Advanced English

《 高 级 英 语 》（第三版）第一册

主编：张汉熙

外语教学与研究出版社

Lesson 11 The Way to Rainy Mountain

by N. Scott Momaday

Teaching Points

I. Background information II. Introduction to the text III. Language points IV. Text analysis V. Questions for discussion VI: Writing assignments

I. Background Information

1.  N. Scott Momaday 2.  Historical background 3. The Kiowas (para. 1) 4.  the Plains (para. 3) 5. the U.S. Cavalry (para. 3)

1.  N. Scott Momaday

Navarre Scott Momaday (born February 27, 1934) is a Kiowa-Cherokee Pulitzer Prize-winning writer from Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Momaday’s father Al Momaday was educated at Bacon College and the Universities of New Mexico and California. Scott Momaday was a well-known artist, deeply committed to his Kiowa heritage. His mother, whose great-grandmother was Cherokee, grew up in a middle-class family and was educated at Haskell Institute, Crescent Girls Collage, and the University of New Mexico. She studied art and journalism and became a well-known painter and writer. He inherited both his father’s and mother’s talents. He started out as a writer, but since 1974 painting and sketching have become important forms of creative expression for Momaday.

Momaday belongs to a generation of American Indians born when most tribal communities had long ceased to exist as vital social organizations. His Kiowa ancestors shared with other Plains Indians the horrors of disease, military defeat, and cultural and religious deprivation in the 19th century. Their only chance of survival was to adapt themselves to new circumstance.

His parents’ academic background and their integration into Anglo-American culture did not sever their ties to their Kiowa and Cherokee ancestors. Momaday identifies himself more as Kiowa than as Cherokee. Mamaday grew up on various reservations in northern New Mexico. Between 1936 and 1943, Momaday and his parents lived on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico and Arizona.

During this time, Momaday became familiar with Navajo culture and learned some of their language. After the family moved to Jemez Pueblo in 1946, Momaday became closely acquainted with Pueblo Indian culture and the unique landscape of the Rio Grande Valley. Momaday witnessed the fundamental changes which took place at Jemez and the cultural and personal disintegration among his Jemez neighbors. This is the theme of his novel House Made of Dawn (1968), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969.

From 1952 to 1956 Momaday attended the University of New Mexico, majoring in political science with minors in English and speech. At this point he began to be interested in writing. Then he went to study law at the University of Virginia for some time. There he met William Faulkner, who was teaching at the university, and the great writer had a deep influence on him He graduated in 1958 with a B.A. in political science. Between 1959 and 1963 he did doctoral studies in English at Stanford. In 1962 Momaday received an Academy of American Poets prize for his poem “The Bear.”

From 1963 to 1969 Momaday was an assistant and later associate professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There he taught American Indian studies and was very much concerned with the Indian oral tradition. In 1967 he published The Journey of Tai-me, an exploration of Kiowa folklores, which he enlarge into his best-known book, The Way to rainy Mountain (1969).

The book is Momaday’s inquiry into his Indian past in an attempt to determine the extent to which it has shaped him and the degree to which he has become detached from the mythical worldview of his ancestors. The book is divided into three chapters entitled “The Setting Out,” “The Going On” and “The Closing In” with 24 sections, each told by three different narratives: mythical, historical and personal.

In his book Momaday explores his ethnic identity and the history and culture of his people. He says “None but an Indian, I think, knows so much what it is like to have existence in two worlds and security in neither.” His other work includes two volumes of poetry, Angle of Geese and Other Poems (1974) and The Gourd Dancer (1976); The Names: A Memoir (1976); an autobiographical novel The Ancient Child (1989);

two collections of prose and poetry In the Presence of the Sun (1992) and The Man Made of Words (1997); and an interweaving of poetry and painting In the Bear’s House (1999). In 1992, Momaday received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. He also won the 2007 National Medal of Arts awarded by former President George W. Bush.

N. Scott Momaday (left) receiving the National Medal of Arts from George W. Bush in 2007.

In the past years, Momaday has taught English and given lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, University of Arizona, Princeton, and Columbia. Some of his books have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Polish, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Japanese.

The publication of Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968) and The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969) is usually regarded as sparking the beginning of Native American Renaissance, a controversial term, but one which acknowledges the richness and variety of Native American publications produced since the 1970s in all genres.

2. Historical background The Trans-Mississippi West was far from empty of

human habitation when the newcomers arrived during the period of westward expansion. An estimated 360,000 Indians lived in this region in the mid-19th century. Among the Indians dwelling on the Great Plains, the introduction of horses by the Spanish at the end of the 16th century, and of firearms by British traders in the 18th century, had created the armed and mounted warrior tribes encountered by 19th century westward migrants. Commercial and other contacts with the non-Indian world continued to be important to the Plains Indians as new settlers moved in.

