Kiowa Indian N.

Scott Momaday
In 1969, Kiowa Indian N. Scott Momaday was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, House Made
of Dawn (1968). The literary community had recognized the arrival of a major contemporary Native
American writer and the beginning of the Native American Literature Renaissance.
Momadays writing is filled with stories about himself and his people, the Kiowa, especially in his works
called The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), The Gourd Dancer (1976), The Names: A Memoir (1976), The
Ancient Child (1989), and In the Presence of the Sun: A Gathering of Shields (1992).
Grounded in aboriginal oral traditions, sacred landscapes, and ancient ritual the non-native reader could
immerse themselves into the world of the Native American. Momadays writing speaks to the reader in
ancestral voices, simultaneously remote and immediate, and it is informed with the rhythms of magic
formulas and the mysterious power of images originating in prehistoric petroglyphs and ancient cave
paintings.
Some critics, however, believe Momaday's work reflects the multiple cultural contexts and traditions of the
tribe he grew up in and the conflict between his childhood world and the American culture he would write
and paint in.
Way to Rainy Mountain
In The Way to Rainy Mountain, arguably his most important work, Scott Momaday establishes the patterns
of theme and technique which have characterized his novels, poems, and memoirs. An expansion of the
Kiowa folktakes retold from The Journey of Tai-me is Momaday's attempt to develop a myth which
incorporates individual lives as part of an overall ancestral past.
Each of the three sections ("The Setting Out," "The Going On," and "The Closing In") progresses from the
most inclusive and remote to the most personal and recent: Momaday begins with Kiowa legends,
followed by tribal history, then personal memoir. Using different typefaces to indicate the transitions,
Momaday retells Kiowa origin myths, retraces the history of the tribe's three-century migration from
Yellowstone to the Great Plains, and finally links these stories with personal memories and stories passed
down by his paternal ancestors.
Each layer of the narrative explains and so adds significance to those which precede it, as the psychic
journey of Momaday the teller reenacts the wanderings of the Kiowa. Literally traveling to his
grandmother's grave, he realizes that her lifespan encompassed the decline in tribal identity.
The Names
The Names: A Memoir continues the exploration of personal identity in the larger context of the family and
the tribe. Again Momaday combines Kiowa tradition with genealogical exploration and almost idyllic
memories, as he describes his boyhood among the Kiowas, who give names to every object in, and every
characteristic of, their environment. Momaday's name, Tsoaitalee, is the Kiowa name for a spot important
in tribal legendsa massive rock known in Anglo-American culture as the Devils Tower. Since the name
was supposedly prophetic of an individual's character and fate, Momaday had been given a great honor and
a profound responsibility.
This memoir emphasizes the importance of names, through those names tracing Momaday's AngloAmerican heritage as well as the Kiowa. His mother's family included not only a Cherokee greatgrandmother, but also a grandfather, Theodore Scott, who was a sheriff in Kentucky. In identifying with his
Indian ancestors, however, Momaday is following the lead of his mother, who chose an Indian name,
Indian dress, and an Indian school. Initially among the Kiowa, Momaday's paternal grandfather had only
one name, Mammeday, but with the adoption of Christian names, the name John was added. Alfred, Scott's
father, modified the family name to Momaday. The development of the family surname seems symbolic of
the family's ability to remain Native Americans but to incorporate the best elements of the Anglo culture.

House Made of Dawn

The origin of House Made of Dawn can be traced to the early 1960s, when Momaday was working on his
doctorate at Stanford. Having initially conceived the work as a cycle of poems, Momaday had turned to
prose and, in 1963, had published a short story, "The Well," that anticipates the themes of culture clash,

