The mystery of Tahoma’s family ties haunted us for years. He told everyone during his lifetime that he had no family.  Some people we talked to believed very strongly that he was raised by non-Indians. Partly they believed that because he had a damaged (or perhaps withered) arm. Since Tahoma never talked about his arm–in fact went out of his way to hide it–most people assumed it was a birth defect.  We were told in no uncertain terms that Navajo families would not adopt a child with a birth defect like that. In fact, if a child had been born back early in the twentieth century with a birth defect he would be put out to die.

Some of our interviewees were adamant on this fact, and anthropological books from the time seemed to bolster that opinion. A woman who had overseen the government nurses who served reservation communities told us that a nurse had rescued a Navajo baby whose family had put him out to die. A part-Navajo woman told us that her mother (a full-blooded Navajo) and her mother’s friends believed that had been Tahoma’s fate until someone rescued him.

Other people, however, were not so sure, and some even had examples of children who had born with defects who were raised by their own families.

The one thing that kept nagging at us about the theory that Tahoma had non-Indian adoptive parents, was the fact that many told us how steeped in the Navajo Way–Navajo beliefs– Tahoma was throughout his life.  He reportedly carried a pollen bag (popularly called medicine bag). We were told that he believed in witches and spirits and the power of evil forces to change from human to animal form.

How could he have such strong beliefs in Navajo ways if he was not raised by Navajos? Eventually we found two surprising answers to our questions.

Do you know someone who held on to his traditional beliefs, even when raised in a different culture?

August 30, 2004 – Charnell’s visit with Jean McSwain
 
    It was a magical weekend.

I just returned from California, where I spent two days as the guest of Tahoma’s very special lady friend from the early 1940s.  I’d had many phone conversations with Jean and her wonderful husband Larry (now deceased) off and on for several years, but had been unable to visit her until now.

I photographed the Tahoma paintings she and Larry had acquired. Then Jean showed me the rawhide jacket and the turquoise jewelry Quincy had given her, the wonderful Christmas card he had drawn for her, and the magnificent sketches he had made of her and her mother. The Christmas card featured a gangly colt and a greeting hand-lettered in the extravagant swooping script that he sometimes used. All had been lovingly preserved throughout the years. 
 
As we talked, she reminisced about their times together and about how very special a person Quincy was.  After a while, she brought out this lovely lady’s compact with an embedded watch on its top. Tahoma had painted two beautiful scenes on it: a cottontail rabbit in the desert on the back and, on the front, an inquisitive little fawn gazing at the time. He had given it to Jean as a special present in 1944, the date still clearly visible in his miniature next-scene signatures.     

Then Jean gave it to me, and I cried.

I told you how I met Quincy Tahoma’s artist friend, Ramos Sanchez through Rex Arrowsmith, an Indian arts dealer and expert. This is about my attempt to find Ramos.  When I knew that I was going to be in Santa Fe, I called Ramos and asked if I could come and see him. Sure, he said, any time.  We settled on a date and time and his wife Gerdie gave me directions to his house, which is outside the San Ildenfonso Pueblo, but within the Pueblo’s reservation lines.

I love the country north of Santa Fe. The land here is punctuated by unexpected mesas and vistas of green-clad mountains in the background. In between wide sweeps of flat dusty land provide scarce vegetation for wandering cows and horses.

It is easy to see why the pueblo people have settled there for hundreds, if not a thousand years.  When the Spanish conquistadors came through the Puebloans were here, and they are still here. Most of their legends say they came down from the area of Mesa Verde in Colorado and split into the many villages that exist today, most along the Rio Grand River that runs south from the mountains in northern New Mexico, past Santa Fe and Albuquerque on its way to Texas.

The directions that Gerdie gave me went something like this. Take the highway north from Santa Fe and follow the branch toward Alamos. Go across the river and when you see the black mesa, look for a trailer house and then we are the next road.  It sounded pretty clear until I got there. But then, I wasn’t very clear on a lot of things. I thought Gerdie’s name was Gertie (like my husband’s aunt Gertrude) until I had visited with Gerdie a couple of times, and saw her name in print.

