DENVER AND WASHINGTON — Striking at a longtime practice in the Four Corners area, federal authorities Wednesday unsealed indictments against 24 people in what they called the largest investigation ever into the looting of Native American artifacts on public lands.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the charges at a Salt Lake City news conference and said in a telephone interview that many of the stolen items, valued at $335,000, came from sacred burial sites. "The message that we're sending is, we're not going to tolerate this kind of activity," he said.
The charges stem from a two-year undercover investigation into excavators and buyers of the artifacts in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Federal authorities developed an antiquities dealer as a source who wore a hidden microphone to record several illicit transactions, according to court records.
The items varied: an ax, woven baskets, sandals, ceramic bowls, a rug made with turkey feathers.
"Pot hunting" for Native American treasures is a pastime in many rural communities in the history-rich region.
The high desert of the Four Corners region was home to a flourishing Native American civilization centuries before European exploration, and traces of these inhabitants are found throughout the canyons and mesas of the Southwest, preserved by the arid air inside caves, on rock faces and in towering cliff houses.
Archaeologists, Native American groups and preservationists have long argued that the government has not moved aggressively enough to stamp out the plundering of artifacts. One of President George W. Bush's final pardons was granted to the first Utah man convicted of stealing artifacts from public lands.
"State, local and federal officials have not been very forceful about this in the past," said David Nimkin of the National Parks Conservation Assn.
Many experts also say the government hasn't convinced the public of the damage done by pot hunting, which destroys the historical record that allows archaeologists to better understand the Southwest's earliest inhabitants.
"It's like burning down the library before you have a chance to read the books in it," said Barbara Pahl of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Pahl was in Blanding, Utah, last week -- the isolated town of 3,000 where most of those indicted live -- talking with city officials about how to persuade locals to refrain from disturbing ancient sites. She was dispirited at the wide range of people who authorities allege are poachers.
