GUEST: It's a kachina doll. It was my father's. He taught school in southern Idaho during the '20s, when they relocated tribal people from different places. They sent children all over the United States, and this young man became a friend of my father's, and, and when he left school, he gave my dad the doll, so...
APPRAISER: Do you know where it came from?
GUEST: From hearing what my dad talked about and what he said, you know, that it was from Southwest America somewhere.
APPRAISER: It's from northern Arizona.
GUEST: Northern Arizona?
APPRAISER: It is a kachina doll, but there's some different things about this one that makes it a little bit special. It's not like most kachina dolls. We actually know who made this doll.
GUEST: Oh, really?
APPRAISER: Yeah. It was made by a guy named Wilson Tawaquaptewa.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER: And he was the Hopi chief at Oraibi, but there's two Oraibi villages, and I'm not sure which one it was.
GUEST: See, that name sounds familiar.
APPRAISER: Yeah, but... Because he was the chief, he wasn't going to do something traditional and sell it, and so he made these kachinas that are like no other kachinas.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: You go through the books and you're not going to find one of these, because they most often represent a badger, or they have characteristics of a mouse or some animal in his world out there that's not a traditional kachina, and this is one of them. The way that we spotted it is, he liked to use this indigo color, and... It's this really faded blue here.
GUEST: I never noticed it.
APPRAISER: Yeah, we almost didn't, too. (laughs) Tawaquaptewa worked from about 1930 into the early 1960s. If it wasn't one of his and it was a
kachina that looked like it was from the '30s, like this one, that's worth some pretty good money-- $2,500...
GUEST: Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER: ...to $3,500. But because it's a Wilson Tawaquaptewa, there's a group of collectors now who recognize his work, who buy his work. On a bad day, this is worth $7,500 to $8,500. Uh...
GUEST: (chuckles)
APPRAISER: If it's a good day and the right collector's in the room, $9,000.
GUEST: My goodness.
APPRAISER: So it's something real special that you ended up with.
GUEST: Oh, no kidding, and to know that you can recognize the maker, you know...
APPRAISER: Yeah.
GUEST: That is, that is amazing. That surprises me, surprises me a great deal.
APPRAISER: Great.
GUEST: Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, it does.
