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.

I would like to introduce David Brugge, because he became one of the most important resources that we had as we tried to answer our many questions about Quincy Tahoma.

Several people recommended that we talk to David Brugge, who, they said, knew more about Navajo genealogy than anybody. David lives in Albuquerque, and although he is retired, he still continues his scholarly study and makes presentations to professional bodies. I was going to Albuquerque, so I contacted David and we got together for lunch. We sat on a bench waiting to be seated at a crowded Mexican restaurant, and I wondered where to start on my long list of questions about Navajo relationships and genealogy.

David casually said, “When I knew Tahoma…” and I did not hear the rest of the sentence. He personally knew Tahoma. At that point, the only person we had talked to who personally knew Tahoma was Harrison Begay. Our reliance on David quickly grew from mining his academic knowledge to drinking in the personal recollections that he could add to our story.

Throughout the process of researching the book, I consulted frequently with David, visiting him every time I went to Albuquerque. We sampled the best East Indian restaurant, the best Mexican, Pueblo Indian at the Pueblo Cultural Center and the neighborhood Chinese along the way. He corrected our errors in explaining Navajo culture and Navajo history, and he told us the story of two young men who tried to help the artist as they were starting a gallery in Albuquerque’s Old Town, a story which I will return to later.

Tahoma always told people that he was from Tuba City. In fact he even signed a painting or two “Quincy Tahoma from Tuba City,” but we could find no birth records for him, and it took us a very long time to determine where he was born. Years, in fact.

One key resource came when we asked Mark Bahti to see if he could find out from his friend Harrison Begay if Begay knew anything about Tahoma. Bahti is the 2nd generation owner of Bahti Indian Arts in Tuson, and Harrison Begay used to stay with the Bahti family for a time each year. We knew Tahoma and Begay had both gone to school at Santa Fe Indian School. Since Navajos were a minority in the predominantly Pueblo Indian school, we figured Navajos might have stuck together.  Bahti wrote to Begay, and Begay sent a lengthy, hand-written letter back with all he could remember and find out about

Vera Marie with Harrison Begay in Santa Fe 2006

Tahoma.  Unfortunately, he said, “I found out I didn’t know very much about Quincy Tahoma.”  We knew the feeling. Among the things he wrote to Bahti, was his recollection that Quincy was born not far from Tuba City in a place  near Elephant Feet. This was marginally helpful, since there are at least two Elephant Feet locations in Arizona on the Navajo Reservation, but one is near Tuba City.

We had a false lead when someone suggested that Tahoma was born at Shonto. I drove there and talked to people at the trading post, which is in the bottom of a pretty little canyon, but this was a dead end as far as information was concerned. We contacted Dr. William Adams, who grew up at Shonto and wrote about it, and he had no recollection of Tahoma being from there.

Our second big break came when Mark Rosacker of New Mexico found out about our work, and volunteered to help with research into Tahoma’s family.  Our third major source of information, which dove-tailed with Mark’s work, came from the United States National Archives in the Denver office, where they keep at least some of the school records from Santa Fe Indian School.  More about Mark and the archives in the another post.

Posted by Vera Marie Badertscher

Bundy's majestic stallion is quite possibly the last painting that Quincy Tahoma created.

In the 1950s, Abundio Armijo, Jr. was the Santa Fe Police Department’s photographer and investigator.  Bundy had a little lab at the jail which he let Quincy Tahoma use as an art studio of sorts whenever the painter was drying out from public intoxication.

One day, the Navajo artist brought a beautiful painting of a majestic stallion to the jail to give to Bundy in appreciation for his kindness.  Little did Bundy know that he would be called to Tahoma’s apartment just two weeks later to record the artist’s death.

To the best of our knowledge, this may be the last painting that Tahoma created. You can see Bundy and his 1956 painting, as well as some other owners and their paintings, in the slide show on the home page at our Tahoma web page.

Do you know of any other paintings Tahoma produced shortly before his death in October 1956?

Photo by Charnell Havens. All rights reserved.

Cliffor Brito and his custom painting

It was certainly an unusual friendship, the jailer and the prisoner.  Or was it?!!

Quincy Tahoma seemed to make friends everywhere he went, and the Santa Fe jail was no exception.  As a 1950s frequent guest due to public intoxication, the young Navajo endeared himself to the guard, Clifford Brito, who let the artist out of his cell to perform janitorial duties and to paint.

Tahoma showed his gratitude by painting a beautiful scene of a brave rounding up horses.  The art work was custom designed to fit over the doorway of the jailer’s mobile home and  Brito treasured that painting until his death in 2008.

You can view Clifford Brito and his painting in the slide show on the home page of  the Tahoma web site. I took this picture when I interviewed him in 2004 during a research trip to New Mexico.

Do you know of other instances of jailers and prisoners becoming friends? Have you heard any other jail-time stories about Quincy Tahoma?  We were told, for instance, that he was briefly incarcerated in Indiana or Illinois while on a road trip with a friend, but the details of that adventure are scant.

Photograph by Charnell Havens. All rights reserved.

Tesuque Drive-In Theater with Mural Quincy Tahoma Painted

August 31, 2004

“History is documented with ‘personal recollections.’”

Mona Ortiz Stetina wrote that in an e-mail to Anne Cavanaugh at the Santa Fe New Mexican.

We had written an article for the New Mexican telling people a little bit about Quincy Tahoma and our project and asked for their help. Along with the article, we printed a picture loaned to us by Dan Fannell whose step father Jim Wilson was one of the many people who had befriended Tahoma. A drive-in movie had provided a giant canvas for one of Quincy’s favorite subjects—a horse being spooked by a skunk. We did not know the name of the drive-in, but had been told it stood on Cerillos Road in Santa Fe. (more…)