But beyond these generally positive exchanges, contact with advancing non-Indians massively disrupted Indian life everywhere. Disease, which had devastated Native American since the earlier European contact, continued its ravages among the 19th century western Indians. All tribes suffered severely from smallpox, measles, and diphtheria, as well as other diseases contracted from traders and settlers. The non-Indian who descended on the Plains after 1850 had no understanding of traditional Indian culture and little inclination to respect or preserve the “savages” ways.

Military defeat, occupational massacres, forced removal to reservations, and devastation by disease, alcohol and impoverishment all bewildered and demoralized the Plains Indian peoples. By the 1890s relocation to distant, often inferior, and generally inadequate lands had become the fate of almost every Indian nation of the Great Plains.

(Based on Chapter 17 “The Frontier West” from the book The Enduring Vision edited by Boyer and others)

As the frontier pressed in from east and west, the relentless greed of non-Indian settlers drove the Indian into what was supposed to be their last refuge. Mounted on horses, perhaps 250,000 Indians in the Great Plains and mountain regions lived mainly off the herds of buffalo which provided food and, from their hides, clothing and shelter. No sooner was the Jacksonian removal policy complete than the onrush of migration in the 1840s began to crowd the Indians’ land. Emigrants crossing to Oregon, California, Utah, and Santa Fe came into contact and often into conflict with the Native Indians.

In 1851 the chiefs of the principal plains tribes were gathered at Fort Laramie, where they agreed to accept more or less definite tribal borders and to leave the emigrants unmolested on their trails. The new arrivals soon found it easier to force one tribes to cede its lands without arousing the others, for the Indian could never realize the old dream of a unified resistance.

From the early 1860s until the late 1870s the frontiers was ablaze with Indian wars, and intermittent outbreaks continued through the 1880s. In 1867, a conference was held in Kansas, and ended with an agreement that the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne would accept lands in western Oklahoma. But Indian resistance in the southern Plains continued until the Red River War of 1874 – 1875.

(Based on Chapter 19 “New Frontiers” of the book America: A Narrative History by George Brown Tindall)

3.  The Kiowas (para. 1)

The Kiowa ( /‘kaiəuwɑ:/ ) are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. Today, they are a federally recognized tribe, the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, with 12,000 members.

Total population: 12,000 (2011) Regions with significant populations: 

United States,  Oklahoma Languages: English, Kiowa Religion:

Christianity and Native American Church

Original Southern Plains territory of the Kiowa Nation

American Indian Tribe

Indian Camp

Name

Kiowa call themselves Kaui-gu. Ancient names were Kwu-da and Tep-da, relating to the myth pulling or coming out of a hollow log until a pregnant woman got stuck. Later, they called themselves Kom-pa-bianta for "people with large tipi flaps", before they met Southern Plains tribes or before they met white men. Another explanation of their name "Kiowa" originated after their migration through what the Kiowa refer to as "The Mountains of the Kiowa" (Kaui-kope) in the present eastern edge of Glacier National Park, Montana, just south of the border with Canada.

The mountain pass they came through was populated heavily by grizzly bear Kgyi-yo and Blackfoot people. Other tribes who encountered the Kiowa used sign language to describe them by holding two straight fingers near the lower outside edge of the eye and moving these fingers back past the ear. This corresponded to the ancient Kiowa hairstyle cut horizontally from the lower outside edge of the eyes to the back of their ears. This was a functional practice to keep their hair from getting tangled as an arrow was let loose from a bow string. George Catlin painted Kiowa warriors with this hairstyle.

Language

Kiowa language is a member of the Kiowa-Tanoan language family. The relationship was first proposed by Smithsonian linguist John P. Harrington in 1910, and was definitively established in 1967. Parker McKenzie, born 1897, was a noted authority on the Kiowa language, learned English when he began school. He worked with John P. Harrington on the Kiowa language. He went on to

discuss the etymology of words and insights of how the Kiowa language changed to incorporate new items of material culture. McKenzie's letters are in the National Anthropological Archives on pronunciation and grammar of the Kiowa language.

Government

The Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma is headquartered in Carnegie, Oklahoma. Their tribal jurisdictional area includes Caddo, Comanche, Cotton, Grady, Kiowa, Tillman, and Washita Counties. Enrollment in the tribe requires a minimum blood quantum of 1/4 Kiowa descent.

