Heard Museum Book Store

We were invited to sign copies of the Quincy Tahoma biography at the Heard Museum in Phoenix in early March. In addition to one of the best Indian arts and crafts stores you will find anywhere, the Heard has the delightful book store, with a coffee shop right beside it!

The Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market always has a mind-boggling array of art. I thought the Navajos there this year were particularly creative in finding new expressions. When you look at the slide show below, watch for the Navajo hat maker and the Navajo scarf creator (TahNibaa Naataanii) who combines silk and felt.

I also like the ledger paintings which are in two photos of Black Pinto Horse and his work.  Quincy Tahoma was influenced by the early Plains Indians who painted on ledger paper, when there was nothing else to use. We saw many ledger painters at the Santa Fe Indian Market, and it is refreshing to see this historic art brought back to life.

I was there signing Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist  beside Susan Lowell, who writes children’s books set in the southwest, and with a Navajo author, Malcolm Benally who wrote Bitter Water, oral histories  about Navajos who live in the Disputed Hopi-Navajo lands. It was a sunny, lovely day on the patio of the Heard Museum, but hard to stay put with all that great art and entertainment going on all around the grounds.

Hope you enjoy these photos.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Apologies for being away from the blog for a while.  We may be sporadic in our publishing for a time.  In the mean time, read this article in the Rolls Royce Owner’s Luxury Travel magazine about traveling in Dinétah--Navajo land–using Tony Hillerman novels as a guide.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome to Guidon Books at 7109 E. 2nd Street in Scottsdale, AZ

Post by Charnell

Old Town Scottsdale is the epitome of a shopper’s paradise!  From beautiful southwestern jewelry and pottery to paintings and sculptures to fantastic food and drink (make mine a caramel macchiato, please), it’s all available within easy walking distance of Guidon Books.

The store is also only a street away from the location where Quincy Tahoma spent at least two winters selling his paintings at the White Hogan (no longer there) in the early ’50s.

Charnell and Vera at Guidon Books

Guidon Books is where proprietor Shelly Dudley hosted a fantastic reception for our Quincy Tahoma presentation and book signing on October 27, during Scottsdale’s monthly Western Art Walk.

Pam Stevenson, Vera and Brenda Warneka look at a magazine article about the Quincy Tahoma book

Some folks came by personal invitation, as members of the Scottsdale Corral of Westerners. Others came because they had seen the book signing notice in the media and everyone enjoyed socializing around the luscious spread of hors d’ouvres and wine before we started the presentation.

Diana Pardue, Patricia Etter and Dr. Peter Iverson during the social hour

Among the many notables at the reception, we were both delighted and honored to see Dr. Peter Iverson, the acclaimed history professor at Arizona State University.  During our research journey, Dr. Iverson had encouraged us to write the book and he gave us invaluable leads. We depended upon books he has written–particularly Diné: A History of the Navajos and For Our Navajo People: Diné Letters, Speeches, and Petitions, 1900-1960 – to enrich the background information of our own book, Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

Guidon Books was well prepared for the number of people attending the Quincy Tahoma presentation

We enjoyed meeting each and every one of the interesting people who came to hear our presentation, and I’m delighted to say that the stack of Quincy Tahoma books that Shelly had at the beginning was considerably smaller by the end of the evening!

If you are in the Scottsdale area, drop over to Guidon Books, at the corner of Marshall Way and 2nd Avenue, and pick up a copy of Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist for yourself or for a holiday present. While you are there, take a look at Peter Iverson’s wonderful books on the Diné and browse the shelves and shelves of books on American Indian arts and crafts.

All pictures, except for the one of both Charnell and Vera, were taken by Charnell Havens and she owns the copyright. Do not use without express permission.  Thank you.

Would you like to come to a future book signing event?  Check Upcoming Events in the right hand column of the blog for dates and places! If your town is not on the list, let us know where we might appear for a talk and book signing.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Mound builders

Two artist/scholars set off on a road trip of exploration of Indian mounds in the southeastern United States. The exciting blog Ahalenia posted this introduction of their tour in early September. Since then the two have visited and reported on nine different mound sites in six different states, and you can read about these visits on the Ahalenia blog by following the link above.

