While we acknowledge that the boarding schools were disruptive and damaging to American Indian youth when they were created, the administration of those schools had changed by the time Tahoma was in fifth grade.

We based our description of life in the Santa Fe Indian School on the testimony of people who had attended school there about the same time that Tahoma did.  When Tahoma was whisked away from his native Tuba City first to Albuquerque Indian School and then quickly to Santa Fe Indian School, the system was despicable. Children were not permitted to speak their native language. Long hair was cut against the wishes of the children. They were marched from place to place in military style. And generally, the objective was to remove any “Indian” from them and turn them into non-Indians.

By the 1930s, a progressive movement in the federal government, pushed along by reformers in Santa Fe, began to mold a system that showed more respect for the individual student. That all happened just after the impressionable young Quincy Tahoma was shifted from Albuquerque to Santa Fe Indian School.The rules were softening, and as he grew up at SFIS, he was able to speak Navajo outside of class and the school had regular events with dances and feasts for the various Pueblo, Navajo and other cultures represented.

So although the beginning of his life in boarding school was tough, his schoolmates looked back fondly on their experiences, particularly in high school. Tahoma was weaned away form the reservation, but he had already been separated from his birth mother and claimed not to have any family at all. And he certainly would not have been able to develop his talent in painting had he stayed on the sheep camp where he grew up. The paintings also gave him some financial freedom, as he was allowed to sell them in the school store that teacher Dorothy Dunn set up.

We believe that it is incorrect to assume that boarding school was always a bad experience. The testimony of students at SFIS during the 1930s contradicts that assumption. (See the First One Hundred Years Project at the University of New Mexico, Center for Southwest Research.)

Museum Hill, Lab of Anthropology on right.

One day Charnell and I visited the library of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology on Museum Hill in Santa Fe.  The Lab has been in existence since 1931 (later merged with the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture), and has both an extensive archival collection and a library where we  browsed.

We were returning to the welcoming adobe building where the building designed by John Gaw Meem, and funded by John D. Rockefeller, copies Pueblo style. The thick walls of mud topped with heavy log rafters favored by Meem (Spanish Pueblo Revival) transformed Santa Fe in the early 1930′s.

We had previously discovered magazine articles that mentioned Tahoma’s art and books and newspapers that carried brief mentions of Taoma when we browsed the library. The slim bio file of Tahoma at the Lab’s library did not yield much information, much to the dismay of the librarian.

So when we made this return visit, the librarian was very happy to tell us about a new acquisition. Somebody had donated school newspapers from the Santa Fe Indian School, and librarians were beginning to catalogue them, but we were welcome to take a look.  Of course they were not a complete collection, but we were ecstatic to discover the Teguayo student newspaper covered the years that Tahoma went to school at SFIS.

When we went to look at the records available at the Lab of Anthropology, we had a long list of questions. One of those questions was, “What grade was Quincy in when he went to Santa Fe Indian School?” We were also curious to know what other interests he might have had besides art.

We knew that he had been sent to Albuquerque Indian School from Tuba City and had transferred to Santa Fe by the time he was in high school.  But suddenly, we found a sports article in the Teguayo that told us that he was playing basketball for SFIS’s 7th grade team in December 1934. Another member of that team, Herbert Manygoats, would surface later in our research as the friend who drove the adult Tahoma around New Mexico.

Tahoma in football uniform

As we continued our search, we learned that Tahoma continued his interest in sports, as despite his crippled arm, he could throw a football a long, long way, according to Harrison Begay. And he set a track record that lasted for decades, and even taught some younger kids to play tennis. But those are stories for another day. Sports helped young men adjust and survive at boarding schools, we learned. And we’ll talk about that conversation later, too.

The photo at the top of the page was taken by Vera Marie Badertscher, all rights reserved. The photo of Quincy Tahoma in football uniform is used with the kind permission of the Roberta Anglen, daughter of Kee Yazzie who was a friend of Tahoma.

Back to you….What’s your guess as to the role of sports in government-run Indian boarding schools?

Back of 1953 Navajo Scout painting - Courtesy of Mark Rosacker

1953 The Navajo Scout – Courtesy of Mark Rosacker

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?

Portrait of Tahoma

WHEW! Haven’t been here for ten whole days but we have a good excuse.  We sent the completed manuscript to the printer yesterday.