J.T. Goombi, former Kiowa tribal chairman and first vice-president of the National Congress of American Indians

Big Tree, a Kiowa chief and warrior

Donna Standing Steinberg, Kiowa-Wichita and Josephine Parker, Kiowa, with their beadwork

Kiowa parfleche, ca. 1890, Oklahoma History Center

Kiowa beaded moccasins, ca. 1920, OHS

Crow-tribe

Piegan-blackfoot

War Party ( 北美印第安人的远征队）

Indian Scouts ( 童子军；侦察兵 )

4. the Plains (para. 3) The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat

land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

The Canadian portion of the Plains is known as the Prairies. Some geographers include some territory of Mexico in the Plains, but many stop at the Rio Grande. The region is known for supporting extensive ranching and agriculture.

Approximate extent of the Great Plains

Countries ： United States, Canada, Mexico Coordinates ： 37°N 97°W Length ： 3,200 km (1,988 mi) Width ： 800 km (497 mi) Area ： 1,300,000 km2 (501,933 sq mi)

View of the Great Plains near Lincoln, Nebraska

A photo of bison at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma

Great Plains in North Dakota c.2007, where communities began settling in the 1870s

Buffalo hunt under the wolf-skin mask, 1832–33

Cattle herd and cowboy, circa 1902

The term Great Plains is used in the United States to describe a sub-section of the even more vast Interior Plains physiographic division, which covers much of the interior of North America. It also has currency as a region of human geography, referring to the Plains Indians or the Plains States

The Great Plains are the westernmost portion of the vast North American Interior Plains, which extend east to the Appalachian Plateau. The United States Geological Survey divides the Great Plains in the United States into ten physiographic subdivisions.

In general, the Great Plains have a wide variety of weather through the year, with very cold and harsh winters and very hot and humid summers. Wind speeds are often very high. The prairies support an abundant wildlife in undisturbed settings. Humans have converted much of the prairies for agricultural purposes or to create pastures. The Great Plains have dust storms mostly every year or so.

History ： Original American contact

The first Americans (Paleo-Indians) who arrived to the Great Plains were successive indigenous cultures who are known to have inhabited the Great Plains for thousands of years, perhaps 10,000 years. Humans entered the North American continent in waves of migration, mostly over Beringia, the Bering Straits land bridge.

Historically the Great Plains were the range of the bison and of the culture of the Plains Indians, whose tribes included the Blackfoot, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived in semi permanent villages of earth lodges, such as the Arikara, Mandan, Pawnee and Wichita.

5. the U.S. Cavalry (para. 3)

The United States Cavalry, or U.S. Cavalry, was the designation of the mounted force of the United States Army from the late 18th to the early 20th century. The Cavalry branch was absorbed into the Armor branch in 1950, but the term "Cavalry" remains in use in the U.S. Army for certain armor and aviation units historically derived from cavalry units.

Originally designated as United States Dragoons, the forces were patterned after cavalry units employed during the Revolutionary War. The traditions of the U.S. Cavalry originated with the horse-mounted force which played an important role in extending United States governance into the Western United States after the American Civil War.

Today, cavalry designations and traditions continue with regiments of both armor and aviation units that perform the cavalry mission. The 1st Cavalry Division is the only active division in the United States Army with a cavalry designation. The division maintains a detachment of horse-mounted cavalry for ceremonial purposes.

Cavalry branch plaque

Active ： 17 November 1775–1951 Country ： United States Allegiance ： United States of America Branch ： United States Army Type ： Cavalry Role ： Reconnaissance, security, assault Size ： Division, Brigade, Regiment, Squadr

on, Troop

II. Introduction to the text

“The Way to Rainy Mountain” first appeared in Reporter, 26 January 1967. With few modifications this piece is used as the introduction to his book The Way to Rainy Mountain, published in 1969. This essay is widely anthologized and included in The Best American Essays of the Century edited by Joyce carol Oates.

We study this essay for many reasons: for the author’s special racial identity, the history of his Kiowa people – the American Indian elements depicted in this piece are undoubtedly thought-provoking and capable of widening our knowledge of the Native American – and above all the pure enjoyment of reading a wonderful piece of prose.

III: Language points

1. For my people, the Kiowa … Rainy Mountain. (para. 1)

Landmark: A landmark is any prominent feature of the landscape, such as a tree, a hill or a building, serving to identify a particular locality. Rainy Mountain is where the author’s grandmother lived and died. She is buried there with the author’s grandfather and many other Kiowa warriors.

2. Great green-and-yellow grasshoppers … the plenty of time. (para. 1)

The grasshoppers on the plain are large and everywhere. When a grasshopper hops, it pops up like the growing corn in the fields, making a sudden, explosive movement to sting the flesh. Tortoises crawl abut the red earth aimlessly in no hurry for they have all the time to themselves.