Not only is the history of these sites interesting, but the variance in the way people today treat the once sacred land gives one a lot to think about.  Some are public parks. Some have been reclaimed by today’s tribes. Some are still on private land and unexplored. The authors accompany their travelogue of the past of southeastern woodland Indians with photographs that make you feel you are there. You’ll have to go to Ahalenia to see their beautiful photographs. They are not including Ohio, but we have borrowed a few photos of Ohio Mound Builder sites.

Serpent Mound , Ohio

When I was a little girl in Ohio, I was fascinated with the 1000-foot-long sinuous Serpent Mound (an effigy mound). We would drive there sometimes on a weekend, and climb up on the viewing tower so we could see the snake with his mouth open, swallowing an egg. My father would tell me about the Mound Builder Indians that once lived on that land.

I was in awe of Fort Ancient, whose high walls measure a total of five miles long . The Newark Earthworks, encompass the Octagon and the Great Circle earthworks, “The Great Circle is one part of the Newark Earthworks State Memorial, the largest system of connected geometric earthworks built anywhere in the world” according to the Ohio History web site.

Octagon Mound, Newark Earthworks

When I was young and the family drove through the midwestern farmland, my father taught us to look carefully at farmers’ fields and see if there was a small hill that looked like it did not belong to nature. That was probably the work of ancient American Indians, he explained. When I was a child, very little was known about the mounds and their builders. They were a curiosity. Some stone tools were found in the area, people collected arrowheads.

Although the Mound Builder cultures remain a mystery, archaeologists have  learned much more. Study such as that being done by the author of Ahalenia and her colleague will shed more light on Mound Builder culture, and hopefully encourage people to have respect for these ancient people. And thanks to my visit to the M’ikmaq ‘s Glooscap Cultural Center in Nova Scotia, I know that there is a connection between those Mound Builders and the Quincy Tahoma’s people, the Diné (Navajo) of the Southwest.

Tahoma painted a semi-mythical past of warriors chasing buffalo, but there was an even more ancient and not mythical past of people who built effigies on the ground and aligned long earthen walls with the sun and the moon.

Having read several of Ahalenia’s posts, I now am itching to travel to the Southeast and see more of the remains of the Mound Builder culture.  Please take a look at her travel/study story and see if you are not amazed.

These photographs all come from Flickr, using a Creative Commons license. You can click on each photo to learn more about the photographer and see more photos.

If you have not yet subscribed to our newsletter, stay informed about our upcoming events by subscribing today. For your convenience there’s a subscription box on the right side of the page. And it is free. (Remember if you are reading this in your e-mail or on Facebook, you’ll need to click through to the Tahoma blog site to leave a comment, or sign up for the newsletter.)

Have you visited Mound Builder sites? Where do you recommend we go to see interesting ones?

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Navajo Girl at Indian Market

I just discovered Storify, a new way to consolidate tweets, photos from Flickr, Google articles, and more.

I made a little story about our trip to Santa Fe next week. Click on the link and take a look.

Charnell and I will be signing books (Adobe Gallery, Thursday, 4-7 pm) and looking for friends of Tahoma.  Will we see you there??

You can buy Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist at the book booth near the Plaza.

(The adorable Navajo girl in the picture comes from a Creative Commons photo on Flickr. You can click on the photo to go to Flickr and see more of the photographers pictures.)

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Photo courtesy of Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe web site

Far away from Navajoland, deep in the southern part of Virginia, the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe is reclaiming its heritage.  A small tribe of dispersed members, it is the only Iroquoian tribe still residing in the Commonwealth of Virginia claiming a documented continual existing “state recognized” status.

Their state recognition became official in 2010, and the tribe recently reclaimed 100 acres of sacred ground where they can meet and on which they will build a museum to honor their heritage.

Tribal recognition by the Commonwealth of Virginia, photo courtesy of Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe web site

Nottoway is an extinct Iroquoian language of Virginia. There are Nottoway Indians living today not only in Virginia, but also in Wisconsin and Canada where some of their ancestors fled in the 18th century. The language, however, has been almost entirely lost, known only from a few scanty wordlists jotted down 200 years ago. So the rebuilding has begun.