I missed the turn-off to Alamos which is pretty simple to see when you are familiar with it–and pulled into an orchard where a guy loading crates of fruit explained to me how to get to San Ildefonse.

I saw an entrance to San Ildefonse, but I had not yet crossed a river. Soon I saw another sign for San Ildefonse, and I got worried because I assumed I need to go into the village.  I pulled off the road, and called Gertie on my cell phone. No, she explained, I did NOT need to go into San Ildefonse.  I went on a ways and the road dipped and curved over a bridge across the Rio Grande River. (Duh, I said to myself–”the river” is the Rio Grande.)

Ahead was a large black mesa on the right hand side of the road. Of course there were mesas of varying degrees of darkness all over the place, but this one seemed more dramatic than the rest, and likely to be the landmark.  Good. The bad news, however, lay ahead–a ribbon of road bordered by barbed wire fence, and here and there a cluster of houses or trailers off to the right beneath trees.

Thoroughly confused, I called Gerdie once again. By now I’m sure she had me pegged as an idiot and was wondering why she and Ramos were wasting their time on me.  “Do you see a man painting by the road?” She asked. YES! There he was, easel set up for painting the Black Mesa.  That was a landmark that got me in to their house. Heaven knows how I would have found it if he had packed up his paints before I got there.

This expedition was just another example of communications between the native dwellers of the Southwest who know every natural landmark and notice every change made by man–and the urbanized (even from small towns) non-Indians who rely on roads, named geological features, numbers on houses and signs to get around.

Last weekend I had a phone call from Ramos Sanchez from San Ildefonso pueblo.  Ramos had read the manuscript of Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist and wanted to make two small corrections.  “Is that all?” I asked. “Yep. You two sure did a lot of research,” Ramos said.

Yes we did, and Ramos was a very large part of the research Charnell and I did. Way back at the beginning of Charnell’s quest, before I was involved, her first questions were put to Indian art dealers. I’ll let her tell you the details, but one of the Santa Fe Indian traders she talked to in 2001 suggested several names for us to contact.  One of those names was Rex Arrowsmith, who used to have a store in Santa Fe. Turned out that he now lives in Tucson, so it would be very easy for me to see him.  Well, of course, because he lived so close, I kept thinking I’d get around to it one of these days.

Finally in 2004 I reached him on the telephone just as he was getting ready to go to Santa Fe for the Indian Market. We agreed to talk when he got back to Tucson.  As it turned out, Rex had never met Tahoma personally, but as we talked in his home, he showed me the wonderful art collection he had assembled during his years in the business.  He has several Tahoma paintings, and also showed me some by Ramos Sanchez, who paints as Oqwa Owin, and told me that Sanchez’ father was the famous Pueblo painter, Owi Pi (Abel Sanchez.)

Rex said that Abel definitely knew him and it was possible that Ramos might remember him, too. It was probably a long shot. Well, in fact, when I called Ramos, I learned that he had known Quincy in school, and that Quincy spent a lot of time with his family when they were young. But even better, when I sat down in January 2005 to talk to Ramos and Gerdy, I learned that Tahoma had spent a lot of time with Gerdy Montoya Sanchez’ family before she married Ramos. Quincy and her brother Sonny were best friends, she said. It got better. Gerdy’s mother was a Navajo, and Quincy liked to visit because he liked having someone to speak Navajo with.

Then after Gerdy and Ramos married, Quincy continued to visit the families at San Ildefonso. Except for the time that Ramos Sanchez was in the Navy during World War II and until Ramos and Gerdy moved out of state in the 1950’s, they had spent a lot of time together.

