The Way to Rainy Mountain, 50th Anniversary Edition

By N. Scott Momaday and Al Momaday

The Way to Rainy Mountain recalls the journey of Tai-me, the sacred Sun Dance doll, and of Tai-me’s people in three unique voices: the legendary, the historical, and the contemporary. It is also the personal journey of N. Scott Momaday, who on a pilgrimage to the grave of his Kiowa grandmother traversed the same route taken by his forebears and in so doing confronted his Kiowa heritage. It is an evocation of three things in particular: a landscape that is incomparable, a time that is gone forever, and the human spirit, which endures. Celebrating fifty years since its 1969 release, this new edition offers a moving new preface and invites a new generation of readers to explore the Kiowa myths, legends, and history with Pulitzer Prize–winning author N. Scott Momaday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Aug 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780826361226

N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday (1934-2024) is an internationally renowned poet, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, artist, teacher, and storyteller. He authored numerous works that include poetry, novels, essays, plays, and children’s stories. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel House Made of Dawn and was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Academy of American Poets Prize, the National Medal of Arts, the Ken Burns American Heritage Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, and the Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry. A longtime professor of English and American literature, Momaday earned his PhD from Stanford University and retired as Regents Professor at the University of Arizona. In 2022, he was inducted into the inducted into the Academy of American Arts and Letters. 

Book preview

The Way to Rainy Mountain

50th Anniversary Edition

THE WAY TO

RAINY MOUNTAIN

N. Scott Momaday Illustrated by Al Momaday

Text and illustrations © 1969 by the University of New Mexico Press

Text © 1998 by N. Scott Momaday

Illustrations © 1998 by Al Momaday

Preface © 2019 by N. Scott Momaday

All rights reserved

50th anniversary edition published 2019

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-8263-6121-9 (paper)

ISBN 978-0-8263-6122-6 (electronic)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the Library of Congress.

Cover illustration | Buffalo at Water, ca. 1904.

Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2006679191/.

Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill

For Al and Natachee

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Introduction

The Setting Out

The Going On

The Closing In

Epilogue

PREFACE

After many years the landscape of the Southwest remains in my mind as a birthright and as the end of a human migration that defined the spirit of a people.

The Way to Rainy Mountain is the oral story of a journey set down for the first time in writing. It is one story, but there are other stories in the one. In a way, that is the nature of literature. Story is at the beginning of literature and also at its end. Language is a wheel that is in perpetual motion. We do not know what the first story was or who told it, but we know that it had somehow to do with the human condition and that the storyteller was a man or woman who believed in the power of words.

I too believe in the power of words. I have taken literature seriously. In my long teaching career I have tried to introduce my students to words, spoken and written, that would be important in their lives, that would clarify their understanding of the world, that would touch wonder to their minds. These were the gifts that were given to me when I first heard the stories contained in this book.

In a sense the stories herein contained are reflections of human experience reaching into the unrecorded past. Their origin myth has it that the Kiowas came into world one by one through a hollow log. Over the years I have wondered about this story. Is it complete, or is it the fragment of an older, more comprehensive story? Where and when did the emergence take place? What was on the other end of the log? Who first told the story? In my study of the oral tradition I have learned that such questions are by and large irrelevant. We have the story as it has been given to us by the storyteller. We accept it on its own terms. That is the nature of the literary experience.

We cannot date these stories. The origin myth is undoubtedly old, perhaps as old as the migration of peoples to this continent thousands of years ago. Most of the stories center upon the Plains culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A few are more recent. Indeed, they can be said to be timeless.

When I first saw The Way to Rainy Mountain turned into a book, I could not have imagined a fiftieth anniversary edition. I am deeply gratified, and I pray the book will continue to mean to the reader something of what it means to me.

N. Scott Momaday | March 2019

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The introduction to this book first appeared in The Reporter on January 26, 1967. In slightly different form, it was incorporated in the text of my novel House Made of Dawn, published by Harper & Row in 1968.

I wish also to acknowledge my own book, The Journey of Tai-me, which is in a special sense the archetype of the present volume. The earlier work was produced in collaboration with D. E. Carlsen and Bruce S. McCurdy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in a fine edition limited to one hundred hand-painted copies.

Finally I should like here to thank those of my kinsmen who willingly recounted to me the tribal history and literature that informs the book.

The Way to Rainy Mountain

HEADWATERS

Noon in the intermountain plain:

There is scant telling of the marsh—

A log, hollow and weather-stained,

An insect at the mouth, and moss—

Yet waters rise against the roots,

Stand