Student Question
Why does Momaday travel to Yellowstone, the Rockies, and Black Hill in "The Way to Rainy Mountain"?
Quick answer:
Momaday travels to Yellowstone, the Rockies, and Black Hill to reconnect with his Kiowa heritage and honor his grandmother's memory. His journey reflects his desire to explore the landmarks significant to the Kiowa tribe, culminating at Rainy Mountain, a symbolic place for his people. This pilgrimage allows Momaday to weave the myth, history, and personal experiences of the Kiowa, ultimately leading to the creation of his work, The Way to Rainy Mountain.
As the title suggests, Momaday travels to these places to get back to a particular Kiowa landmark: Rainy Mountain. This is why the title of the book is The Way to Rainy Mountain. There is one particular quote that shows the significance Momaday's travels:
A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range. For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain.
Momaday's travels through Yellowstone, the Rocky Mountains, and Black Hill were all an effort to reconnect to his Kiowa heritage and an effort to get back to Rainy Mountain. Momaday even gets more specific for his readers:
I returned to Rainy Mountain in July. My grandmother had died in the spring, and I wanted to be at her grave.
If the reader puts both of these quotes together, the significance...
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of Momaday's travels becomes clear. Momaday will use these travels to put together the myth, the history, and the personal experience of the Kiowa tribe and eventually write it down in those three voices. The result is his impressive work The Way to Rainy Mountain. As a result, the book is Momaday's own journey towards his roots in the Native American tribe of the Kiowa. He walks this "way" due to his respect and his love for his own grandmother, Aho.
Why does Momaday want to visit Yellowstone, the Rockies, and the Black Hills?
The Way to Rainy Mountain is N. Scott Momaday's reflection on Native American culture, particularly that of his Kiowa tribe which came out of the mountains of Montana and, as Momaday puts it, "ruled the whole of the Southern Plains." At one point he recounts the life of his grandmother. She was, for Momaday, symbolic of the "golden age" of the Kiowa because she had been present at the "last Kiowa Sun Dance." Although his grandmother spent her entire life in Oklahoma "in the shadow Rainy Mountain," Momaday claims that within her "mind's eye" she had witnessed all of the places the Kiowa had traveled after they came down out of the mountains. She had told stories of the Crows, the Black Hills, and the legends of the Kiowa.
Momaday sets out on a "pilgrimage" to visit the places which were in his grandmother's "blood." He travels to Yellowstone to begin his journey where his ancestors had started and then travels south and east into the Plains where the Kiowa first met the Crows and Blackfeet and formed an alliance with those tribes. In the Black Hills, at Devil's Tower, Momaday tells of the legend of the eight children, one who became a great bear and the other seven, the stars of the Big Dipper. Like pilgrims before him, Momaday sought to witness the natural elements which shaped his culture and the destiny of his Kiowa ancestors. His pilgrimage ends at the site of his grandmother's grave at the foot of Rainy Mountain.