The January 2005 conversation was the first of several long conversations I had with Ramos and Gerdy in the following years, as we talked about Quincy Tahoma. They knew details about his life that nobody else had a record of. Eventually, we would be contacted by their neice who had a collection of snapshots of Quincy, with her father Kee Yazzie, another school boy friend of Tahoma’s.

                                                                                                                          

I am pleased to say that I count Ramos and Gerdy as  friends, and I have twice visited San Ildefonso Pueblo in January on their most important feast day.  We truly could not have put together this book without the help of people like Ramos and Gerdy Sanchez who shared their memories, and helped us understand Native American culture, and people like Rex Arrowsmith, who scoured their memory for someone who might be able to help.

Of course we never stop looking for more information, so if you know someone who knows someone who might have a snapshot or a memory, please let us know.

Please tell us your story about how strangers may have helped you complete a task some time in your life. We would like to know.

We pursued the leads from the January 2005 copies of National Archives Santa Fe Indian School records. David Brugge explained that the closest he could come to the name Sigantizo that we found on the school record as a guardian, would be the Navajo word Teghanitso, which could have been distorted by an English speaker who did not understand Navajo. That name sounds more like Siganitso, which is a name that David recognized.

A letter in the school files refers to Quincy as Tahome (or Tohannie). Harrison Begay had suggested that the name Tahoma came from a clan name for Edge Water. David Brugge now suggested that Tohannie is nearer the clan name for Near Water, To’ahanie. So we felt we were closer to finding out his clan name which might help lead us to any family.

By August of 2005, we had talked to Elmer Jenkins, a Hopi who knew Tahoma in school. He recalled having heard that Tahoma returned to the reservation some time, probably in the 50’s to visit family named Spencer. Elmer had given us a great deal of helpful information about Tahoma and his school years, and his memory was sharp as a tack, so we did not question this recollection, but it presented us with another mystery. If Tahoma had relatives named Spencer, why had we not heard about them?

Now we had another family name to seek out. We hoped to get some information from St. Michael’s on the Navajo reservation, which we have heard has the best birth, death and census records. But when we talked to them, they said they could only give information to a family member. For all we know, Quincy has no living family members.  Catch Twenty-Two. Mark continued to comb through census records and wander down paths with dead ends. He found a boy named Quincy who lived near Leupp in the 1930 census. But the information did not quite match up, so he went back to combing through sometimes almost-unreadable records, looking for “our” Quincy.

Do you know the Spencers that lived near Tuba City early in the 20th century? If so, have you heard of any connection to Quincy Tahoma, or someone in the to’ahanie clan?

Posted by Vera Marie Badertscher May 27, 2009.

New Orleans Balconies

I’ve just returned from a few days in the wonderful, timeless city of New Orleans.  I could not help wondering if Quincy Tahoma ever saw that city?  The odds are slim, but the possibility persists.

The De La Salle Christian Brothers, a French Catholic religious order, founded St. Michael’s school in Santa Fe in 1859 as part of San Miguel Mission.  Originally, the school was open for boys only, and girls went to the Sisters of Loretto Academy nearby.  The street now known as Santa Fe Trail was called University in Quincy’s day because it ran beside the St. Michael’s school.

Quincy Tahoma found a friend in Brother Francis at St. Michaels during the 1950’s. In exchange for a place to stay when he was out of money and recovering from a bout of drinking, Quincy painted pictures for the Christian Brothers, which they still display in their living quarters on the campus of the new St. Michael’s High School on the east side of Santa Fe.  Quincy wrote a letter to Brother Francis after the former principal of the school had retired to the main office of the Santa Fe District of the Christian Brothers. That main office still stands in Lafayette, Louisiana.

In the letter, Quincy says that he might come down there next winter, and inquires whether they have any museums there. Harrison Begay says that he thinks Quincy once traveled to Louisiana, but we can find no other record of such a visit. We have also been unable to learn whether the Christian Brother’s archives contain any correspondence between Quincy and Brother Francis, or if any of his paintings made their way to Louisiana.