3. Loneliness is an aspect of the land. (para. 1)

Loneliness is a major quality of this landscape. As we can see, the depiction of the land is injected with emotions and imagination, bringing out the spirit of the place. The author emphasizes loneliness, perhaps because this quality enables one to concentrate one’s mind on the earth.

4. To look upon that landscape … of proportion. (para. 1)

When you look upon the landscape in the early morning with the rising sun at your back, the objects you see may seem larger (or smaller) than they really are. And the sense of proportion is about life, creation, etc. and so it is a philosophical comment, not just about the physical.

5. Your imagination comes to life … Creation was begun. (para. 1)

The landscape makes your imagination vivid and life like, and you believe that the creation of the whole universe was begun right here. Different culture and religions have different myths about how the universe began.

Creation: With a capitalized “C” and the definite article. “the,” “the Creation” is a theological term, meaning the act by God, according to the Bible, of making the universe, including the world and everything in it. Here the author capitalizes the word but omits the article “the,” perhaps to show that he is talking about the creating of the universe as a Kiowa imagines. Later in the essay he talks about the emergence of his people according to the Kiowa myth.

6. The function of Paragraph 1: The opening paragraph of the essay is a vivid descri

ption of the author’s ancestral land, which plays a key role in his exploration of his Kiowa identity. The land is crucial for Momaday because the migration of his people took place here. The land witnessed the tribal history. The old days are gone forever. The Kiowa warriors are dead. The culture has almost disappeared. What remains is the land which is the visible embodiment of their people’s past. By directly involving himself with the landscape of his ancestors, the author is able to identify more closely with them and relive their experiences in his imagination more vividly.

The descriptions of the land are very pictorial: The author is good at painting pictures with words. In an interview with T. Morgan, Jr. in 1975, Momaday said: “I have always been concerned to see that I’m writing, and I have a real image of the subject I am treating. I deal a lot in descriptive writing. I write descriptions of things. I try to render them to the mind’s eye accurately. To that extent I would say that my writing tends to be pictorial. I really want to see things in my writing, literally, and I want the reader to see what I’m talking about, to have a visual impression.”

7. … I was told that in death her face was that of a child. (para. 2)

In death, she was peaceful and free from all earthly worries and miseries. Her face looked like that of a child. Only in death can one return to childhood innocence and peacefulness.

The word “child” is repeated in the next sentence of the next paragraph: I like to think of her as a child. Structurally the two paragraphs are smoothly connected. In meaning, the author seems to say that life is but a cycle – one begins as a child and ends like a child, and in death one returns to where one begins.

8. The function of Paragraph 2:

In paragraph 2 the author explains his purpose of his visit to Rainy Mountain: to be at his grandmother’s grave. This paragraph serves as a transitional link between the description of the land in Paragraph 1 and the narration of his grandmother’s and his people’s stories in the following paragraphs.

9. I like to think of her as a child. (para. 3)

Why does the author like to think of her as a child? His grandmother was born (around 1880) at time when the Kiowa were still living in their golden time or to be more exact, the last moment of their golden time.

Starting from Paragraph 3 the author links his grandmother with the history of the Kiowa. This narrative structure will continue in the following parts of the essay.

10. In alliance with the Comanches … Plains. (para. 3)

They had ruled the whole of the southern Plains: The Indians of the Great Plains inhabited two major sub-regions. The northern Plains, form Dakota and Montana southward to Nebraska, were dominated by several large tribes who spoke Sioux languages, as well as by the Flathead, Blackfoot, Crow and some other Indian tribes.

The other major concentration of Plains Indians was in the central and southern Plains. The so-called “Five Civilized Tribes” pursued an agricultural life there. In western Kansas lived the Pawnees. Surrounding these were the truly nomadic tribes of western Kansas, Colorado, eastern New Mexico, and Texas – the Comanche, Kiowa, and Arapahoe.

11. But warfare for the Kiowas … rather than of survival … (para. 3)

Warfare was important for the Kiowa more because of their militant tendency than because of their need for survival. The Kiowa often fought just because they felt that war was sacred because it could demonstrate their courage and strength, because they were good warriors, because they fought out of habit, character, nature, not because they needed extra lands or material gains for the sake of surviving and thriving.

12. … and they never understood the grim … of the U.S. Cavalry. (para. 3)

Why didn’t the Kiowa understand the grim, unrelenting advance of the U.S Cavalry? Wars were common among different Indian bribes. The cause of war was simple. They fought either for the simple necessity of survival or to display their bravery. When one side won a battle, they would typically stop advancing upon their defeated enemy but would celebrate their victory.

