What is the main idea of The Way to Rainy Mountain?

At its core, The Way to Rainy Mountain serves as a way for the author to answer the questions “Who am I?” and “Where did my people come from?” He is in search of his ancestors, in search of his own personal history. His key starting point is with his grandmother, Aho, who was a Kiowa. After Aho passes away, Momaday works his way back to the roots and the folklore of this Native American people, both geographically and historically. His task includes a pilgrimage to Rainy Mountain, a rounded hill that stands alone and near the Wichita Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma. It is a special place for the Kiowa. Many of the double-page spreads of this book start with a native legend, which is followed by geographic or historic facts, and which concludes with Momaday’s experiences in the same place or under the same circumstances. This unique approach winds up being both historical and personal. What Momaday learns along his way gives him a better understanding of both the Kiowa and his own place in the world. He shares this knowledge with us in this combination of myth and memoir. It’s possible that some individuals may be inspired to learn more about their own cultural heritages as a result of reading this book.

What is the main idea of The Way to Rainy Mountain?

It looks like you are asking about the thesis or main idea for The Way to Rainy Mountain. 

Essentially, the novel is made up of a collection of stories about Kiowa history, Kiowa culture, and Momaday's family history. If I were to sum up the main idea, I would argue that memory (assisted by verbal tradition) is an important preserver of culture, especially when there are few recorded events to rely on. Both the verbal tradition and recorded history contribute immensely to how history is remembered.

In the book, Momaday traces the history of his people, the Kiowas. He tells of their migration from the headwaters of the Yellowstone River to the south of the Wichita Mountains. The Kiowas were an adaptive people; they allied with the Comanches and the Crows, acquired a large number of horses, and adopted the sun religion of the Plains Indians. 

Horses became extremely important to the Kiowas after the buffalo was decimated. In fact, the Kiowas began naming their religious rites as the "horse-eating sun dance" or Tsen-pia Kado. Momaday holds the summer of 1879 as the time the buffalo disappeared completely from Kiowa life.

This mention of the loss of the buffalo is pivotal to the story: it underlines the resilience of the Kiowa people, who fought desperately to retain their adopted way of life. Even after the last Kiowa warriors surrendered to the United States cavalry, members of the tribe relied on their adaptive natures to navigate an alien culture. Momaday's grandmother chose to convert to Christianity. Yet, she retained a fierce pride in her Kiowa heritage.

Momaday also writes about how there were only ten fighters in the Kiowa warrior society. These warriors were called the Ka-itsenko (Real Dogs), and their battle prowess was revered by all. Momaday relates that there were always dogs lingering around his grandmother's house when she was alive.

Most importantly, Momaday's knowledge of Kiowa history has been reinforced by testimonies from older members of the tribe such as Ko-Sahn, an acquaintance of Momaday's grandmother. At the time of her interaction with the author, Ko-sahn was one hundred years old. Yet, her memories of the Sun dances were vivid, and she related scenes from those events with both pride and wistful longing.

In the book, Momaday's retelling of Kiowa history is supported by both recorded history and verbal tradition. He makes the point that much is gained when we rely on both to help us envision the past and to preserve important traditions for future generations.

What is the significance of the title "The Way to Rainy Mountain"?

The significance of the title lies in the meaning that the narrator finds on a pilgrimage as he retraces the history of his grandmother's people, the Kiowa.

Author N. Scott Momaday's journey is to his grandmother's grave "at the end of a long and legendary way." He travels fifteen hundred miles on this pilgrimage, as he perceives in reality much of what she saw appeared "more perfectly in the mind's eye." He retraces the history of the Kiowa tribe, who were driven across the Plains into Oklahoma. The tribe began in the Montana area, came into the Plains in the seventeenth century, and met the Crows, who befriended them and introduced them to the culture of the Plains. There, the Kiowas learned to ride horses and 

their ancient nomadic spirit was suddenly free of the ground. They acquired Tai-me, the sacred Sun Dance doll, from that moment the object and symbol of their worship, and so shared in the divinity of the sun.

The Kiowas, who acquired a sense of identity, did not understand the relentless United States Cavalry. After their surrender at Fort Sill, the Kiowas were driven into the Staked Plains and lost their freedom with their resettlement near Rainy Mountain in Oklahoma.

There is a perfect freedom in the mountains. . . The Kiowas reckoned their stature by the distance they could see, and they were bent and blind in the wilderness [to which they came].

After the author retraces "the long and legendary way" to his grandmother's grave, he sees Rainy Mountain and he comes away, perceiving in reality what his grandmother had seen "more perfectly in the mind's eye." The author has revived in his language the pride and history of the Kiowa tribe.

What is the significance of the title "The Way to Rainy Mountain"?

What does the "way" symbolize in The Way to Rainy Mountain?

We can consider Momaday’s use of “the way” to have several different meanings; and yet, they seem to converge into a cohesive one by the end of the book. The Kiowa, his Native American ancestors, once migrated from the Yellowstone valley of the upper Rockies to the Black Hills of North Dakota, and then on to the American Plains and to southwestern Oklahoma, toward a rounded hill called Rainy Mountain. Momaday retraces this journey as a personal pilgrimage – a “way” -- in order to learn more about his people through his own visceral and on-the-ground experience. They made their “way”; now he makes his. He also shares some of the relevant legends that have been passed down through the generations. These stories are a “way” of reminding the people where they came from and what is important to their culture. This book is also a “way” to pay tribute to Aho, the author’s grandmother, who was his last living link to the traditional native days. Merged together, the journeys and the legends and Momaday’s reactions to them combine in order for him to finally find his strong ties to the Kiowas of the past. His way “to” their ways is one that also goes “back.”