Like many people last weekend, I took the public tour of the new Church History Library in downtown Salt Lake City, where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stores some of its most precious artifacts.

In one of the library's reading rooms, some artifacts are housed in glass cases. They run the gamut from a first-edition copy of The Book of Mormon with handwritten notations by Joseph Smith to a genealogy board game from the '70s (with garish colors true to the period).

Such artifacts are a record of a people. The artifacts are clues to how they lived their lives, and what they believe to be important.

Nobody would look at these precious items and say to themselves: "Gee, I wonder how much these would fetch on eBay?"

The monetary value of artifacts from another group of people -- the Native American tribes of the Four Corners area of southeastern Utah -- was a hot topic last week, when federal officials announced the arrests of two dozen suspects accused of trafficking in looted archaeological items.

The case has been in the works for two years, with the FBI and the Bureau of Land Management working with an unnamed dealer who bought and sold artifacts including ceramics, stone pipes, sandals, jewelry, knives and a turkey-feather blanket.

Perry Maryboy, a Navajo from White Rock Point, told The Salt Lake Tribune 's Christopher Smart that "back in the time when these [Native Americans] were buried, these items were used to take them to the next world." They are clues to how the Anasazi lived their lives, and what they believe to be important.

The undercover dealer, who was wearing a wire during these transactions, paid $335,685 for these artifacts, according to U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman.

But Bureau of Indian Affairs head Larry Echohawk said at last week's press conference, "these articles are really priceless. ... You can't put a dollar figure on them."

Many people in the Utah town of Blanding, where 16 of the 24 suspects lived, were angry not about the crime that may have been committed by their neighbors (who include some of the town's more prominent citizens), but at what they deemed heavy-handed tactics of the FBI in carrying out the arrests.

One Blanding resident told a Tribune reporter, "People woke up with guns in their faces and they arrested them in front of their kids." Another resident was more vitriolic: "Hitler had the Gestapo, and the U.S. has the FBI."

The anti-federal rage intensified after one of the accused -- Dr. James Redd, 60, Blanding's town doctor -- died in an apparent suicide a day after the arrests.

Redd's name has come up before in connection with Native American artifacts. In 1996, a sheriff's deputy witnessed Redd, his wife Jeanne and some of their children digging at an Indian burial site near Bluff, Utah. James and Jeanne Redd were charged with desecration of a corpse. After a six-year legal battle, charges against Dr. Redd were dropped, while his wife pleaded no contest to a reduced charge. In 2003, they paid the state $10,000 to settle a lawsuit brought against them by the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration.

Dr. Redd's funeral is scheduled for today in Blanding. His grave will become an artifact that will offer clues to future generations of how he and his people lived their lives, and what they believe to be important.

Sean P. Means writes the Culture Vulture in daily blog form at blogs.sltrib.com/vulture.