witchcraft, and identity conflict that he develops in depth in the novel. While the story is set on the Jicarilla
Apache reservation, where he had taught in 1958, as the settings for House Made of Dawn Momaday
chose Jemez, which is called Walatowa in the novel, and -- as the urban counterpoint to the Pueblo world -Los Angeles.
The protagonist of House Made of Dawn, is Abel, who was a composite of individuals Momaday knew in
Jemez: young men whose inability to cope with conflicting cultural patterns led them into alcoholism,
violence, and death; and veterans who failed to reintegrate themselves into their tribal community after
fighting in World War II. Abel's troubles, however, are not caused by his exposure to the world beyond the
Indian village; his war experiences and the alien milieu of the modern American city only deepen an
identity crisis that already troubles Abel as a young man. Isolated within the tribe -- his father was an
outsider who left the family -- and further set apart by the deaths of his mother and brother, Abel grows
up with his grandfather, Francisco, who tries, with little success, to teach him the old ways. Abel's killing
of an eagle he has captured shows his ignorance of the traditional hunting code. His distance from his
people's ceremonial life results in a generational conflict with Francisco: "You ought to do this and that, his
grandfather said. But the old man had not understood, would not understand, only wept, and Abel left him
alone. It was time to go, and the old man was away in the fields."
Abel's quest for identity leads him first into World War II and then back to his village, where he tries to
attune himself to the land and his people's traditions. Failing to resolve his inner conflict by ceremonial
means, he seeks solace in a sexual encounter with Angela St. John, who initially exploits Abel but will later
become instrumental in his healing process; finally, he kills a mysterious albino whom he identifies as a
witch. In disposing of the "evil spirit" Abel, for the first time, acts in accordance with tribal law, signaling
his return to his tribe. But he is convicted of murder and sent to jail, a world in which he is ill equipped to
survive.
The remainder of the novel traces Abel's struggle to escape the conflicting cultural forces that threaten to
tear him apart after his release from eight years in prison and his relocation to Los Angeles. The disjointed
structure of the work, particularly in the chapter "The Priest of the Sun," owes much to Faulkner's narrative
technique and reflects the protagonist's confusion, gradual disintegration, and near death. Yet it also holds
the seed of Abel's restoration to his homeland and its ancient ceremonies. Abel's vision of the runners after
evil, following his nearly fatal beating by an evil policeman, "Culebra" Martinez, reveals to him the
possibility of dealing with witchcraft ceremonially rather than through violence.
This experience lays the foundation for Abel's renewed faith in his own culture. His friend Ben Benally's
Navajo night chant, from which the novel takes its title, helps to restore Abel's psychic balance by
centering him in "the house made of dawn" -- the Navajo universe -- and by pleading for the restoration of
his mind, body, and voice. Ben and another character, the Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah, are foils for
Abel.
Benally tries to live the American Dream and constantly talks about it, but his imagination is still centered
in the Indian world. Tosamah, an urban Indian, lacks any understanding of or sympathy for Abel. Tosamah
is important in the novel for articulating, in his sermon on the Gospel of John, the contrast between the
written word and the oral tradition.
Abel's visit with Angela as he recovers in Los Angeles also helps his healing process. Their seemingly
frivolous affair turns out to have had a profound effect on Angela, engendering love for her previously
unwanted child, which she now regards not as her husband's but as Abel's, and leading her to an insight
into Abel's tribal heritage. While much in the novel suggests that the bridging of cultures is impossible -the difficulty that the two Catholic priests have in understanding their Pueblo flock is an example -- the
conclusion of Abel's and Angela's relationship offers hope for cultural synthesis.
Abel's final encounter with the dying Francisco further prepares him for his reintegration into his culture.
Francisco's last utterances -- fragmented lessons on the importance of the land, the solar calendar, and
hunting ceremonies (Francisco's account of his successful bear hunt contrasts directly with Abel's failure to
act appropriately on his eagle hunt) -- prompt Abel to prepare Francisco's body for burial in the traditional
manner. Abel's subsequent joining of the race of the dawn runners confirms the restoration of his body, and
his singing of "House Made of Dawn" as he runs affirms that he has left inarticulateness and alienation
behind and is running toward a new day both for himself and his tribe.
Momaday also treats the issue of cultural identity in his best known work, House Made of Dawn, winner

of the 1969 Pulitzer prize for fiction. In this novel, praised for its mythic themes but criticized for its
difficult narrative structure, a Native American veteran (interestingly, named Abel) cannot re-adapt to
reservation life upon his return from World War II. After killing a man and serving a prison sentence, he is
paroled to a halfway house in Los Angeles.
Unlike his roommate Ben, a narrative voice who appears to be a Momaday spokesman, Abel remains
outside the Anglo-American culture; his attitude causes trouble on the job and with the police. Although
the local groups he discovers do not practice the Native American ceremonies in their pure form, the
sermons of medicine man/priest John Tosamah lead ultimately to Abel's return to the reservation and his
dying grandfather. The novel's resolution is the ritual race at dawn, in which Abel's true opponents are evil
and death. Thus, coinciding with his grand-father's death is Abel's symbolic rebirth into his culture.
Like his character Abel, Momaday finds strength and beauty in traditional Native American life, which he
sees as an antidote to the prevailing modern mood of individual isolation. A part of their belief in the
principle of harmony in the universe, the Kiowa's oral tradition links them to the land and establishes it as
a spiritual entity, similar to themselves and worthy of reverence. The retelling of history and legends also
taps into the tribal memory, providing a sense of personal and group identity.
The Gourd Dancer and Angle of Geese and Other Poems
Momaday's poems, which have received less attention than his prose, likewise recast traditional Kiowa
legends in terms of family history. In The Gourd Dancer and Angle of Geese and Other Poems, Momaday
draws upon "blood memories," becoming in effect the successor to ancient medicine men as he interprets
for his contemporary audience the Native American consciousness.
In attempting to express his essentially intuitive perceptions about the Kiowa, however, Momaday is
hampered by the limitations imposed in using the language of an alien culture. Nevertheless, Momaday,
who does not speak Kiowa himself, understands how the language not only reflects but also influences the
way a people think, and he believes that in relating these tales, he is offering hope and spiritual healing to
modern American society.

