Vocabulary
Momaday explains how his grandmother was "about seven when the Kiowas came together for the last time as a living Sun Dance culture.” Before their last dance began, soldiers “rode out from Fort Sill under orders to disperse the tribe.” That was July 20, 1890, and Momaday says his grandmother from that day forward carried a vision of THIS (or the killing of a god) in her mind.
What is DEICIDE? (dee or day)
*NOTE: A deity is a god or supreme being. The word "deity" comes from the Latin word deus (pronounced day-us), which means "god." The root of deus is dyeu- (pronounced die-oo), which means "to shine" like a god might in the sky.
In his Introduction, Momaday describes the houses in the plain, referring to the expanse of flatland in the Midwestern and Central parts of the country (specifically, in Oklahoma where he's visiting his grandmother's home and grave). He says they are “like sentinels [or guards] in the plain," which demonstrates THIS type of figurative language.
What is a SIMILE?
Momaday explains that the “stories in The Way to Rainy Mountain are told in three voices.”
“The first voice is the voice of [his] father, the ancestral voice, and the voice of the Kiowa oral tradition.”
“The second is the voice of historical commentary.”
“And the third is that of THIS.”
What is MOMADAY'S own voice?
This is the name of the doll that was part of the medicine bundle (or collection of sacred items used in Indigenous American ceremonies and rituals).
What is TAI-ME?
When describing the role of women in Kiowa culture, Momaday says that THIS was "the mark and compensation of their servitude."
This verb has multiple meanings, but it is used in The Way to Rainy Mountain many times to mean carried or transported. For example, Momaday says the seven sisters in the Devil's Tower myth were THIS into the sky.
*HINT: This is the past participle form of the verb to bear.
What is BORNE?
In the prologue, Momaday says that "[t]he end, too, was a struggle" for the Kiowas. To emphasize this struggle, he compares the death of the Kiowa people to THIS.
What is BURNING GRASS in the prairie wind?
The Way to Rainy Mountain is an example of THIS two-word genre.
What is LITERARY or CREATIVE NONFICTION?
When describing Devil's Tower, Momaday explains the Kiowa legend about how it came into being. According to this myth, eight children were playing at the base of it (seven sisters and one brother) when the boy suddenly turned into THIS and started running after his sisters. When they got to the tree stump, it spoke to them and told them to climb on it (at which point it rose into the air so that it was just beyond the boy's reach). While the boy clawed at the base, the seven sisters became the stars of the Big Dipper.
What is a BEAR?
In one of the excerpts you read, the ancestral voice tells a story about a woman who left her blind husband. On the day she left, a herd of buffalo came near. The man used his bow and arrow to shoot at them, but his wife kept telling him he had missed (even though he actually hit his mark multiple times and knew that he did). She then she helped herself to the meat and ran away with her child. He survived on his own for seven days eating THIS until a group of Kiowas found him and brought him to their camp where a woman was telling a story about her husband being killed by enemy warriors, and he immediately knew her voice. At sunrise, they "threw her away."
What is GRASS?
*NOTE: "Threw her away" is a euphemism, a mild or indirect word or expression used in place of one that might be considered too harsh, offensive, or unpleasant (e.g., "let go" instead of "fired").
Momaday describes the “perfect freedom in the mountains” of his homeland but says it really belongs to "the eagle and the elk, the badger and the bear." The Kiowas, he says, "reckoned THIS by the distance they could see, and they were bent and blind in the wilderness.”
HINT: This word can refer to how tall someone is, but it also means status or authority.
What is STATURE?
*The Kiowas didn't think of themselves as having status or authority in the mountains because they were "bent" and "blind" there, probably referring to how they would have to bend down to go under branches (unlike the creatures like the badger that were more equipped for such as environment).
To emphasize how dry, stiff, and unbendable the grass got in the summertime, Momaday compares it to THIS (a solid metal block used as a workbench for shaping metal).
What is an ANVIL's edge?
*The edge is the part of the anvil that is struck with a hammer to shape metal, so it is extremely hard (like the dry grass).
This is the name of Momaday's grandmother.
What is AHO?
According to their origin myth, the Kiowa people came “one by one into the world through THIS” but “not all of them got out” (14). A pregnant woman got stuck, not letting others through, which is why "the Kiowas are a small tribe in number."
What is a hollow LOG?
In the prologue, Momaday quotes someone who said the following: “There were many people, and oh, it was beautiful. That was the beginning of the Sun Dance. It was all for Tai-me, you know, and it was a long time ago.”
Many of you made a good educated guess and said you thought he was probably quoting his dad since he had told Momaday many of the stories in the book. However, in the epilogue, we learn that THIS PERSON actually said it.
Who is KO-SAHN?
- a 100-year-old woman who arrived at Momaday's grandmother’s house one July day after Aho had died
Momaday says in the preface that his mother was THIS "to the expression of [his] own spirit," meaning that she was absolutely necessary, essential, and all-important to the development of his character.
HINT: This word begins with the prefix in- (which often means "not" something).
Momaday describes the landscape around Rainy Mountain by saying, "At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems to THIS in fire."
