: Not that I remember. They had their own special group that went to them first and us second, which didn't keep us from buying or not buying. There was 33:00not a problem. It was either for sale or it wasn't. However, their one big display room, which has several artists, we had some of the same works by the same artists. They have a fine collection, I might add. I don't really know whether they're for sale or not. I haven't seen them priced. So, they apparently bought them to display them. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Sometimes people in the media have some power in terms of expressing their opinions, and I'm wondering if you ever took an editorial stance on Indian issues that maybe other non-Indian residents in the town might 34:00have disagreed with?

McBride: Well, we've been kind of low-key on that. We are fully aware of the fact that, well, for instance, the school system. I think the enrollment is 62 percent American Indian. It's here. There's no point in fussing about it. Editorially, we've tried to be positive. We get negative, maybe, occasionally.

Little Thunder: You mentioned that Anadarko Indian Fair was a time when, in the '80s, you did about a third of your business [for the year]. Can you kind of describe the atmosphere in the town and here at the gallery?

McBride: Well, yes, of course, that kind of comes and goes. Just the level of national interest in American Indians was a factor in the whole thing. The oil boom was on in Oklahoma in the '80s. It started in the late '70s, and lasted until the early '90s. (Laughter) Made a difference. These people around here, in this part of Oklahoma, they call it the Deep Anadarko Basin. It stretches from here to Elk City, north into Custer County, and up around and down Anadarko. It's the deepest point. So, that's the reason for the name. Not that that's 36:00relevant to this conversation. (Laughter)

It was pretty free and easy there for a while. We, in our own case, had one oil lease on five acres that paid three thousand dollars an acre. And there was a lot of that. They had restricted drilling down to 15,000 feet. So, since everything was deep here, it was very energetic. It started out around Elk City and gravitated this way. But as the lease money rolled in and the gas and oil rolled out, why, incomes of the people, locally, went up, and they were buying Indian art. And the people that come here to visit were buying Indian art.

Little Thunder: So, you had a lot more local purchasers during that period?

McBride: Well, I say local-- Oklahoma people, in particular. The whole state benefitted. Some of them came to see the activity. At night, you could see--I could count as many as six rigs running from my house. We were on 640-acre spacing, so that gives you some idea.

Little Thunder: When the oil [prices] fell, in the mid-'80s when the crunch came, a lot of Indian art galleries in Tulsa and Oklahoma City really felt that. I imagine it was the same for you?

McBride: Well, it just kind of tapered off. It just didn't crash, but it just 38:00kind of went away. We still have some activity here, but not like it was then. It was crazy. There's just no two ways about it. People would come in and look at a piece of work and stand there and hold it. We finally had to put up these signs, "Do not remove paintings. Ask for assistance." (Laughter) It was really pretty good. That's why we have Navajo earrings and Hopi silverwork here, in addition to local arts and crafts things. Of course, we were buying, too.

Little Thunder: Did you go out to the Fair to buy occasionally, then?

McBride: No, they came in here. In other words, the buyers and the sellers, this 39:00was a meeting place for them. So, I tried to stand between them all the time. (Laughter) I did the buying and I did the selling, too. (Laughter) Oil escalated prices somewhat, [but] we maintained the same markup. We don't just go through periodically and raise prices.

Little Thunder: When artists brought their work in, in the past, if there was a lot of cultural content, did you sort of take notes on that or mental notes? How much a part of the business was that?

McBride: No, as I said earlier, there's at least one painting that I can think of, which I didn't like it, but I bought it anyway. (Laughter) I didn't pay a real good price for it, and I didn't get a good price for it when I sold it. But it did sell. And I've always been surprised by that. So, I kind of decided that I didn't want to be putting my taste on the walls, necessarily. Whatever came this way, if it was attractive, that's the main thing. A lot of the works that we have now are imaginative as opposed to being realistic. In other words, the Five Kiowa Artists are all gone, and they lived it. Today's artists, they're 41:00more contemporary to my mind than are the Kiowa Five. So, they paint what they see. Sometimes, some of their work is pretty weird. We try to stay away from weird, unless it's just priced to where you can't refuse, just too good to be true. There's not much of that. We have a pretty good variety of work. Some of it's modern, some of it's contemporary, some of it's ancient. Some of them you can look at and say, "Yes, I remember him," and that sort of thing.

Little Thunder: You do have a nice, diverse display.

McBride: Yes, in fact, I see these galleries--and I can remember some that I visited over the years--where you'd have a large wall and the painting would be on the wall there, and there wouldn't be anything around it but cushions and chairs, and [you'd have] to walk and look at it. Even the Louvre Museum in Paris is not as cluttered as this place. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What did you pick up from going to galleries and trying to see how they displayed art?

