N Scott Momaday Research Paper

On February 27, 1934, N. Scott Momaday was born to mother, Mayme Scott who was a teacher and a writer, and to father Alfred Morris Mammedaty who was a teacher and an artist. Momaday’s father later reduced the family’s surname to the present day spelling of Momaday. N. Scott Momaday was specified as seven-eighths Native after birth, and a tarrying one-eighth of pioneer lineage. In Native American tradition, presenting a name for a person is significant as in determining the person's life course. Momaday was given three different names. In the english translation, he was named Rock Tree Boy, Eagle Alone, and Kiowa for Red Mountain. Although English was his predominant language, his family encouraged him to pursue the tribal cultures that surrounded
them on their home reservation. They would often tell him stories of his heritage, “I was first told these stories by my father,” (Momaday) he even states in his preface of The Way to Rainy Mountain.
Later in his life, the Momaday family moved to New Mexico, where they settled in Jemez Pueblo and lived up until N. Scott reached his senior year in high school. As substructure for college, Momaday sought a more demanding educational experience, which he found at Augusta Military School, Virginia.
Momaday’s involvement with his culture and education lead him to writing about his characters in a way that English and American Indians could understand both respective cultures. Both languages learned by Momaday, as well as the culture influence he experienced have emerged in his writing. N. Scott Momaday spent his entire life learning about the cultures that molded together around him. The influences a family has on a child can be great. Most times, the outcomes of the
child’s life depend on it. This is the common belief for the Native Americans that named Momaday, in hopes of deterring the child towards a good life. “At six months of age, he was given his first Native name by Pohd-lohk, stepfather of Mammedaty, Momaday’s grandfather, who died of Bright’s disease two years before Momaday was born,” (Mills and Macdonald). The culture significance of being given a name by his grandfather before he died is a legacy. Momaday lives through his grandfather’s influence according to the Native American belief. This showcasts the closely knit family orientation of the American Indians and how they revolve around each other, and how dedicated they are to their young, as well as their willingness to be involved with their families. ¨He considers his early formal education, however, including attendance at several Catholic schools, as unremarkable and substandard,” (Mills and Macdonald). Although school became a very important aspect in his later years of school, he considered his early years as “slacking” in modern terminology. His change in location could be the reason for his change of views on education, but in actuality, it is more likely that it was his parents that influenced him in being more serious about it. “Studies occupied the next eleven years,” (Jaskoski and Jones).
At a very young age, education proved to be of a high importance, mostly due to the fact that both of his parents held the occupation of teachers. Over the eleven year span, Momaday attended the University of New Mexico, and Stanford University, where he earned his Ph.D. “Describing a personal quest inspired by the death of his grandmother, Aho, Momaday’s chronicle of Kiowa tribal history from emergence to demise coalesces racial memory, legend, and personal experience into a life-giving renewal of Kiowa spirituality,” (Mills and Macdonald). Momaday’s novel is in honor of his late grandmother, who obviously influenced his life culturally. Though she may not have been around for his entire life, growing up, she was still a huge piece of his life that he couldn’t ignore. His novel, The Way to Rainy Mountain, he manages to capture an environment that shares similarities to the story of his
grandmother.
Native American culture vary depending on the location of where it’s people settled years ago. Many groups in the same area speak multiple dialects. It all depends on the location of settlement, as well as the distance between each settlement. Another difference between each settlement, is the legends they create from the different journey’s they experienced. Momaday describes this by mentioning his grandmother's birth right, and the reservations legends and myths. “Momaday has continued to explore in essays, prefaces, and speeches: an examination of the Native American people in their relationship to themselves and to the invading European culture,” (Jaskoski and Jones). Momaday is continually increasing his writings through many different platforms. Even after years of writing and experiencing this culture, he continues to analyze the different effects both cultures create when in harmony of each other. “Reasserts his persistent sense of affinity for particular landscapes,” (Jaskoski and Jones). Momaday shows a great interest, in not only his culture, but the natural landscapes of the natural world surrounding him. This interest is casted in The Way to Rainy Mountain, as Momaday describes situations he has been in, as well as the situations that are in the past and of his heritage and cultural history. “The bulk of Momaday’s prose and poetry has reflected both his Native American heritage and the Southwestern landscape,” (Mills and Macdonald). These are Momaday’s main writing muses. He shows these two subjects in The Way to Rainy Mountain, in a way that grasps natural elements in a vivid and accurate representation. Describing a personal quest inspired by the death of his grandmother, Aho, Momaday’s chronicle of Kiowa tribal history from emergence to demise coalesces racial memory, legend, and personal experience into a life-giving renewal of Kiowa spirituality,” (Mills and Macdonald). Momaday shines light on the way that his grandmother perceived the world around her. She experienced a migrant people, which is different from Momaday’s stationary living situations in reservations. Momaday also includes the myths and ideology that lead his people in believing things most would deem impossible. Over the course of a long and tedious journey to find a place to settle. The people found themselves through the journey. They found many things that they liked, and they settled around the things that gave them the best opportunities for survival. They created a system of belief that got them through the long wait for land, and once they got it, they praised it. “In the course of that long migration they had come of age as a people. They had conceived a good idea of themselves; they had dared to image and determine who they were,” (Momaday, 77). Here Momaday addresses the migration of his ancestors. The people had been modified by their journey, and so finally they began to consider who they were and what they were meant to become. “What remains is fragmentary: mythology, legend, lore, and hearsay--and of course the idea itself, as crucial and complete as it ever was. That is the miracle,” (Momaday, 77). In regards to his culture, Momday expresses his perception of the stories his father once told him as a child. He is now old enough to understand the myths, and the great legends that have shaped his culture and living environment. “It is a whole journey, intricate with motion and meaning; and it is made with the whole memory, that experience of the mind which is legendary as well as historical, personal as well as cultural,” (Momaday, 87). The journey made the legends being told more legendary. His people crafted a culture that changed their previous views of life, and were modified to a very personal, historical, and cultural journey together that allowed the memory and belief to stick.