HINT: This word means to twist in pain or to contort the body as if feeling great emotional or physical discomfort.
What is WRITHE?
The foliage (a non-human thing) is described as doing this human action in order to emphasize the way the "steaming foliage" looked as it moved in the wind. It's likely he was also emphasizing the vibrant red, orange, and yellow colors of the turning leaves.
Although many Kiowa people identify as Christians today, the Kiowas' religion used to be polytheistic and animalistic, meaning that everything in the natural world--such as animals, plants, rocks, and the weather--possessed a soul. At one point, Momaday demonstrates this when he says his grandmother had a reverence (or deep respect) for THIS.
What is the SUN?
THIS is where the Kiowa people were imprisoned after surrendering to the "grim, unrelenting advance of the U.S. Cavalry." Driven away from their home, they were "divided and ill-provisioned" and eventually "had nothing . . . but their lives" after "abandon[ing] their crucial stores to pillage." Momaday comments on the humiliation his people must have felt being surrounded by "those high gray walls."
What is the Old Stone Corral at FORT SILL?
*The museum's description of this corral says it was built after a "horse-stealing raid by the Kiowas" and served as a safe place "in case of attack by Indians." The museum's website also states that "Fort Sill's primary purpose was to control the Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa and other tribes of the Southern Plains who were making frequent raids on settlements in Texas and Mexico" (which was considered "Indian Territory" at the time). "One theory claims [they] turned to raiding to sustain themselves because of their forced migration away from the buffalo-rich Great Plains into the more austere desert and mountains of the Southwest."
Momaday says he remembers a lot of noise and coming and going in his grandmother's house. Specifically, he remembers the “aged visitors” who arrived in the summertime after keeping to themselves all winter. They wore great black hats and “bright ample shirts,” and they “wound their braids with strips of colored cloth.” Some of them “painted their faces and carried the scars of old and cherished THIS."
*HINT: This word sounds like enemy, which is close to its definition meaning mutual hatred and ill-will.
What are ENMITIES?
*singular: ENMITY
Along his journey, Momaday visits Devil’s Tower. He says that there are “things in nature that [cause to exist, produce, or THIS] an awful quiet in the heart of man,” and Devil's Tower is one of them.
What is ENGENDER?
*MNEMONIC: The root "gen" means born or produced, as in the words generation and generate. To engender is to produce or cause something to exist.
When Momaday returned to his grandmother's house after her death, he says he noticed for the first time just how small it was. He also describes how he “sat for a long time on the stone steps by the kitchen door” one night and “caught sight of a strange thing" when he looked at the moon. He says "a cricket had perched upon the the handrail" and his "line of vision was such that the creature filled the moon like a THIS." Momaday says the cricket "had gone there . . . to lie and die, for there, of all places, was its small definition made whole and eternal. A warm wind rose up and purled [or flowed in a circular motion] like the longing within me.”
What is a FOSSIL? (something that has survived a long time, is fixed, and cannot be changed)
NOTE: The cricket in this image might also be a metaphor for his grandmother, whom he believed would forever live on in the spiritual realm.
In one of the excerpts you read, Momaday shares a personal reflection. He says he remembers being on the northern Great Plains in late spring and looking into the distance. He says that, at first, there “was no THIS in the eye," meaning that he was only perceiving the vision in a holistic way and was not noticing any different or separate elements in the landscape. After looking at it for some time, though, he says the "smallest things beg[a]n to stand out . . . herds, rivers, and groves" (groups of trees without underbrush).
What is DISCRIMINATION?
*NOTE: Many of you said he was talking about the way his people had been discriminated against or treated differently, but the word discriminate was used in a different context here.
In one of the excerpts you read, Momaday says that the Kiowa people originally named themselves Gaigwu (pronounced guy-i-goo), “a name which can be taken to indicate something of which THESE differ from each other in appearance." This name refers to the fact that the Kiowa people used to "cut their hair on the right side of the head only and on the line level with the lobe of the ear, while on the left they let the hair grow long." Momaday adds that it makes sense then that Kiowa is indicated in sign language by “holding the hand palm up and slightly cupped to the right side of the head and rotating it back and forth from the wrist” (15). Eventually, though, they took on the name Kiowa, which is a softened form of Gaigwu.
What are TWO HALVES?
In the epilogue, Momaday describes hearing about the Sun Dance from a 100-year-old woman who showed up at his grandmother's house one day sometime after she had died. During the ceremony, she saw an old woman who "had a bag full of earth on her back" and a digging tool in her hand and explained that the "dancers must dance upon the sandy earth." When this woman spoke, she said, "We have brought the earth, / Now it is time to play; / As old as I am, I still have the feeling of play." At the end of his epilogue, Momaday brings the discussion back to the present. He reflects on how Ko-sahn is probably dead now but how she must have wondered who she was and if she had become “in her sleep that old THIS of the sacred earth, perhaps, that ancient one who, old as she was, still had the feeling of play?”
What is PURVEYOR?
*A purveyor is one who supplies goods (usually as part of a business).