Ancient Child
This process of translating his ancient myths to benefit modern society is the subject of Momaday's second
novel, The Ancient Child, which is primarily autobiographical. Using the myth associated with his own
Kiowa name, Momaday portrays a Native American artist's efforts to maintain his culture and interpret it
for the Anglo world. While the artist generally is an outsider in his society, the Native American can draw
upon his advantage of an alternate world view found in tribal legends. Thus, like Momaday himself, the
artist can use the traditional vehicles of dreams and visions to forge an identity which is at once personal
and universal.
Momadays Biography
Navarro Scott Mammedaty was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, on 27 February 1934 to Alfred Morris
Mammedaty, a full-blood Kiowa, and Mayme Natachee Scott Mammedaty, who is of Scottish, French, and
Cherokee descent. Later his father changed the spelling of the family name to Momaday.
When Scott was six months old, Pohd-lohk, a Kiowa elder, named him Tsoai-talee (Rock Tree Boy), thus
linking the child to one of the ancient stories in Kiowa mythology: to account for the origin of Devils
Tower, the strange landmark in what is now northeastern Wyoming that they had come upon on their
journey south from the Yellowstone area, the Kiowa created a story about a boy who was transformed into
a bear and chased his 7 sisters right up a tree; the tree became Devils Tower and the sisters became the Big
Dipper. To reinforce this mythic connection, his parents took him to Devils Tower.
The myth has become so much a part of Momaday's identity that his writings gravitate to it again and
again; it provides the unifying subtext for The Ancient Child.
When Momaday was two his parents left Kiowa country for a series of teaching positions: on the Navajo
reservation at Shiprock, New Mexico; at Tuba City and Chinle, Arizona; and, in 1946, at a two-teacher day
school at Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico. As a Kiowa among Navajo and Pueblo people who was also being
guided by his parents toward success in the larger society beyond Jemez, Momaday inhabited a complex
world of intersecting cultures. The need to accommodate himself to these circumstances prepared him for
the perceptive treatment of encounters with various cultures that characterizes his literary work.

Momaday's formal education took place at the Franciscan Mission School in Jemez; the Indian School in
Santa Fe; high schools in Bernalillo, New Mexico; and the Augustus Military Academy in Fort Defiance,
Virginia. In 1952 he entered the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque as a political science major
with minors in English and speech. He spent 1956-1957 in the law program at the University of Virginia,
where he met William Faulkner; the encounter helped to shape Momaday's early prose and is most clearly
reflected in the evocation of Faulkner's story "The Bear" (1942) in Momaday's poem of that title (collected
in Angle of Geese and Other Poems, 1974). Returning to the University of New Mexico, Momaday
graduated in 1958 and took a teaching position on the Jicarilla Apache reservation at Dulce, New Mexico.
There he met and, on 5 September 1959, married Gaye Mangold. They have three daughters: Cael, Jill, and
Brit.Content with his new career, Momaday had no plans for further academic training; but in 1959, on the
urging of a friend, he applied for and received a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship to Stanford
University. There the poet and critic Yvor Winters became his mentor, his friend, and the single most
important influence on his early career.
Winters persuaded Momaday to pursue a doctorate in American literature and proposed and supervised his
thesis, an edition of the works of the nineteenth-century poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman that was
published by Oxford University Press in 1965. In a letter to the editor published in the 23 February 1967
issue of The Reporter Winters predicted Momaday's impending literary acclaim. And he critiqued the
drafts of House Made of Dawn, which, to him, provided further evidence of Momaday's immense talent.
Winters's untimely death in 1968, a year before Momaday's Pulitzer award, prevented him from seeing his
pronouncements on his student's literary potential validated.After receiving his Ph.D. in 1963 Momaday
taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Next came his writing career.

Works By Momaday
Momaday, Natachee Scott. American Indian authors. 1976.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. Owl in the cedar tree. 1992.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. Woodland Princess, a book of 24 poems. 1931.
Momaday, Natachee Scott.The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, 1965.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. The Journey of Tai-me (Kiowa Indian folktales). 1967.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. House Made of Dawn. 1968, reprinted, 1989.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. Angle of Geese and Other Poems,.1974.
Momaday, Natachee Scott.The Names: A Memoir. 1976.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. The Ancient Child. 1989.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. In the Presence of the Sun: A Gathering of Shields. 1992.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. Circle of Wonder: A Native American Christmas Story. 1994.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. Conversations with N. Scott Momaday. 1997.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages. 1997.
Momaday, Natachee Scott. In the Bear's House. 1999.
References
Caduto, M. J. Native American Stories. 1991.
Schubnell, M. N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background. 1986.
Velie, A. R. Four American Indian Literary Masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon
Silko, and Gerald Visenor. 1982.