In Quincy Tahoma, Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, if you turn to the acknowledgements,you see, “We owe enormous thanks to dozens of librarians, archivists, government officials, museum curators, and experts in Navajo life and art for digging up the primary and secondary source material we needed….We do not dare start thinking each of those people individually, but we value every one of them, who universally went beyond what they simply had to do and added their personal interest and attention to our passion for finding facts.”

That would include numerous librarians at the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, at the library of the Museum of New Mexico, and the library of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Also librarians at the Santa Fe Indian School, at the Fra Angelico Chavez History Library in Santa Fe, the New Mexico Library and Archives, The Center for Southwest Research in Albuquerque and Special Collections at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Although we did not dare in the book, I will dare here, by naming a few of those people who helped me personally.

Dr. Peter Iverson, Arizona State University, retired, was one of the first people Vera talked to. He told us the project was important and spent hours giving us names of other people to contact.

Bruce Bernstein, welcomed me to Washington D.C. several years ago with an impromptu tour of the Suitland Maryland storage area for the yet-to-be-opened National Museum of the American Indian. Bruce lived and worked in Santa Fe for many years and wrote a book with Jackson Rushing about the Santa Fe Indian School.

Alan Furth, archivist at Arizona State Museum on the campus of the University of Arizona, told us about the collection in that institution of about 50 paintings by schoolboy Tahoma, and shared them with us.

Laura Holt became a friend as she moved from one institution to another in Santa Fe. (Now with the School for Advanced Research Catherine McElvain Library.) She was always ready to let me pick her brain and suggest new avenues of search.

And I owe an enormous debt to Elizabeth Kennedy, professor of history and teacher of oral history, for helping me understand the requirements of writing true history, and techniques of developing oral history into literature. She questioned my assumptions, and sharpened my sensitivities and gave me the generous gift of her time.

In the tricky business of a non-Indian writing about a Navajo, we had the help of several people, in addition to the oral history sources named in the book. In addition to the warm welcome we received from the Saganitso family of Tuba City, and the wealth of information from Harrison Begay which are acknowledged in the book, here are some others who helped.

• Mark Bahti, owner of Bahti Indian Arts, not only gave us advice on gathering information and on publishing, but introduced us to Harrison Begay and opened up a whole world of information from one of Quincy’s best friends.
• Carolyn O’Bagy Davis, non-Native who has written much about the Hopi, gave very appreciated advice.
• Ron Maldonado, Culture Liaison  for the Navajo Nation, paved the way for our research trips to the reservation, and sat and talked with us, sharing ideas and interest.
• Gerdy Sanchez, who is half Navajo, shared what her mother had told her of Navajo culture. She and Ramos Sanchez, in San Ildefonso Pueblo read the manuscript to look for any mistakes we may have made.
• Dr. Jenny Joe, professor at the University of Arizona, also gave us first hand feedback from a Navajo point of view as one of our first readers.

On a personal level, I would like to thank two important groups of writers who have been friends throughout her career–AWC  and TWW , for support, encouragement, cheerleading and practical advice. And of course my chief personal cheerleader–my husband Ken, who seems to think that I can do anything even when I am having serious doubts.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.