Yet, the U.S. Cavalry seemed different. They never gave up advancing even when they won. This puzzled the Indians. The truth is that U.S Cavalry was sent to accompany and protect the non-Indian, mostly white, settlers. In the 19th century, the American frontier kept moving westward. This westward expansion brought constant conflicts between the native Americans and non-Indian newcomers. When such conflicts occurred, the U.S Government and Army would invariable be on the side of the latter.

13. My grandmother was spared … military museum. (para. 3)

Luckily, my grandmother did not suffer the humiliation of being put into a closure for holding animals, for she was born eight or ten years after the event. But she must have heard what had happened from her parents and grandparents. Therefore she must have known the great pain and distress brought by defeat, and she must have seen how they had kept thinking about their defeat in a gloomy and hopeless way.

14. … the last culture to evolve in North America. (para. 4)

Before the arrival of the European, there had been numerous native Indian cultures that had existed for a long, long time in North America. After the Kiowa migration to the Great Plains from western Montana three centuries ago, they acquired horses and the Sun Dance culture. They changed their old ways of living and developed their new culture gradually. The author says that this was the last culture to develop in North America.

15. … whose language has never been positively classified … group. (para. 4)

The native Indian languages are classified mainly geographically, not linguistically. Perhaps because of the migration of the Kiowa, their language has never been definitely classified in any major group of the Native Indian languages.

16. It was a long journey toward the dawn … golden age. (para. 4)

Dawn: the word “dawn” has two meanings: the beginning of daylight; daybreak and the beginning of something. Both meanings suit the context here in that the Kiowa people not only moved toward the sun from a sunless mountain area, but also toward the beginning of a new era in their history.

17. Along the way the Kiowa were befriended by the Crows …(para. 4)

Indian wars were frequent in history. Yet, in the process of their migration, the Crow helped the Kiowa by giving them horses and introducing them to the religion of the Great Plains, both of which were essential for the transformation of the Kiowa from a mountain people to a plain people.

18. … and their ancient nomadic spirit was suddenly free of the ground. (para. 4)

As a nomadic people, they had no permanent home and were constantly on the move. When they lived in the mountain in Montana, they had no horses and therefore they had to walk on foot all the time. In a sense they were tied to the ground. Now they were able to gallop on horseback. This gave them a new freedom of movement, thus completely liberating their ancient nomadic spirit.

19. They acquired Tai-me … the divinity of the sun. (para. 4)

They came into possession of Tai-me, the object and symbol of their worship – the Sun Dance religion. This object was worshiped by all tribe that regarded the sun as deity.

1) Tai-me: Tai-me is the sacred object of worship in their Sun Dance religion. It is also referred to as the Sun Dance doll or fetish. In other places in his work Momaday describes it as a bundle of medicine, which has great healing power.

2) Sun Dance: The Great Plains Indians worshipped the sun as their god. The Sun Dance was their religious ceremony. The dance was attended with symbolic rites. One of the rites was to hang Tai-me, the Sun Dance fetish, from a tree. That was the only time when it was exhibited to view. The Sun Dance period took place in mid-summer and was considered to be very festive and sacred.

20. According to their origin myth, they entered … a hollow log. (para. 4)

According to the myth about where hey originally came from, they believed they entered the world from a hollow log. In the first chapter of his book The Way to Rainy Mountain, Momaday writes, “Yon know, everything had to begin, and this is how it was: The Kiowas came one by one into the world through a hollow log. There were many more than now, but not all of them got out. There was a woman whose body was swollen up with child, and she got stuck in the log. After that, no one could get through, and that is why the Kiowas are a small tribe in number. They looked all around and saw the world. It made them glad to see so many things. They called themselves Kwuda, ‘coming out.’”

21. The main idea of Paragraph 4: Paragraph 4 is about how the Kiowa

migrated from western Montana and how the migration transformed the Kiowa. Like Paragraph 3, this part uses the author’s grandmother’s story as a focal point, but quickly moves on to the story of the Kiowa people. The use of words like “she belonged to the last culture” and “her forebears” smoothes the transition.

22. I wanted to see in reality … my pilgrimage. (para. 5)

1) in the mind’s eye: in imagination. Aho had never been to places like the Black Hills, but she had seen the place quite well in her imagination, for she had heard so much about it from the older generations. It is through the oral tradition that the Kiowa cultural heritage has been handed down from generation to generation.

2) pilgrimage: a journey to a place of historical interest. For Momaday, the journey is indeed aimed at a holy place, a place where his ancestors lived and thrived in their golden age.

