Momaday

Momaday was born February 27, 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma. He was born in the Kiowa and Comanche Indian Hospital, and was then registered with having seven-eighths Indian blood. N. Scott Momaday was born of having a mix of English, Irish, French, and Cherokee blood while, his father, Alfred Morris Momaday was a full blood Kiowa. His mother was a writer and his father, a painter. In 1935, when N. Scott Momaday was one year old, his family moved to Arizona where both his father and mother became teachers on the reservation. Growing up in Arizona allowed Momaday to experience not only his father’s Kiowa traditions but also those of the Southwest including: Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo traditions as well. In 1946, Momaday moved to Jemez Pueblo,
New Mexico, at twelve years old and lived there with his parents until his senior year of high school. After high school, Momaday attended college and was awarded his Bachelor's of Arts degree in English in 1958, from the University of New Mexico. After continuing his education at Stanford University, he received his Ph.D. in English Literature in 1963. Momaday’s works are based on his culture and the way he grew up, The mentors he learned from and the cultures he observed helped influence the way he writes. Such writings are based on true stories like the book In the Way to Rainy Mountain, this book discusses what he went through, however he writes it so that the viewer can relate which is why he has been classified as one of the best writers.
The way people grow up can really influence who they become. Where Momaday grew up there was a lot of cultures mixed together, which can be seen when his works are read. “The influence of imaginative, talented parents led Momaday on the path to a fine formal education. Taking his A.B. degree from the University of New Mexico in 1958, he moved quickly the following year to Stanford University as a creative writing fellow.” Both of Scott’s parents were teachers in their reservation. This helped him because his parents always made sure that he was doing what he was supposed to. As well as, His parents would teach by using stories to help the children visually learn. This would have helped the creative juices flow in Scott’s mind which allowed him to stay focus and not become a frivolous writer but a talented one. become such a talented writer.“Six months after his birth in February, 1934, Navarre Scott Momaday was solemnly given the Kiowa name Tsoai-talee (Rock-Tree Boy) by Pohd-lohk, his step-grandfather. A year later, the Momaday's moved from Oklahoma to New Mexico, and from 1936 to 1943 they lived in various places on the Navajo reservation.” With the culture that Momaday grew up with it was bound to influence what he would write about. Most of Momaday's stories are based off of his own clan (Kiowa), this helps with cross between the culture he was born into and the culture he grew up with. “It was in 1965, after the death of his grandmother, that Momaday made the journey north from Oklahoma to South Dakota that was to inspire The Way to Rainy Mountain.” Many of his books are based off of real situations that he went through. With this past of his he developed a skill that allowed for the readers to feel an emotional connection with his characters in his books. “Momaday sees language as the primary vehicle for this transformation and affirms again and again the elemental importance of words. Collective imagination working upon natural existence creates culture, and in his examination of the contrasts and interweavings of the cultures of his experience, Momaday explores them as products of the human imagination. In an early essay, he speaks of two Kiowa legends, which he then shows to be emblematic of Kiowa thought and history and of the Kiowas’ response to their history. In the same essay, he points to the metaphorical language of a non-Indian historian whose imagery betrays his fundamental bias and underlies a whole theory of civilization versus savagery.” It was easy for Momaday to relate his stories to his language because he grew up with that culture and it allowed him to become a better writer because of it.
Culture can affect the way that anyone works, speaks and acts.
The language is different in every part of the world. Dialect is used to show said culture through the way we write and talk. In Momaday's works it is easy to see how he views life and how he was brought up. “Momaday’s prose works — his essays, autobiographies, and fiction — treat the dynamic of the two elements — sensory life and the power of imagination — discursively and sometimes analytically. His poetry, on the other hand, focuses most often on the fundamental meeting of nature and imagination in the act of perception itself. This is a consummately introspective procedure, and the poetry collected in The Gourd Dancer demonstrates a loving attentiveness to the natural world as it impinges on the mind.” When people think of the culture that is native american they often imagine people with a subtle nature and never hurting a fly. Considering that Momaday grew up within this culture his books are probably not going to have a lot of violence. In the book The way to Rainy mountain, Momaday writes how his people were never into violence and they were more likely to go with peace then war. “The Native American views space as spherical and time as cyclical, not linear and sequential. The universe, then, moves and breathes continuously, unlike the Western idea of fixed and static movement. The notion that nature is somewhere over there, while humanity is over here, or that a great hierarchical ladder of being
exists on which ground and trees occupy a very low rung, animals, a slightly higher one, and man a very high one is antithetical to Native American thought.” Through his early years Momaday was influenced by cultures other than his own. He went to a native american school, however he the college of Stanford. The views of the teachers he had were miraculously different and gave hiam an advantage that helps him to communicate in a shrewd way that makes sense of both types of culture. “Native American thought, God is known as the All Spirit. Other beings are also spirit. The natural state of existence is whole. Therefore, the sacred chants and ceremonies, spoken and sung, are meant for healing, emphasizing restoration of wholeness. Beauty is wholeness; health is wholeness; goodness is wholeness. This all rests on the basic Indian assumption of the wholeness or unity of the universe. Thus, Native American literature must consider how it is relevant to the continuing of the harmony of the universe.” With native american culture being based on wholeness and nature, Momaday’s books are centered around this concept. In most of his works the Characters go through a healing process that allows them to be resolute and get done what is needed in his works. This helps the reader connecte and spiritually go through this process with the character to help themselves wipe their slates clean as well.