McBride: Well, particularly, west of here, we traveled some. And a lot of the things we did were, we went to art galleries.

Little Thunder: So, are you talking, like Santa Fe?

McBride: Yes, Santa Fe. We had a half-interest in a condominium in Tucson, so we spent a lot of time out there. We went out of our way to look at them. We took 43:00one thirteen-state trip one time. One of the big things we looked at was art galleries.

Little Thunder: What year was this?

McBride: Oh, I was afraid you were going to ask that. (Laughter) Let's see, Carla is forty-six, and she was three, so it has been forty-three years ago.

Little Thunder: What ideas did you come back with?

McBride: I don't think we came back with anything specific. That's why I mentioned this immense space given to galleries. Although, we have a lot--I think it's ten or eleven rooms here. It's a lot, but it's set up so one or two people is all that is required to handle it.

Little Thunder: I understand you had a fire in the newspaper office and at the gallery in 2009.

McBride: The gallery wasn't involved in the fire, just the newspaper. And it was in a separate building from this. Of course, currently, the operation is out of this building. What happened was a bar, pawn shop, whatever was next to the newspaper, mysteriously caught on fire. And we had a common roof. Our building was a seventy-five-foot front--fifty feet was occupied by the newspaper, and twenty-five by this bar. The fire went over the wall and just burned us to the ground.

Little Thunder: And you had artwork in there.

McBride: Yes, I had a lot of art, nice work, too. Most of it was large pieces. We had a good room to display it in.

Little Thunder: Were they premium pieces?

McBride: Well, mostly. That's partly my wife's doing. She liked everything we had, except one painting, which was about a sixteen-by-twenty that I liked. It burned up in the fire, too, as did [others] by well-known artists, quality people. Good works that were in there--I don't know how many were there. We had one wall that had about five or six on it. Maybe fifteen pieces.

Little Thunder: That's tough. Talk to me a little bit about this building that the gallery's housed in, what it was originally.

McBride: When we came down to Anadarko in '37, this was a Safeway building, a Safeway store. What's now a parking lot to the north of the building was a drive-in on the corner. When Safeway built its own building and moved out of it, why, the building owners, the Browns, converted the property to the Anadarko Indian Agency, which handled the affairs of seven tribes. We also have the Anadarko Area Office here, which is all of Western Oklahoma and some of Kansas and Texas and New Mexico and everything else.

I bought the building--first of all, I wanted the thirty-two off-street parking 47:00spaces that came with the parking lot. I bought the building for what seemed like an awful lot of money at the time, with the idea of locating the newspaper in it. I just never did do it. The boom played down. What else could we do? Well, we had this art gallery, which wasn't in this building at that time. It was at another property. One of the things we could do was open up and expand our art gallery, so that's what we did. We kind of went on a buying spree.

Little Thunder: To fill the walls a little more.

McBride: Yes. There was quite an interest at that time. Everything worked out well. Unfortunately, deep drilling got to be terribly expensive. (Laughs) The 48:00640-acre space would kind of limit--that's a square mile. So, you only have one [well] to a square mile instead of four or six or eight. It may come back, you never can tell. It just depends on whether we all decide to run cars on natural gas. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What's a memorable transaction for you that happened with another art dealer?

McBride: Well, Doris did buy quite a few things from us. She didn't buy it all at once. She came down periodically. She'd shop through and see things she 49:00liked. I've been up to her place--

Little Thunder: In Oklahoma City?

McBride: And seen some of our old pieces up there. She bought a lot of Mirac Creepingbear's work.

Little Thunder: I know she was grateful to be able to buy that from you.

McBride: She has a nice gallery, I always thought. It's well arranged, considering location and everything else. She does a good business, too. Always has. But she also has extended out. Of course, I understand--and I haven't visited with them in, say, a couple or three years--that she's not as active as she once was. Maybe I'm not as active as I was once. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What about a particularly memorable transaction with another artist?

McBride: Well, I don't have any that come to mind where we would sell to another artist.

Little Thunder: I meant to say, an artist coming in and selling to you.

McBride: I've had them come in with as many as twenty paintings. I had one here just a few weeks ago, and I picked out four, I think. You've seen a lot of them. That was Tim Nevaquaya. I've got one of the paintings on the wall there on consignment. I said, "I'll just put that one for sale, too." I didn't want to 51:00buy it. I don't know whether--we haven't sold any of them, so--

Little Thunder: But that's a nice grouping.