Of course, if you have any knowledge about this chapter of Quincy’s life, or if you can lead us to someone who might know, we would appreciate your help.  We are sharing what we know so that others may share with us what they know about Quincy Tahoma. The more stories we have, the better picture we can paint of his life.

Posted by Vera Marie Badertscher May 25, 2009

Photograph by Vera Marie Badertscher. All rights reserved.

In January 2005 we E-mailed the National Archives Western Regional Office in Denver and learned that they had some incomplete school records from Santa Fe Indian School. We were disappointed to learn that they had none from Albuquerque or from Tuba City Boarding School, but excited to find out they did have a file on Quincy Tahoma at SFIS.

Getting copies of those records was like Christmas. There were forms with basic information about Quincy’s enrollment, medical records, all of his grade records and letters to and from school administrators. The most important piece of paper had a typed enrollment record that included a tiny picture of a very young Tahoma.Although many of the lines were left blank, the sketchy information included some valuable clues.

Here is some of the information on that form:

Tohoma, Quincy (with Tahoma, Quincy, written in pencil above the typed misspelled name)

Date of filling blank: November 1936

Date of Birth: December 25, 1918 (as noted in another post, the 18 is written over top of a typed twenty-something)

The lines for father and mother were blank, and after father…living, the answer was :No

Stepfather: Yes, Guardian: Yes, Manuel Sigantizo (with the word “brother” written in after the typed information.

What Day School Did you Graduate From: Tuba, Day School    When? 1928 May 30

And of all this exciting information, some of which proved to be incorrect, we found a census number.  The Indian Census, separate from the ten-year federal census, assigned a Roll Number to each person counted. Some of the Indian Census records still exist, and because birth dates are iffy, and as previously note, spelling of names is frequently incorrect, the Roll Number helps pin down individuals better than anything else.

Thus we were REALLY excited to find Tahoma’s Census Number. Surely, it would lead us to his family. And, finally, it did.

Puzzling information included Do you own your own home? Yes–but size and value left blank. And even more puzzling: Brother’s name: Tahoma Age: 18   Sister was left blank.

So now we had to try to find a copy of an Indian Census with Tahoma’s census number on it, and find this mysterious Manuel Sigantizo.

Do you know anybody who attended Santa Fe Indian School during the 40s and 50s? Did you ever look up their records in the National Archives?

Was it possible that Quincy Tahoma actually did not know his clan as he said? He told people that he had no parents, and that information was in the school records that we found at the National Archives Western office in Denver. But somebody cared for him as a child–and the people who raised him must have been Navajo, since he was well grounded in the Navajo culture. So would they not have told him who his mother was, and therefore what his clan was?

One of the problems with not knowing one’s clan includes not knowing who one can properly marry. Is that why Tahoma apparently never married (although he seemed never to be without a girlfriend)?

With the help of Mark Rosaker, and David Brugge, we kept following the clues. The Santa Fe Indian School records for Quincy Tahoma, incomplete as they were, at least had a registration form  that said “no parents” and listed a guardian, “Manuel Sagantizo.” Someone had written “brother” in pencil. School records indicated Tahoma came from Tuba City. That record also listed Tahoma’s birth date as December 25, 1918 (the 18 was written over top a typed twenty-something)

David Brugge explained that he had never heard of the name Sagantizo, but Saganitso was a rather common name, particularly around Tuba city. A pause here to complain that mis-spelling of names on records complicates research enormously.  And in the case of non-Indians trying to write down what they think they hear a Navajo say, or Navajos using a different variety of their names each time they are asked–well, confusion reigns.

Mark took the information about Manuel Saganitso and ran with it. Digging into on-line birth and death records, he came up with dozens of Saganitsos–most of them demonstrably not connected to Tahoma. To be continued…

Have you had personal experience with a Navajo who was raised by someone other than his/her parents and did not know his or her own clan? We would like to hear such stories.

Posted by Vera Marie Badertscher, May 17, 2009