Searching for Tahoma 2
A distant relative ponders the legacy of this long-dead Native artist
Quincy Tahoma’s The Chase of Monument Valley, 1947
tHere it was: section 13, row 11, grave number 34. My research had led me to Rosario Cemetery, but I didn’t think there’d be much to find. Everything I read said unmarked, and despite the literalness of that word, its actual meaning hadn’t yet materialized for me. I hadn’t expected to find the actual grave of Quincy Tahoma.
It was a breezy, cold day last fall when I did find it. A man in the cemetery office gave me a map of Rosario’s grounds and a list of names. Tahoma was near the bottom, highlighted. Holding the papers tight in my hands, I found Tahoma’s spot rather easily. I marveled for a moment—I was actually standing above his grave. Not that anyone else would know. “Unmarked” meant that Tahoma’s final resting place was nothing but gravel. No headstone, no vase for flowers, no designation marker, nothing. His spot was simply coordinates on a sheet.
I couldn’t help wondering how many people had come to Rosario, in Santa Fe, in search of the unmarked grave of this once successful and prolific Navajo artist, an alcoholic who died over 50 years ago, in 1956, at the age of 35. Without a marked grave, he couldn’t even be stumbled upon. His name couldn’t even be spoken arbitrarily, like many names are when people search for others; all that could be heard above his grave was the shuffle of feet on gravel. A name and a set of dates chiseled in stone is significant, maybe more so when absent.
I first heard Quincy Tahoma’s name when I was a kid. My mother would mention him from time to time, mostly in relation to our family’s supposed acquisition of a handful of his paintings back in the 1940s and early ’50s. Paintings I have yet to see. Tahoma’s art, though, was certainly the driving force in his life, and continues to be what floats his name around museums and galleries today. What he created with his hands is what marks him in today’s world, the one thing that propels his legacy forward and backward. His paintings are the coordinates that give direction back to the places and people that crossed his path, and ultimately to the short life he lived.
An early piece of his, titled Watching the Sheep (1932), offers a simple look into his early life: tending sheep in the rural areas of Tuba City, Arizona. He was 12 years old when he painted it, a fifth-grader attending the Santa Fe Indian School. He received art direction under Dorothy Dunn, who had created the Studio art program, from which many prominent Native American artists would emerge (Allan Houser, Oscar Howe). He went on to blossom as an artist in the late 1930s, and found much success and admiration throughout the ’40s. He never went back to the reservation in Arizona and was known to tell people that he didn’t have a family.
Research done by authors Vera Marie Badertscher and Charnell Havens, who have written a soon-to-be-published biography of Tahoma, points out that at the peak of his success he “seemed poised to dominate the Indian art market. He worked constantly . . . continued to experiment and innovate and easily sold everything he produced.” But his deterioration at the hands of alcohol seems to be what filled the shadows of his existence, bringing his life to an end on October 9, 1956, “in a small, bare Santa Fe apartment near De Vargas St.”
Tahoma received many awards for his work throughout his life, including, in 1956, first prize at the New Mexico State Fair for “best Indian watercolors.” Yet, despite all the success, the friends, and the connections he made in and around Santa Fe, clearly none of it was enough to save his life. He certainly left his mark, though: Badertscher and Havens have so far verified about 200 of his paintings, and expect the total to reach at least 1,000.
At the cemetery that day last fall, I kept wondering about this enigmatic artist. The foggy vision I’d had of him growing up was clearer now, but tragic ends always leave questions. Did his telling people he had no family lead him to this unmarked grave? Of course, I had to consider the possibility that maybe the art he created was enough to stand as his marker, and that for him a chiseled stone would only tell the story of a life short-lived.
As historic and monumental as cemeteries are, there’s a pageantry and sentimentality to them that tends to dwell more on the death of a person, as opposed to the life. All one needs to do is take a look at any one of Tahoma’s paintings and it’s clear that the imagination and vision he gave to his work speaks more about life than death. Section 13, row 11, grave 34. Quincy Tahoma’s final resting place. It is an unmarked grave—one of dozens, maybe hundreds. But it does not need to be marked for Tahoma to have his place in history.
