The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday

First published: 1969

Type of work: History/cultural anthropology

Time of work: The early nineteenth century

Form and Content

The Kiowa tribe emerged from the mountains of Montana soon after horses became available to the people of the northern plains. Early in the nineteenth century they migrated south to Oklahoma, where they fought their final battles with white civilization and were defeated. This is the story which N. Scott Momaday, whose father was a Kiowa, tells in The Way to Rainy Mountain. Yet the book’s impressionistic methods make it less a history of the Kiowa than a personal meditation on that history in which Momaday employs myth, legend, ethnographic and historical data, and his own memories.

Momaday has included a prologue and an introduction which relate the history of the Kiowa tribe that follows to his own experience, particularly to his grandmother, Aho, who gave him the first accounts of the Kiowa that he ever heard. The book ends with an epilogue, in which he recounts a story of a Kiowa Sun Dance, which he heard from a hundred-year-old woman who actually witnessed it.

Yet the bulk of the book is made up of three movements: “The Setting Out,” which describes the origins of the tribe and their acquisition of a religion and a sense of tribal destiny; “The Going On,” which recounts legends of the Kiowa heyday on the southern plains; and “The Closing In,” in which the old Kiowa freedom is restricted until they and their destiny, in a sense, fall to earth. These three movements are composed of twenty-four numbered sections, each of which includes three very brief pieces: a legend, recollected by the author from the stories of his grandmother; an ethnographic or historical gloss on this legend; and a personal recollection or observation, which is related to the legend or to the gloss or to both.

In the first of these sections, for example, Momaday gives the legend of the origin of the Kiowa tribe, which tells how they emerged from beneath the earth through a hollow log and how some of them were forced to remain underground when a pregnant woman got stuck in the log—an explanation of why the Kiowa have always been a relatively small tribe. This legend is followed by an explanation of the linguistic origin of the tribal name, which derives from a word which means “coming out.” Finally, the author relates this story of origin and self-definition to his own memory of the first time he “came out” onto the plains. The juxtaposition of these three elements, in effect, relates Momaday to his Kiowa ancestors by showing the relationship of the tribe’s mythic origins to their actual historical experience of “coming out” onto the plains; this was later repeated by Momaday, who, in effect, saw the plains for the first time as the Kiowa saw them.

As the twenty-four sections which compose the book’s three principal movements unfold, significant changes in tone and content become noticeable. In “The Setting Out,” the legends have to do with the acquisition of power, often understood in terms of language: The Kiowa name themselves in terms of their miraculous origins; they acquire dogs when the first dog speaks to a hunter and saves him from his enemies; a Kiowa girl ascends into the sky and marries the Sun, who becomes the father of her son; the son becomes, in time, a set of miraculous twins who provide the Kiowa with one of the principal elements of their religion; and the Kiowa discover Tai-me, a strange half-animal, half-bird creature who becomes a primary element of the Sun Dance.

In “The Going On,” the stories are all concerned with the Kiowa’s great freedom on the southern plains and with the horse, which made that freedom possible. Two stories have to do with escape from enemies, one tells of how the “storm spirit” understands the Kiowa language and always passes over the tribe, another is of a hunter’s escape from a magic buffalo when a mysterious voice tells him of the animal’s weak spot, and the last is the story of a fantastic journey of Kiowa warriors far south into Mexico, where they see “small men with tails,” presumably monkeys.

Finally, in “The Closing In,” there is a steady decline from the freedom and power of the middle section to stories of death and deprivation. A Kiowa manages to save his brother from the Ute only by his great bravery, but a great war-horse dies of shame when his rider turns him away during a charge against the enemy. Momaday’s grandfather, in a rage, shoots an arrow at a rogue horse and accidentally hits another horse. Most telling of all, for no apparent reason—except that the Kiowa no longer seem to respect their ancient religion—the Tai-me bundle, which contains the effigy which represents the god, falls to earth.

Accompanying this story of the rise, triumph, and decline of the Kiowa is the story of the author’s discovery of himself as a Kiowa. The journey of the tribe from their place of origin in the mountains of Montana to the cemetery of the Rainy Mountain church, where Momaday’s ancestors lie buried, parallels the author’s journey. Each of the legends is understood in relation to a similar, illuminating event in the author’s own experience. For example, the legend of the acquisition of the god Tai-me by the Kiowa is glossed with Momaday’s story of the time he actually saw the Tai-me bundle, and the story of the hunter who miraculously escapes from a magical buffalo when a mysterious voice speaks to him is paralleled by Momaday’s story of how he and his father, walking in a game reserve, are chased by a buffalo.

Critical Context

The Way to Rainy Mountain is a remarkable example of the way traditional tribal materials can be used to achieve a new combination of the traditional and the personal by a literary artist who is sensitive to those materials and determined not to violate them. The most notable achievements by American Indian writers are works which are simultaneously products of a tribal culture and contributions to it. Momaday succeeds in attaining both these ends. His book is the most important definition of the Kiowa identity by a Kiowa writer and a distinguished contribution to the culture of the tribe. At the same time it is a deeply personal work, a product of its author’s effort to achieve a sense of what it meant to him to be a modern Kiowa.

Because The Way to Rainy Mountain—in an earlier version titled The Journey of Tai-me (1967)—was Momaday’s first published work, it must be considered crucial in his development as an artist, a necessary first step in the discovery of his origins and thus of himself. Because his example was such a great inspiration to so many young Indian writers—and many of them have affirmed this—and thus so great an inspiration in producing what might be called a modern American Indian literary renaissance, The Way to Rainy Mountain must be considered a seminal work.

Beyond the book’s significance as an influence on a whole generation of young writers, it must be considered a remarkable achievement as a testament to the uniquely human power of language to work miracles. As such, it is not only a remarkable personal document and a distinguished work of Kiowa literature but also a work of universal significance.

Bibliography

Berner, Robert L. “N. Scott Momaday: Beyond Rainy Mountain,” in American Indian Culture and Research Journal. III (1979), pp. 57-67.

Lincoln, Kenneth. “Tai-me to Rainy Mountain: The Makings of American Indian Literature,” in American Indian Quarterly. X (1986), pp. 101-117.

McAlister, Mick. “The Topology of Remembrance in The Way to Rainy Mountain,” in Denver Quarterly. XII (Winter, 1978), pp. 19-31.

Milton, J.R. Review in Saturday Review. LII (June 21, 1969), p. 51.

The New Yorker. Review. XLV (May 17, 1969), p. 150.

Papovich, J. Frank. “Landscape, Tradition and Identity in The Way to Rainy Mountain,” in Perspectives on Contemporary Literature. XII (1986), pp. 13-19.

Schubnell, Matthias. N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background, 1985.

Trimble, Martha Scott. N. Scott Momaday, 1973.

Velie, Alan. Four American Indian Literary Masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor, 1982.