During our research we were constantly being surprised by people who came up with information that either confirmed our guesses, or totally disproved our assumptions and set us out on a new trail of clues.

Take for instance the unusual picture of a Navajo man who painted beautiful pictures while he was in the hospital.

One clue that confirmed what we had been hearing,was an e-mail from a woman who said that her father had been a doctor at the Indian Hospital at Santa Fe and had treated Quincy Tahoma.  When I contacted the retired doctor by phone, he told me about Tahoma’s problems with alcohol and the kind of treatment that patients got at that time. The time was the mid 1950′s.

He liked Tahoma, but knew that he had a tendency to spend any money he had on alcohol. Nevertheless, when Tahoma said that he would like to have a radio (we had been told that he liked music) the doctor gave him one, thinking that was not cash, and since Tahoma really wanted it, he would not sell it. Wrong.  As soon as he left the hospital, he sold the radio and used the cash to go “partying” as he and his friends called their drinking binges. The doctor was disappointed. Not only in Tahoma, but also in himself for being mislead.

This doctor told me what the hospital was like and how well-liked Tahoma was by the staff and the other patients.  Tahoma could never be long without his paints, and as soon as he was able to, he would start painting–even in the hospital.  Although most of the alcoholic patients that showed up were suffering from secondary problems–injuries from fights and falls–Quincy Tahoma never had the broken bones and bruises. He was a gentle soul, the doctor said, and apparently avoided fights.

And information about the hospital stays came in two other unexpected ways, as well. When I was visiting the school librarian at the Santa Fe Indian School, a man who worked as a custodian there overheard our conversation and said “I knew Quincy Tahoma.”  It was almost spooky that in this school, nearly 70 years after Tahoma was a student there, I would hear someone say that.

It turned out that the man was hospitalized as a child, and remembered the adult Quincy Tahoma painting pictures in the hospital. Quincy made quite an impression on everybody he met.

The final piece of information that confirmed the hospital stay and using the hospital as an art studio, came when Mark Rosacker turned over one of the Tahoma paintings he had bought, There he saw that beside the signature on the back it said “Santa Fe Indian Hospital.”

Do you look at the back of paintings you own to see if you can find clues to the artist’s life?

Quincy Tahoma painted hundreds and hundreds of paintings in his short life. Charnell has embarked on the huge task of rounding up photographs, or at least visual descriptions of all the paintings we can find that Tahoma painted.

We know we will never find them all. There will be somebody who has a Tahoma in the closet and does not use the Internet and has not found us.

There will be a museum somewhere that we did not realize might have a collection of American Indian art.

But in the meantime, Charnell is re-contacting all the private owners we talked to in the past ten years to be sure they have not sold their paintings or bought new ones, and to be sure that we have their permission to use a photograph of their paintings in our book.

And she is contacting all the museums that we know have Tahomas in their collections and trying to get their permission to reproduce their paintings.  Museums have to get money to operate from somewhere, and one of the places that they get it is by charging a fee for the use of their photos. Sometimes that fee is beyond our ability to pay. Sometimes they will give us a break because this book will be THE book of record about Tahoma and his paintings, and it would be a shame if their particular collection, chosen with such great care, was not included.

You know how it is. Museums always have way more paintings than they can display.  So some of these absolutely top notch Tahoma paintings have never (or rarely) been seen by the public.  Our book will be an opportunity for thousands of interested people to finally see what good taste those museums have, and what a great painter Tahoma was.

All of this is to let you know that if you have a Tahoma painting, or if you know the whereabouts of one–it is not too late to be considered for our book.  Please leave a comment below or let us know by e-mail and we will talk to you. We want to be sure that his very best is represented. Have you seen Tahoma’s paintings in museums outside of Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma that we should be aware of? Do you know someone with one in his or her private collection? Let us know.

Here is a list of the museums that we are in contact with:

Arizona

The Heard Museum

Amerind

Arizona State Musem

California

California Academy of Sciences (Ruth and Charles Elkus

Collection)

Connecticut

Yale Beinecke Library

New Mexico

Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico

New Mexico Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

Wheelwright Museum

School of American Research

Milicent Rogers Museum

Oklahoma

Fred Rogers Jr. Museum

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Gilcrease Museum

Philbrook Museum

Washington D.C.

National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institute)

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.

Writing a biography of Quincy Tahoma took a lot of research verging on detective work. We started our research with questions.

• Where was Quincy Tahoma born?
• What was his clan?
• Were any of his family members still living?
• Was he, in fact, adopted, and if so, why?
• What caused the injury to his arm that many people mentioned?
• What did he do during World War II? (Many biographical sketches said he served in the armed forces, and some even said he was a Code Talker.)
• Why did he die so young?
• Where is he buried?
• Where are his paintings today?
• Why did he go from Arizona to Santa Fe for school?
• Who were his friends? Did he ever marry?
• Who influenced his painting?
• Where did he live during his life? Where did he travel?
• Did he ever return to the Navajo reservation?

Some questions were quickly answered, but we tried to verify from more than one source. Every time we found an answer to a question, we found more questions.  And we found no answers at all for some questions.

But what we did find amazed and delighted us.  We never dreamed that we would find so many people who knew Tahoma personally, or that children and nieces and nephews of people who knew him would be able to tell us stories passed down through their families.

If you continue to read these pages, you will see where we went to find answers and you will have an opportunity to help us answer more questions. And any time that YOU have a questions, please ask. We’ll be happy to try to answer.

In order to keep track of the entire journey, we encourage you to subscribe to the blog by RSS feed or by e-mail. And do tell your friends, won’t you?

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.