Charnell had the task of getting permissions to reproduce pictures, then formatting them to fit, deciding which ones went where (with some input from Vera), making color prints, checking the color, and lot of other technical stuff. Vera wrote and formatted the captions.

In the end, we had more than 260 illustrations!  When you get the Tahoma book, (working title Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist,) you will be seeing over 100 paintings that have never been seen before in public.  So many private donors shared their paintings with us that we have paintings from every year of his painting life, starting when he was a teenager.

We also have photographs that were given to us by girlfriends, school friends, and descendents of friends who knew him during his lifetime.

This collection of photographs of Tahoma seems amazing when you realize that it took years of research before we saw what he looked like in a photograph.  When the Circle of Light tribute to outstanding Navajos was created in the Tanner Trading Post in Gallup New Mexico, we were told they searched for a very long time and finally found ONE picture of Quincy Tahoma.

More about the manuscript in future posts, and why not subscribe by e-mail, so that you can learn all the secrets of writing a biography?

You can read the article  in the Santa Fean online edition if the magazine is not readily available where you live.

Smith goes hunting for Tahoma’s grave in the Rosario Cemetery in Santa Fe and finds the area of the unmarked grave.  It is a sad, but very touching story.

Ever since we found the record of Tahoma’s funeral at the Cathedral and his grave location at Rosario cemetery, we have puzzled over many things. He was not a practicing Catholic, so why the Catholic church funeral and burial? Did his friend Eppie Montoya, politically and religiously well connected, pull a few strings?  Why is the grave not marked? Because the cemetery did not recognize American Indians? Because his friends ran out of money?

Give us your thoughts. And please take a look at Joseph Smith’s lovely essay.

By 2004, we had received encouragement from people like Bruce Bernstein (then at the American Museum and now at SWAIA-Santa Fe Indian Market); Peter Iverson, professor and author of several books on the Navajo; Jim Bialac, leading collector of Indian art; Mark Bahti in Tucson and Ray Dewey in Santa Fe, both leading Indian traders….and the list kept growing.

But more important than encouragement, we had begun to assemble solid facts. Harrison Begay gave Mark Bahti information. Charnell had discovered Jean McSwain, who had been a girlfriend of Tahoma. Charnell discovered the connection between Tahoma and the Christian Brothers of Santa Fe. And the contacts continued to pile up as we filled in the timeline of his life.

We knew we had to publish, when in 2003, out of the blue, a local publisher’s acquisition editor asked if I had any book ideas. Then I met a university press editor and she was very interested in the book and early in 2004, offered us a contract. Soon after, I had the opportunity to talk to another regional publisher who had some interest, and also sent a proposal to a national publisher.  All of these fell through, but with favorable reviews from university reviewers, we could see that there was going to be interest in the book, so we kept filling in the blanks and started actually writing chapters.

We wrote an article that was published in American Indian Art magazine, wrote an article for the Santa Fe newspaper, and were interviewed by the Gallup Trader newspaper and the Navajo Times. And the web site for Tahoma drew more contacts and more information.

Ultimately we tried another private publisher and two more university presses–one of whom took nearly two years to make a final decision– before we found the right match.

But finally, we have found the perfect home for the Tahoma biography, Schiffer Books in Atglen Pennsylvania. Stay tuned as we prepare the manuscript, double check all the photographs of Tahoma’s paintings, and bring you a copy of Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist — a title which may change–another reason to stay tuned.

Please use the comment space to tell us what YOU would like to know about our research and writing of the Tahoma biography.  What do you find most interesting?  Or do you have something to add to our knowledge base? Join in the discussion. We would love to have you be a partner.

The good news.

Quincy Tahoma’s biography will be published by Schiffer Books. The book is due to appear in their Spring 2011 catalog.

A little history.

When Charnell Havens inherited some Tahoma paintings from a relative, she started looking for information about Tahoma’s life and art.  After a few years, she asked Vera Marie Badertscher if she would like to join the effort to uncover Tahoma’s biography and perhaps write a jointly authored book about the painter.

That was in the year 2000. Since then, the two of us have covered a lot of territory and talked to a lot of people, both separately and together.  Among the more than fifty people we interviewed, we have written about three of them here, Ramos and Gerdie Sanchez and Jean McSwain.

Next, we will share the road to publication so far. And we intend to take you along on this journey, so please come back often, and please tell us what you would like to know.

In order to be sure you do not miss anything, we encourage you to sign up for a subscription (see the box on the right) so that we can e-mail you each new post as it is written.

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.