McBride: Well, that's a periodic thing. A lot of the artists have other jobs these days or they're like me. I retired on the job, rather than from a job. (Laughter)You can see from looking at the artworks that we do have a pretty good collection from some of these people. But they didn't come in all at once. They came in over a period of time. You see a certain similarity from paintings. We do have some people that come in and look around, and I'm convinced that they're 52:00trying to decide what to paint.

Little Thunder: [Looking] for ideas, maybe?

McBride: That's something I learned. I was on the Board of Directors for Indian City U.S.A. for twenty-seven years. I wasn't active, particularly, in the operation part of it, but I was pretty well up to date on it. So, I learned something about buying and selling Indian art. That was the other source, and here. Although, we've got a lot more artwork than Indian City has.

Little Thunder: Can you explain a little bit about Indian City and what the board did?

McBride: Well, it was getting complicated. I was off the Board. I think Caroline [my wife] was on it at that time. She went on the Board about a year after I 53:00left, I guess. The board was advisory. They had a hired manager. He worked with the Board. The day-to-day operations were turned over to him. We were there a lot, and I wrote about it in an editorial here the other day, about [when] the Japanese Ambassador to the United States came to visit Indian City. I was there 54:00and Dixon Palmer, the late Dixon Palmer--he just died. He took the ambassador on a tour of Indian City. When it was over with, the ambassador asked his assistant to come over and inquire if tipping was permissible. He said, "Sure." So, he gave Dickson a pretty good-sized bill, at least for that time. I don't remember what it was, a twenty, I think. Could've been a fifty, I don't know. Anyway, Dickson smiled and kind of nodded his head, and waved at him and says, "Aho!" which in Kiowa means, "Thank you." The two Japanese put their heads together, and the assistant came over to Carl West and inquired what did "Aho" mean? Carl 55:00told him, "It's Kiowa for 'thank you.'" He says, "Oh, I'm much relieved. 'Aho' in Japanese means, 'You fool.'"

Little Thunder: (Laughter) One of those language things.

McBride: I've got to say that was my favorite memory of a good friend at Indian City. I enjoyed it. I left because they decided to pull in their horns and not expand, so it was a waste of my time.

Little Thunder: That was quite a draw.

McBride: Well, it is. They continued on for several more years, and they sold it to the Kiowa tribe, who tried it for a while and then shut it down. We had somebody come by the office the other day, inquiring about what they might do 56:00with Indian City. Well, they should have left it open. So, I don't know. I don't know if people have lost interest. Indian City was extremely unique when it was first founded in the early '50s. It was the only thing like it in the whole United States. It's been duplicated many times over. In fact, an outfit in California even used the name until we told them it was copyrighted, and they better quit, which they did.

Little Thunder: They had live demonstrations, and they had replica dwellings.

McBride: Everybody kind of picked up on it. The seven villages, in itself, were really unique, although the Wichita Grass House I'd seen before. I'd never seen the others, other than a tipi camp. Of course, you didn't have buffalo hide. 57:00There's a shortage of buffalo, even though Indian City had a small herd. We used canvas instead of buffalo hides. In the wintertime, tourism dropped off pretty rapidly, and we reduced the employment. Most of the people who remained throughout the winter were craftspeople. They made moccasins and knick-knacks and beadwork, earrings. Things like that would be sold and they paid for themselves that way. Plus, the fact that it sold for a pretty good price. Tricky 58:00business. [People] say, "Well, this was made in Japan." Well, yes, if you had an original Indian artwork or piecework, it wouldn't be that inexpensive. So, you had to supply a unique market.

Little Thunder: Looking back at the gallery business, what was one of the high points for you?

McBride: Well, I've enjoyed it. I've been fortunate to have a mother/son group. The mother died not long ago, Pat Ware, and Sam James III, or Trey he's called, 59:00took his mother's place as the manager. I don't know. I got to thinking about that the other day, "What would I do if I had to operate this myself?" I'd be bored to death, I'm afraid. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That's kind of analogous to the way your family is carrying on, passing down the newspaper business.

McBride: We're in our third generation right now.

Little Thunder: What was one of the low points of your gallery career?

McBride: I don't really think I've had any, other than Pat's death.

Little Thunder: She had worked for you how long?

McBride: Oh, golly, fifteen years. Anyway, she had much of the same appreciation of the works. Although, they left all the buying decisions to me, which worked out well. It kept the pressure off them to buy things that they maybe didn't want. If I didn't want it, I told them, "Thank you. I appreciate you bringing it by. Maybe take it down to Susan Peters, and see if they're interested in it."

Little Thunder: So, she kind of had the same eye as you did?

McBride: Well, she knew the people, and to some extent, spoke the language--a 61:00good hand. Miss her.

Little Thunder: I bet. What do you think it would take for Anadarko to again become a center of Indian art activity?

