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N. Scott Momaday’s “The Way to Rainy Mountain”
“The Way to Rainy Mountain” by Momaday is an ingenious literary masterpiece poignant of his prowess in combining familial, tribal, and personal stories bringing out the history of the Kiowa Indians. The juxtaposition of Momaday’s personal memories in reference to the Kiowa traditional narratives and culture endears readers to the Kiowa life, which is embedded in mystical aspects and very well-grounded in the short story. Like other American literary texts, Momaday’s short story fits in mainstream American literature because it inherently explores the rich history of the American indigenous people and the struggles after the encroachment of the white settlers on their ancestral lands as well as the resultant influence on their culture.
In “The Way to Rainy Mountain,” Momaday presents the traditional myths and culture of the Kiowa people who formed the Indigenous Americans. The story belongs to the American historical literature because it not only dissects into the history of the Indigenous Americans but also explicitly highlights the rich culture and how it was rudely intruded by the arrival of the white settlers. The story not only creates the experiences but also reflects on the culture of the Kiowa people from the first hand as told by Momaday’s grandmother (Momaday 265). The literary mastery of Momaday comes out in this short story as he mentally balances the traditional rituals of the mountain Indian tribe and the contemporary life of the tribe. From an observer’s perspective, the reader appreciates lived experiences and the fluctuating Kiowa culture as a result of the external intrusion of the white settlers (Witschi 26).
From the story, readers can delve into the lives of Native Americans and how the conflicts with settlers affected them. The vivid description of the blood encounter with “U.S. Calvary” that ill-provisioned and divided the Kiowas further expounds on the historic conflicts with settlers, which drove Native Americans from their ancestral lands. Many native people lost lives and as Momaday portrays, his grandmother was spared because she was only eight to ten year old girl. The historic events depicted by Momaday embed this story in American history. According to Momaday’s grandmother, the Sun Dance was performed as a ritual to honor the Kiowas’ god – the Sun, which the people upheld in high regard (Burt 86).
As Momaday portrays, some of the conflicts between the Indigenous Americans and the soldiers emanated from the restrictions imposed against their cultural and traditional rites. The author explicitly describes soldiers interrupting a Sun Dance ritual in which Kiowas were forbidden from slaughtering buffaloes and honoring their god at the medicine tree. Fort Sill soldiers interrupted the ceremony and forbade Kiowas from exercising their freedom of religion. This depicts that the Native Americans had their rights violated after the settlers pillaged and settled in lands belonging to the Indigenous tribes. The chronological allusion of historical events endears the story to the American literature and makes it a good source of information on the Oklahoma Indian Reserve for the Kiowa people (Witschi 61).
In addition, the setting of “The Way to Rainy Mountain” as depicted by Momaday is in the backdrop of the mountainous region and plains of Oklahoma. The events in the 1800s also make the setting plausible in which the conflicts between the Native Indians and Whites move the story from fictitious literary text to non-fiction work. Therefore, the Momaday’s short story is more than a fictitious story as it forms historical and cultural study of 18th century Kiowa Indians. These people, a nomadic tribe that hunted buffaloes and were in constant migration, eventually settled in Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Kansas. According to Burt (57), the setting places this story in American literature canon given that the white incursion was met with brute force of the Kiowas’ fierce warriors. As a historical American literary text, “The Way to Rainy Mountain” showcases the Kiowas history as the warring tribe whose culture changed from interaction with various tribes before the incursion of white settlers in their ancestral lands. Kiowas were defeated by the settlers in 1874 and a settlement scheme was set in Oklahoma, and they even reside as well as southwestern regions in the United States.
Further, the short story fits in the American literature canon because like other American literary works, delves deep into the issue of identity. Witschi (49) argues the historical incursion of the white settlers unsettled the Native Americans not only from their lands but also from their cultural and traditional identity. The bedraggled warriors, cultural rites and rituals lost, loss of freedom, and loss of hope and vision are characteristics that identify the Native Americans as well as the African Americans. Famous American writers just like Momaday have written literary texts showcasing the search for identity of the American people. The narrator’s aim of taking the pilgrimage to the Rainy Mountain ingrains the story to the American literature in which the search for identity is a major theme. Momaday vehemently explores the Indian people’s background reduced toward programs, policy, poverty, and deprivation of the freedom of their culture in their own land by the new system.
Momaday’s creativity and imagination brings out the image of the landscape to readers as well as directing them to what he feels. Taking the readers in memory lane, helps them explore the rich ancestral background that is documented in the American history. Momaday views the land as his ancestral land as he claims that his people’s ancestors were buried in that land. “The Way to Rainy Mountain” empirically fits in mainstream American literature as it is an amazing literary text on American history, which reminds readers of the past as well as appealing to the present multicultural society. Just like his grandparents were influenced by Navajo and Pueblo people, his life has also undergone changes in the American society as he is discovering his identity in this journey to ‘rainy mountain’ (Momaday 266). The story is interestingly American because it figuratively explores on the many immigrants in the United States in which the first generation encountered many problems. The second generation had easier life challenges and third generation is lost and wants to discover its roots by going back to places grandparents came from (Burt 106).
In conclusion, Momaday’s “The Way to Rainy Mountain” is an exemplary American literary text that contextually documents the history of the Native Americans. Although the story is an imaginative journey of Momaday in the search of his roots and explains his identity, the setting and plot line are rich in plausible historical events of the conflicts between the white settlers and Native Americans. Therefore, “The Way to Rainy Mountain” belongs to the mainstream American literary texts that document the rich history of the American people.

Works Cited
Burt, Daniel S. The Chronology of American Literature: America’s Literary Achievements from the Colonial Era to Modern Times. Boston [u.a.]: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Print.
Momaday, N. Scott. “The Way to Rainy Mountain.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 265-271. Print.
Witschi, Nicolas S. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Print.