23. The Kiowas reckoned their stature by the distance … wilderness. (para. 6)

As hunters, it was very important for the Kiowa to be able to see long distances. So if a Kiowa could see a long way, he would be respected by his fellow Kiowa. In other words, their stature was measured by the distance they could see. Yet, because of the dense forests, they could not see very far, and they could hardly stand straight. Thus the author says “they were bent and blind in the wilderness.”

bent and blind: Note the repetition of the initial sound /b/ in “bent and “blind.” Beside alliteration, here the author also employs the rhetorical devise of hyperbole to make the description more vivid and effective. Hyperbole is exaggeration for effect and not meant to be taken literally. Although they felt a sense of confinement, they were certainly not bent and blind.

24. The earth unfolds and the limit of the land recedes. Clusters of trees and animals … to build upon the mind. (para. 7)

The earth unfolds and the limit of the land is far in the distance, where there are clusters of trees and animals eating grass. This landscape makes one see a long way and broadens one’s horizon. Remember that they could not see far into the distance in the forest-covered mountains.

25. The sun follows a longer course in the day … beyond all comparison. (para. 7)

Why does the sun follow a longer course in the day? Because of the low horizon, the sun rises early and sets late, thus making the day longer and night shorter than in the mountains.

26. The great billowing clouds that sail … dividing light. (para. 7)

Clouds swell like large waves and move like sails upon the sky, casting shadows on the grain fields. As the clouds move, the shadows move too, making some patches of land brighter and some darker.

Note the figures of speech connected with water – billowing, sail, like water. When you use an extended metaphor, stick to the same metaphor and avoid using mixed metaphors.

27. Not yet would they veer southward to the caldron … in their view. (para. 7)

They would not yet change the direction southward to the land lying below which was like a large kettle, implying the idea of heat as well as the bowl shape. First, they must give their bodies some time to get used to the plains. Second, they didn’t want to lose sight of the mountain so soon. Note the inversion of the sentence order.

wean: The word “wean” originally means to withhold mother’s milk from the baby or the young mammal and substitute it with other nourishment. It is used here metaphorically. The Kiowa paused on their way, not in a hurry to go on toward the southeast because they wanted to give their bodies some time to get accustomed to the change of weather and other physical conditions.

28. The main idea of Paragraph 7: This paragraph is a depiction of the

landscape which they came upon when they got out of the highlands in Montana. The new landscape is open, limitless and sunlit, allowing them a new vision into unknown distances. This forms a sharp contrast with the sunless mountain landscape of Yellowstone. The sense of confinement and limitation in the mountains gave way to a sense of freedom in the plains.

29. At the top of a ridge I caught sight of Devil’s Tower … was begun. (para. 8)

1) Devil’s Tower: The rolling hills of the 1347 acre park covered with pine forests, woodlands, and prairie grasslands. Deer, prairie dogs, and other wildlife are abundant. It was proclaimed in 1906 as the first national monument by President Theodore Roosevelt. Millions of people will recognize the shape of Devil’s Tower from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which featured the Tower as the landing spot of the awesome Mother Ship. Devil’s Tower is one of the legendary place in American Indian cultures. There are different versions of the origin of the Tower. Some tribes call it Bears Lodge.

It is an important place in Kiowa history. When Momaday was a baby his parents made a trip to the Black Hills with him. There, Momaday was given a Kiowa name – Tsoaitalee – meaning “Rock Tree Boy” in English, which was derived from the Kiowa story about Devil’s Tower.

2) and the motion of the world was begun: Everything in the world was made to move. The use of the passive voice suggests that there was a force that began the motion of the world.

30. “Directly there was a bear where the boy had been.” (para. 8)

The boy had turned into a bear. Why did he become a bear, not some other animal? In the Kiowa culture, the bear is regarded as the most powerful of all animals. In an interview with Bettye Givens in 1982, Momaday said. “Bear are wonderful creatures. They are human-like, adventurous, powerful, curious, extremely confident in their elements. If you took a lion and you pitted him against the bear, I would bet on the bear. Bears are powerful.” He also said, “I identify with the bear because I’m intimately connected with that story. And so I have this bear power. I turn into a bear every so often. I feel myself becoming a bear …

The boy who turns into a bear, what does that mean? What is the metaphor? What is the symbolism there? I suspect it is that part of man which is subhuman. Primitive. Most people cannot recover nature. At one time, we lived in nature. But somewhere along the way, we were severed from nature. And we cannot any longer comprehend the creatures of nature. We don’t know about them as we once did. But this boy is an exception. He turns into a bear; that means that he reconstructs that link with nature.”

31. From that moment, and so long as the legend lives … night sky. (para. 9)

What is the symbolic meaning of this legend? In the legend the seven sisters are immortalized. With this legend, the Kiowa established a kinship with the stars. They were already allied with the sun through Tai-me. Now that they were related to the Big Dipper through the myth of Devil’s tower, they stood in good relation to the universe. The sun and the stars protected them day and night. This prepared them for the coming of their golden age.

