40 pages • 1 hour read
N. Scott MomadayThe Way to Rainy Mountain
Nonfiction | Anthology/Varied Collection | Adult | Published in 1969A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Cultural Context: The Kiowa Tribe of the Great Plains
The Kiowas are an Indigenous North American tribe of the Great Plains. They are part of the Kiowa-Tanoan language family, implying a shared origin with the Tewa and Towa peoples, though—in contrast to these Puebloan nations—the Kiowas were nomadic. The Kiowas recall their origins as being in present-day eastern Montana before migrating out onto the plains, first near the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota, and later onto the central plains. After they acquired the horse, the Kiowas were buffalo hunters and warriors.
Pushed south by the Northern Plains tribes, the Kiowas allied with the Comanches on the southern Great Plains by 1860. However, their lifestyle came under acute pressure as a result of American westward expansion (11). In 1867, the Kiowas signed the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, which guaranteed them hunting territory south of the Arkansas River. Despite this treaty, General George Armstrong Custer captured the Kiowa leaders Satanta and Lone Wolf (Mammedaty’s grandfather Guipahgo) at Rainy Mountain Creek, Oklahoma when they approached him to negotiate. Custer then used the hostages to coerce the rest of the Kiowas to submit to imprisonment on a reservation or see their leaders hanged (243-48). Kiowa hunting and raiding activities continued intermittently until 1875, when the last war parties under Lone Wolf surrendered at Fort Sill. The deliberate extermination of the buffalo from the plains and the starvation that followed played a strong role in this final surrender (Dee Brown. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970, pp. 11, 243-70). This is the scene of imprisonment and the slaughter of the war ponies that Momaday reflects upon in Story XIX.
Allotment followed imprisonment in short order to strip the Kiowas of what remained of their historical territory. Though the Treaty of Medicine Lodge stipulated that no portion of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Kiowa Apache reservation could be sold off without the approval of three-fourths of the Indigenous men, the reservation was allotted—broken up into individual plots for individual tribal members, an attempt at forced assimilation—in 1900. Lone Wolf unsuccessfully sued to stop this allotment, and the Supreme Court ruled against the Indigenous claim in 1903 (Clifford E. Trafzer. As Long as the Grass Shall Grow and Rivers Flow. Harcourt, 2000, p. 318). All told, the government sold off nearly 3 million acres of the reservation, and Kiowa landholdings declined from the 160 acres allotted per person in 1900 to an average of just 17 acres per person by 1934 (Marcel Brousseau. “Allotment Knowledges: Grid Spaces, Home Places and Storyscapes on the Way to Rainy Mountain.” Native American and Indigenous Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring 2018), pp. 136-167). Thus the land that Momaday’s family owns near Rainy Mountain Creek is a tiny and historically significant island in a sea of territorial loss.
Literary Context: The Native American Renaissance
N. Scott Momaday is considered the founding writer of the first wave of the Native American Renaissance, which is usually dated from the publication of his 1968 novel, House Made of Dawn. This term was coined by scholar Kenneth Lincoln in 1983 to describe an upsurge in literary production by Indigenous writers (Lincoln, Kenneth. Native American Renaissance. University of California Press, 1983). Other first-wave writers include James Welch, Gerald Vizenor, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Written in the political era of the American Indian Movement and Red Power, these writers’ works often centered Indigenous characters enacting a return to or reaffirmation of traditional cultures, frequently through a return journey to the space of the reservation. The Way to Rainy Mountain fits into this model, as Momaday moves through the spaces of Kiowa history and uses multiple modes of writing and research to deepen his understanding of traditional knowledge and story.
Writers in the Native American Literary Renaissance achieved unprecedented recognition and success in mainstream publishing. This can be seen in Momaday’s own career arc: The Journey of Tai-me was published in 1967 in an art edition of just 100 copies, while House Made of Dawn was released to major success by Harper & Rowe. Writers in this movement can thus be thought of speaking to at least three audiences: members of their own tribe, who share traditions, culture, and knowledge; other Indigenous North American readers, who may share similar political concerns from within their own distinct experiences of settler colonialism; and finally, a broader American and international community of readers from outside these social and political contexts. Momaday can be seen as accommodating these least-informed readers of The Way to Rainy Mountain when he offers definitions or clarifying explanations for some of the most fundamental tenets of Kiowa culture, which no Kiowa reader would need, including Tai-me, “the sacred Sun Dance doll” (6).
