The Way to Rainy Mountain
N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain is a history of the Kiowa people told in fragments. Momaday provides short pieces of Kiowa myth alongside related historical details and personal recollections of the landscape and his grandmother. It is a fascinating introduction to Kiowa history and mythology because of this personal connection.
Some favorite passages:
A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. By means of words can a man deal with the world on equal terms. And the word is sacred. A man's name is his own; he can keep it or give it away as he likes. Until recent times, the Kiowas would not speak the name of a dead man. To do so would have been disrespectful and dishonest. The dead take their names with them out of the world. (33)
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One morning my father and I walked in Medicine Park, on the edge of a small herd of buffalo. It was late in the spring, and many of the cows had newborn calves. Nearby a calf lay in the tall grass; it was red-orange in color, delicately beautiful with new life. We approached, but suddenly the cow was there in our way, her great dark head low and fearful-looking. Then she came at us, and we turned and ran as hard as we could. She gave up after a short run, and I think we had not been in any real danger. But the spring morning was deep and beautiful and our hearts were beating fast and we knew just then what it was to be alive. (55)
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East of my grandmother's house the sun rises out of the plain. Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk. (83)
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These passages in particular are meaningful because they emphasize the value of the landscape (passage 3), the ability to find meaning in small experiences (passage 2), and the power of language (passage 1). The power of language is especially significant because of the centrality of storytelling in Native American cultures and because, as Momaday points out, Kiowa culture is essentially dead and the only way that it can survive is through verbal traditions, through language. He writes, But indeed the golden age of the Kiowas had been short-lived, ninety or a hundred years, say, from about 1740. The culture would persist for a while in decline, until about 1875, but then it would be gone, and there would be very little material evidence that it had ever been. Yet it is within the reach of memory still, though tenuously now [in 1969], and moreover it is even defined in a remarkably rich and living verbal tradition which demands to be preserved for its own sake. (85-6)
Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain is a loving preservation of this verbal tradition and of the remains of the culture.
Some favorite passages:
A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things. By means of words can a man deal with the world on equal terms. And the word is sacred. A man's name is his own; he can keep it or give it away as he likes. Until recent times, the Kiowas would not speak the name of a dead man. To do so would have been disrespectful and dishonest. The dead take their names with them out of the world. (33)
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One morning my father and I walked in Medicine Park, on the edge of a small herd of buffalo. It was late in the spring, and many of the cows had newborn calves. Nearby a calf lay in the tall grass; it was red-orange in color, delicately beautiful with new life. We approached, but suddenly the cow was there in our way, her great dark head low and fearful-looking. Then she came at us, and we turned and ran as hard as we could. She gave up after a short run, and I think we had not been in any real danger. But the spring morning was deep and beautiful and our hearts were beating fast and we knew just then what it was to be alive. (55)
.............................................
East of my grandmother's house the sun rises out of the plain. Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk. (83)
.............................................
These passages in particular are meaningful because they emphasize the value of the landscape (passage 3), the ability to find meaning in small experiences (passage 2), and the power of language (passage 1). The power of language is especially significant because of the centrality of storytelling in Native American cultures and because, as Momaday points out, Kiowa culture is essentially dead and the only way that it can survive is through verbal traditions, through language. He writes, But indeed the golden age of the Kiowas had been short-lived, ninety or a hundred years, say, from about 1740. The culture would persist for a while in decline, until about 1875, but then it would be gone, and there would be very little material evidence that it had ever been. Yet it is within the reach of memory still, though tenuously now [in 1969], and moreover it is even defined in a remarkably rich and living verbal tradition which demands to be preserved for its own sake. (85-6)
Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain is a loving preservation of this verbal tradition and of the remains of the culture.