32. Before the dance could begin … to disperse the tribe. (para. 10)

The orders came from the U.S government. Judged by the values of Christianity and European civilization, the Native American cultures appeared to be inferior and backward. The U.S. government perceived the Sun Dance as idolatry and therefore abolished it by force. For the Kiowa people, the Sun Dance was their holiest religious ceremony. Forbidden to practice their own religion, they were cut off from the life-sustaining power of the sun.

33. Forbidden without cause the essential act … from the medicine tree. (para. 10)

They were forbidden to perform the most important part of their religion and no reason was given for abolishing the Sun Dance religion. The white new comers and merchants killed buffalo in large numbers for commercial purposes, mainly for the hides. So after killing the animals, they would leave the dead bodies rotting on the ground.

34. Without bitterness, and for as long as she lived … of deicide. (para. 10)

deicide: the killing of a god

-cide: a suffix forming nouns, meaning

i. a killer e.g. pesticide, fungicide

ii. a killing e.g. suicide, genocide

35. Paragraph 4 to 10:

We can see that in para. 4 to 10 the author, by involving himself with the landscape, explores the three stages of the Kiowa --- emergence, evolution and decline. His grandmother serves as a focus or a link by which the author moves his narrative from one stage to another.

36. Now that I can have her only in memory … came upon her, praying. (para. 11)

This is a long sentence with several participle phrases portraying the different postures peculiar to his grandmother. Each posture is described in precise detail.

The method the author uses here is similar to montage, a technique often employed in films as well as in literature and music. Montage is the art or process of selecting, editing, and piercing together separate sections of cinema or television film to form a continuous whole; the technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of pictures, words, music, etc.

37. I was never sure that I had the right … mere custom and company. (para. 11)

The grandmother was praying privately and her prayers did no follow any customary way of praying, and she did not want anyone else to hear them. So the author was not sure that he had the right to hear her prayers.

custom and company: alliteration. “Custom” means a usual practice, a habitual way of behaving; habit. “Company” means companionship, a group of people gathered for a social purpose, etc. “Mere” indicates how much less important custom and company were than her prayers.

38. The last time I saw her she prayed standing … like a shawl. (para. 11)

Unlike the first sentence of this paragraph, which juxtaposes several postures together, these two sentences focus on only one posture of his grandmother – praying by the side of her bed at night. Here the author uses the technique of close-up ( a photograph shot at a very close range) instead of montage. With words he creates a memorable portrait of his grandmother. As an artist, he clearly knows how to use light in painting a portrait. This is a fine example demonstrating the author’s ability to create a visual impression.

39. The main idea of Paragraph 11:

For the first time, the author concentrates only o his grandmother’s story rather than mixing it with the history of the whole Kiowa tribe. Also for the first time, the author shifts the focus of depicting the landscape to describing a person – his grandmother Aho as an old woman.

40. The main idea and function of Paragraph 12:

Paragraph 12 is about the old houses at Rainy Mountain, in which the author’s grandmother and other Kiowa used to live, but which are now empty. This paragraph serves as a transition between the depiction of Grandma Aho and the reunions at her house in the past.

41. The women might indulge themselves … of their servitude. (para. 13)

The women, who usually stayed and served their men, now could make good use of these gatherings with other women and do what they like to do or what they normally couldn’t do, such as gossiping, making loud and elaborate talk among themselves, joking, etc. Gossip revealed their position as servants of men and was also a reward for their servitude. Only on such occasions could they have a chance to gossip with other women.

42. Paragraphs 12 to 14:

Paragraphs 12 to 14 describe the reunions that were once held at the grandmother’s house when the author was a child. After depicting his dead grandmother’s old house, he brings to life the joy and activity that once filled it. As a child Momaday took part in those events. By re-creating those scenes, he reminds himself of whom he is.

43. It had gone there, I thought, to live and die … eternal. (para. 15)

The cricket is a small insect with nothing special about it. But if it could go to live and die on the moon, the small meaning of its existence would become larger and eternal. Here the author has created an impressive image of the cricket against the moon. As readers we will ask, “What does the image mean? What does the cricket represent?” Different people may have different interpretations. One may see the cricket as symbolic of the Kiowa culture.

The Kiowa culture may seem small in definition, but its significance depends on how you look at this culture, or on the angle from which you view it. Maybe the cricket has a deeper meaning than that. In his essay “Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman” Momaday discusses the symbolic meaning of the cricket in Tuckerman’s poems “The Cricket.” He says, “The ubiquity of Tuckerman’s cricket is the ubiquity of death. Unlike man, who has severed his existence from primitive nature, the cricket is an integral part of nature. And, like death, it has absolute existence in a dimension incomprehensible to man. Therein lies the validity of man’s quest to know the meaning of death.” These words way throw light on our interpretation of the image.

