Did the treasure hunt have something to do with that? Sending people out onto BLM land as retaliation for the raid? They found nothing, but I'd talked to some of the people who'd investigated him. In 2009, the FBI and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) raided Fenn's house looking for native artifacts collected illegally.
'But the Indian that left that Arrowhead there 10,000 years ago, did he deserve to leave that there for me to find 10,000 years later?' But weren't archeological objects part of history? A cultural context? Wasn't his treasure hunt a little more, well, contrived? Did his treasure chest deserve the same attention? To Fenn, the treasure chest was an object that told a story-like any archeological find. I was a third-rate freelance journalist, mumbling something about a podcast when he asked where this interview would be published. I was a young writer, 29 at the time, who'd heard about his treasure hunt and driven across the country, from Oregon to New Mexico, to interview him.įenn was a first-rate collector, his study brimming with artifacts from Native American tribes, famous authors, and his favorite artists. He was an old man, 84 at the time, who in 2010 had hidden a chest full of gold coins and other valuables, written a poem full of clues to its location, and invited the world to go looking for it. I don't think Forrest Fenn liked me very much.