McBride: First of all, there [needs to] be a resurgence in interest in Indian art, clothing, all that sort of thing. That would help quite a little bit. It may be a generational thing. There's a generation that's more interested in Twitter than they are in earrings or paintings. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: So, cultivating that new generation of buyers and artists?

McBride: Well, there has to be an interest. You know Americans, sometimes they know too much about everything. (Laughter) We still have a lot of foreign visitors here in the gallery. A lot of them come out of Fort Sill. In other words, they're at Fort Sill in Artillery School, and they're in the military. So, if you looked at our sign-in book, you'd see people from all over everywhere.

McBride: Again, a lot of our sales are people that are not residents of Anadarko. So, somebody says, "Where'd you get that?" and they say, "Oh, I got that in Anadarko, Oklahoma." We've had people say, "Yes, so and so had a 63:00painting they bought here." A friend or relative." Interesting.

Little Thunder: Is there anything you'd like to add about the gallery or art business or anything we forgot to talk about?

McBride: Well, I haven't lost interest in the gallery, but everything we've got is for sale! (Laughter) I just rent the space. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Well, let's take a look at a couple of pieces that you found especially interesting.

McBride: I've always been interested in what we call Fire Dancers. I first saw it live at the American Indian Exposition when I was very young. So, this 64:00display is by Terry Allen Picard. He does a good job of the Apache Fire Dancers. There's Apaches and there's Apaches. There's the Fort Sill Apache, and there's the Mescalero Apache. Now, they're related, but there's different kinds of Apaches. So, although they're similar, each of them is different. That's one thing about Indian artists. I know that the ones who come here and look to see what we have want to make sure that whatever they're doing is different. It may look the same, but it will be different. The other guy's head will be turned the other direction or something like that, or the horse will be eating grass instead of just standing there. But they don't copy--or they try not to. So, 65:00that makes it interesting. You rarely ever see paintings that-- Now, these are rather similar in appearance, [but] part of it's the mounting and framing.

Little Thunder: He's got the dancers in different poses.

McBride: Yes, they're doing different things. Once you've seen them live--normally, there will be at least five, sometimes just four, in a pattern doing a dance, and it's around a fire. That's why they're called Fire Dancers.

Little Thunder: Title?

McBride: I don't recall. These are all just labeled Apache Fire Dancers. Dance 66:00of the Mountain Gods, I think that's what they call it in New Mexico.

Little Thunder: How about this piece?

McBride: Well, it's a print. We've sold all his originals we had. He's Rance Hood's younger brother, [Larry Hood]. Never was as popular an artist as Rance or as prolific or expensive. (Laughs) These prints themselves are still rather inexpensive, comparatively. We probably could have bought a hundred of them for not much more than we paid for one. You do see the variety. There's a similarity, yet at the same time, they're different.

So, even the artist competes with himself. Or herself. Although, it is interesting, most of the artists are men. The beadwork, earrings, things like that are more of the women. [Gesturing] These paintings in here are a mixture between Huzo Paddlety and Jeffrey Yellowhair, who is still with us and still painting. We have a whole room in there that's Jeffrey's work. These two funny looking ones up here on the left-top are Nathan Begay. He's from out West. Navajo, probably.

Little Thunder: You dealt with Jeffrey a long time?

McBride: Yes, we bought a lot of his work and sold a lot of his work. He paints period pieces, more or less. Take this painting right here, it's called Yellowhair Power. Just trying to make a painting about some of the Indian thoughts and beliefs and practices that are rather mysterious to non-Indians. I wish that I had more, or room for more, as far as that goes. We're getting a 69:00little crowded in here.

Little Thunder: He's one of the painters that you really like?

McBride: Yes. [Now] Huzo Paddlety, he's the one that did the mural on the north wall. If you look at it, you recognize the similarity between what's on the wall and his paintings.

Little Thunder: And you had him do that mural, when?

McBride: Ten years ago. He kind of tends toward pastel colors, what I call pastel colors. They're not the Indian works of, say, Jeffrey Yellowhair, which are more true to life. His are attractive and marketable. There's one right 70:00there, above that buffalo painting, if you catch that. That's kind of a modernistic [piece]. Maybe a little too far out. (Laughter) There'll come a day, though, that that can be considered conventional. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: And as you mentioned before, you know that someone will come in who will like it.

McBride: Yes, I can't judge. What appeals to one may not appeal to me. (Laughs) Which is fine with me. I'm pretty conventional in my taste in Indian art.

Little Thunder: Well, I've really enjoyed talking with you and appreciate your time for this interview.

McBride: Well, you're welcome. Come again.

------- End of interview -------