N. Scott Momaday: A Man of Words

Abstract

the cultural tradition of the Kiowa people. In doing so, he has struck a responsive chord among the other diverse peoples of North America. He is a collector of the ancient traditions that circulated orally among the Kiowa people and others of the American Southwest. With him begins a literary tradition of those prose narratives which previously had circulated almost exclusively within specific tribal contexts. This process is one in which a great literary work, House Made of Dawn, issued at a stroke. Such a collecting and refashioning of old material cannot be ascribed to the initiative of Momaday alone. The time and place are ripe for it. Indeed, what is most important is that the presuppositions for this collecting and refashioning are present in the ancient tribal traditions themselves. The majority of these old narratives are etiologies. Their purpose is to explain some facts in tribal heritage, about a place or in the spiritual tradition. Previously the validity of these traditions and the interest in them have been