By now, you’re probably wondering why in the world Charnell Havens, who spent more than thirteen years researching the life of the Navajo artist Quincy Tahoma, would have any interest in the Nottoways. The reason is simply that my son-in-law Tommy and his family are card-carrying members of this American Indian tribe. His eighth generation grandfather was one of 13 Cheroenhaka chief men (councilman) who made his mark on the first deed of sale to a Colonial in 1735 for land in Virginia’s Isle of Wight County.

I was fascinated by the way that modern Cheroenhaka people’s names come to be, in contrast to the time-honored Navajo way.  In this Virginia tribe, member names are chosen by the individual and become officially registered when the person has reached the age of twelve.

Star Watcher, Running Fox and Shining Moon Melody watching ceremony, photo courtesy of Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe web site

Tommy, who is also part Cherokee and part English and part who-knows-what-else, has chosen a tribal name of Star Watcher. My grandson Trey, whose feet have wings (just watch him in any soccer match!) is Running Fox, and my daughter Amy will be Shining Moon Melody when she is accepted (by marriage) into the tribe. Little Ryan, although he does have a role number, will not become Sky Walker until he comes of tribal age. All the names they selected are surely okay by me.

Did I say “okay”?!!

According to one theory, the “okay” colloquialism came from the Iroquoisan dialect where the word for “yes” is “Ho-Keh”.  It seems that Thomas Jefferson received a written phonetic vocabulary of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) language from one of the last known tribe descendants in early 1800s. In a letter dated July 7, 1820, Jefferson passed this document to a friend, Peter S. DuPonceau, Esq, in Philadelphia who published it. That document reveals the origin of the word “okay”.

This Nottoway expression, now used throughout the world, may have originated as a convenient way for early Colonials to communicate with the indigenous people.

You may learn more about native words and names when you read Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.  We talked here about how Quincy got his unusual (for a Navajo) name. Do you have a story to tell about indigenous people reclaiming their ancestral name?

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

A cocky Tahoma during the 1940's

Quincy Tahoma was a hit with the ladies. All through his life they flocked around him. Valentine’s Day might just have been his favorite holiday after Christmas, the date that he adopted for his birthday. Not that he did anything to discourage the attention.  Now we would not want to say he was vain, but while still a school boy, Tahoma did spend some of the money he made selling paintings on “hair slick.” Joe Sando, who grew up to become an expert on Pueblo history and author of many books, told me that the younger boys like Joe, used to sneak into Quincy’s dorm room at Santa Fe Indian School and “borrow” some of the pre-mousse hair stuff–most likely “Brillcreme, a little dab ‘l do you.” (If you are humming that advertising jingle, we know how old you are!) And the boy WAS good looking. Oh, my.  So many people have commented to us about his thick, wavy dark hair and his friendly smile. It is captured well in photographs that he liked to hand out to friends.

Quincy Tahoma. Check out his right eyebrow.

We can’t say for sure, but the well known photographer T. Harmon Parkhurst, who gave Tahoma a place to work in his studio near the Santa Fe Plaza, probably snapped some of those pictures.

Because so many of these photos, and others have come back to us, we know that the Navajo painter handed them out frequently. Now does that sound like a modest, retiring gentleman to you? Nah. Quincy Tahoma KNEW he was good looking. The picture shown here came from the daughter of his old friend, Kee Yazzie, but most of the pictures we retrieved came from old girlfriends.

Charnell wrote about a visit with one of the first people she found who knew Tahoma personally. Quincy had a serious, and rather surprising, romance with Jean Wallace (McSwain). A couple of people have told us stories about a Navajo girlfriend at Santa Fe Indian School, but after he left school, as far as we know, most of his girlfriends were non-Indian.  There is a romantic tale about the attraction between Tahoma and a quiet Pueblo girl which her mother put an end to, but that girlfriend, now a widow and a grandmother, is not talking.