While reading Momaday's literature it is easy to see that he knows alot about the subject he is writing about.
He bases what he has written over what he has lived and seen throughout life. “Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain ar isolated; there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose to the sense of proportion.” (Momaday, 3) Like mentioned, this quote can be related with Momaday’s culture. This book relates to his people that he is associated with, even if they are adversaries. This similarity helps the reader imagine what it is like to live like these people on the reservation like he did ,cut off from the real world. “But warfare for the Kiowas was eminently a matter of disposition rather than of survival, and they never understood the grim, unrelenting advance of the U.S. Cavalry.” (Momaday, 7) This goes back to the wholeness of the native american culture. In the book and in real life the KIowas never like to bolster troops, they would rather just use peace as a tactic instead. “Along the way Kiowas were befriended by the Crows, who gave them the culture and religion of the plains.”(Momaday, 23) In the culture he grew up with they were always helping of others even if it was not in their best interest. In the book Momaday talks about how the character's grandmother died and where she came from. He explains
how these culture became intertwined. “No longer were they slaves to the simple necessity of survival; they were a lordly and dangerous society of fighters and thieves, hunters and priest of the sun.” (Momaday,56) In this quote he is showing what happens to his culture when they have given up. In their culture if you are untrue or unholy you will be punished and in this story that is exactly what happened. Growing up in this culture Momaday was centered around the religion of spirits and the the fact that nature is a beautiful work of art that should be left untouched. “When the wild herds were destroyed, so too was the will of the people; there was nothing to sustain them in spirit.”(Momaday,5) The way Momaday grew up he was always taught to believe in god and the spirits of the animals and elders. He was told to believe even when in hard situations. This book however, shows what happens when the people of this culture do give up. “The grandmother spider told him never to throw the ring into the sky, but one day he threw it up, and it fell squarely on top of his head and cut him in two. He look around and there was another boy.”(Momaday, 97) The culture where he comes from uses myths and stories to give a moral to the reader to help better themselves. This story has the moral of always listening to your elders or people of higher power because, you never know what could go wrong. “Great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh…,”(Momaday, 24) From where Momaday was raised he got a lot of knowledge on how to be very descriptive and haw to not take away some things beauty just because it must be written on a page. The reservation had great skill in describing things to the people, because as stated earlier they were not really connected to the outside world so they would use their own mean to help describe the world to the people who couldn't see. “I want to see in the reality what she had seen more perfectly in the mind’s eye, and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage”(Momaday,76) In this quote he is explaining what he wishes he could have seen because of the way this place have been described to him. Characters in stories are much easier to write about when people base their characters about people they knew in their life. “When I was a child I played with my cousins outside, where the lamplight fell upon the ground and the singing of the old people rose up around us and carried away into the darkness”(Momaday, 43) Momaday uses his own experiences to help develop his characters that can be relatable with the people of today. This helps with people to better understand the moral he is trying to make the public see. “Here and there on dark stones were ancestral names. Looking back once, I saw the mountain and came away”(Momaday,74) With this quote, Momaday is showing how his culture view life. The way that death is viewed can vary from different cultures and the way they deal with it can contain a range of different rituals. “A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.”(Momaday, 97) Bringing this book back to the way Momaday grew up, he grew up living by that old saying of “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.”(Momaday, 28) Momaday knows the importance of word and how to use them for peace and not war. “For my people the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy mountain.”(Momaday, 30) The way the culture works is with myths and stories that teach lessons made from someone else's mistake. These stories would not have been made if no one had the drive to make them, that is why in culture the stories from ancient time are always cherished the most. Culture is something that people can not live without, they are a blank canvas that needs their culture to help with the way they are painted and the mark they make on the world. “She was ten when the Kiowas came together for the last time as a living Sun dance culture. They could find no buffalo; they had to hang an old hide from the sacred tree.”(Momaday,54) The way culture starts has a huge effect on the way it influences the entire belief of everyone involved.
The way writers grow up is very important to the way the works are written. Culture helps with the development of the writing of the world. These skills help writers keep their myths and culture alive. With all of the culture he has absorbed over the years he has been able to learn how to build a bridge of communication between all the cultures he has lived with and learned about.