44. Looking back once, I saw the mountain and came away. (para. 16)

The last two actions of the narrator are significant. Looking back means remembering the past. Out of his exploration into the past grows an attitude of acceptance and a desire to hold on to cherished memories. Coming away indicates a determination to start afresh from Rainy Mountain with a rich heritage that will continue to have a powerful influence on the life of modern Kiowa people.

IV. Text analysis: (1)Genre: This text is an essay (2)Theme: This essay allows us to share with Momaday when h

e concentrates his mind upon his remembered earth. By exploring the Kiowa history and culture, the essay reconstructs the link between humans and nature, which should be close, interdependent and harmonious. One may not be very interested in the Kiowa history, or Tai-me, or the Sun Dance, yet trying to understand nature, love nature and seek harmony with nature ought to be efforts shared by all human beings.

(3)The organization: Para. 1: The opening paragraph of the essay is a

vivid description of the author’s ancestral land, which plays a key role in his exploration of his Kiowa identity.

Para 2: The purpose of his journey: I wanted to be at her grave.

Para 3: Linking his grandmother with the history of the Kiowa. This paragraph sums up the history of the Kiowa as a Plains Native tribe – the golden time and the decline in their history.

Para 4: About how the Kiowa migrated from western Montana and how the migration transformed the Kiowa.

Para 5: Explaining the purpose of the author’s journey to places where his ancestors lived.

Para 6: Description about the Yellowstone: But, beautiful as it is, one might have the sense of confinement there.

Para 7: A depiction of the landscape which they came upon when they got out of the highlands in Montana. The new landscape in open, limitless and sunlit, allowing them a new vision into unknown distances.

Para 8: A legend about Devil’s Tower. Para 9: The Kiowa had been completely transformed

into a plains people. Para 10: About the last days of the Sun Dance

culture by using his grandmother as a witness. Para 4 – 10: The author, by involving himself with

the landscape, explores the three stages of the Kiowa culture – emergence, evolution and decline. His grandmother serves as a focus or a link by which the author moves his narrative from one stage to another.

Para 11: For the first time, the author concentrates only his grandmother’s story rather than mixing it with the history of the whole Kiowa tribe. Also for the first time, the author shifts the focus of depicting the landscape to describing a person – his grandmother Aho as an old woman.

Para. 12: About the old house at Rainy Mountain, in which the author’s grandmother and other Kiowa used to live, but which are now empty.

Para. 13: Descriptions about the reunions of the Kiowa.

Para. 14: Descriptions about the prayer meetings and great nocturnal feasts.

Para 12 – 14: Paragraph 12 – 14 describe the reunions that were once held at the grandmother’s house when the author was a child. By re-creating those scenes, he reminds himself of whom he is.

Para 15: Looking at the room, the author thought about the meaning of death.

Para 16: Looking back means remembering the past. Out of his exploration into the past grows an attitude of acceptance and a desire to hold on to cherished memories. Coming away indicates a determination to start afresh from Rainy Mountain with a rich heritage that will continue to have a powerful influence on the life of modern Kiowa people.

(4) Writing skills a. One of its striking features is the weaving of an

individual’s life with the story of a people. Here Modaday not only tells the story of his grand

mother, but also explores the history of his Kiowa ancestors and thus his own racial and cultural heritage. In tracing the three stages of his people’s history – emergence, evolution, and decline – the author conveys complicated feelings of nostalgia, belonging, and pride, mixed with a sense of loss and a light touch of sadness. Our cultural or ethnic heritage may differ, yet a light touch of sadness. Our cultural or ethnic heritage may differ, yet seeking one’s roots is a common human experience.

b. Momaday also blends a moving narrative of the stories of the Kiowa with a lyrical and pictorial description of the landscape where his ancestors once ranged in their golden age and where he has returned in order to know where he came from and who he is. In his pictures of his ancestral home, the land, the sun, the moon, the hills, the trees and everything else there are all portrayed with both visual precision and powerful imagination. One cannot fail to be impressed by the author’s close involvement with the land.

Momaday says: “Once is his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at very season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.”

Transition device: Repetition:

At the end of para.2: …that in death her face was that of a child.

At the beginning of para.3:I like to think of her as a child.

V . Questions for Discussion

1. How is the essay organized? How does the author combine the telling of his grandmother’s story with his exploration of his Kiowa ancestors?

2. How do the descriptions in the piece serve the purpose of the writing?

3. How is nature presented in this essay? What is the relationship between the Kiowa and nature?

VI: Writing assignments:

A composition with the title: The history and culture of the Kiowa people