Nina Bogard, on the other hand, was happy to talk to us and tell us about her summer fling at a guest ranch.  She was only 16 and thought that Tahoma was in his mid-twenties, but he was actually about thirty. They both enjoyed horses and riding and spent happy days on the ranch where her mother had a summer job. She gave us photographs and a long letter that he wrote to her.

Quincy and Nina in 1946

According to Harrison Begay, Taoma had a fling with a rich white woman from the East who came to New Mexico looking for sexual adventures with the “exotic” Native American men.  Artist Begay told us the story about the woman who took Quincy on a merry ride (quite literally) through northern New Mexico and Arizona. Quincy thought she was serious, and bought a ring and took a train back east to track her down, but she turned him down and sent him back to New Mexico.

You see, Quincy Tahoma was a hopeless romantic. He really wanted to get married, and he fervently pursued one possible mate after another, never with success.  He painted pictures for them, gave them his photograph, gave them elaborate gifts, somehow managed to hide his drinking sprees from them, but he remained single to the end of his life.

You can learn more about the romantic side of Quincy Tahoma in our book, Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, published by Schiffer Books in April 2011. We even print a couple of pages from the love letter to Nina, and show you photographs of  Jean and Nina.

Do you have any theories as to why Tahoma apparently did not  pursue Navajo girls or women? He always claimed that he did not know his clan, although we believe he did learn as an adult that he was named for his mother’s clan. Would that have stopped him? Was he attempting to fit in to the white society? Did he not feel worthy of diné families because of his drinking and because he lived in a different society? We would like to hear your theories.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Events

Turquoise

Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show, American Indian Expo, Flamingo Quality Inn, Stone Avenue, Tucson AZ, January 31-Feburary 14. Featured artists and craftsmen, dancing, food.
Tulsa Indian Art Festival, OK, February 11-13, Juried art show and performances and demonstrations.

American Indian Music Festival, Casa Grande National Monument, Arizona, Feburary 12 and 13. This event was new to me, but it is only the third annual. The website promises food and crafts as well as music. Now if the weather will cooperate.

Southwest American Indian Art Fair, the Arizona Museum on the campus of University of Arizona, Tucson, February 19 and 20. Juried show with finest in crafts from around the country. Performance area with music, craft demonstrations, and food booths.

Indian Fair and Market, Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, March 6 and 7. Juried art show, book signings, music and dances.

Both the Denver Art Museum and the Boston Museum of Art have recently opened enlarged Native American collections. In fact, Denver claims to be the first museum to collect American Indian art.

Reading

I’m currently reading  A New Deal for Native Art: Indian Arts and Federal Policy, 1933-1943 by Jennifer McClerran. It is a must read for anyone interested in the development of American Indian Art starting in the 1930s. We have invited Jennifer to stop by Tahoma Blog and talk to us about the book because it intersects with Tahoma’s life in art.

Travelers in the Southwest should not miss Canyon de Chelley, and the nearby Hubbel Trading Post National Monument at Ganado.  On my reading stack, I have a beautiful book, Tséyi’ / Deep in the Rock: Reflections on Canyon de Chelly, about Canyon de Chelley by Navajo poet Laura Tohe and photographer Stephen E. Strom. If you say Tséyi’, the Navajo word for “place deep in the rock”) will come out sounding like what the Spanish heard–Chelley (in Spanish pronounced Shay).

I treasure a copy I acquired recently of an older book, Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site , by our friend David Brugge, who wrote the foreword for Quincy Tahoma, The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

If you want to keep up to date and get good tips about collecting American Indian Art, you need to tune in to the informative, short and snappy posts on the Savvy Collector Blog. Phoenix appraiser Corinne Cain provides the authoritative voice. Her latest post introduced me to the new Google Art Project, where you can visit major museums and see the paintings in the room in which they are displayed, or zoom in for an incredible close-up of the painter’s brush strokes.

This post above is by Vera Marie. The photo is by “Cobalt123,” used from Flickr with Creative Commons License.

Would you like to share places to go or things to read? We would love to hear from you. And we are still waiting to learn if you would be interested in having the opportunity to buy a Tahoma mousepad or other things with his paintings printed on them. So if you are reading this on Facebook or in your e-mail, please click through to the blog page and make a comment.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.