N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain was written to preserve the stories of the Kiowa, and this act of preservation serves as a way to combat the erasure of their culture. In this way, Momaday infuses his book with hope; he is not resigned to the eventual extinction of Kiowa culture. The European Americans attempted to entirely destroy the Native peoples as they spread across the continent. They did not manage to complete the genocide, though the survivors are still victimized. Momaday’s work, however, ensures that the culture of the Kiowa endures in at least some fashion. Those who read it should feel compelled to remember the victims and to stand against the continued injustices with to which they are subjected. The Kiowa were attacked …show more content…
It is perhaps because Momaday is still able to feel this connection that hope exists within his book. This hope clearly manifests itself in a series of stories that he tells about buffalo that include both the injustice the Kiowa have endured and the chance of a better future. Buffalo are sacred animals in the culture of the Kiowa, and they play a central role in the Sun Dance (10). Therefore, the elimination of the herds by the United States military both causes shortages of food and further restricts the ability of the Kiowa to practice their faith. In Chapter XVI, Momaday first recalls a myth in which a man is able to kill a buffalo with “horns of steel”, a powerful and supernatural beast (54). This story may reflect the central role that hunting buffalo played in the society of the Kiowa, and the danger and honor that came with …show more content…
The residents of Carnegie, Oklahoma have arranged for two “old Kiowa men” to hunt a buffalo that is “a poor broken beast” in which there is “no trace left of the wild strain (55).” The state of the buffalo that is to be hunted and killed alone demonstrates that this occasion is very different from the traditional hunts on which the Kiowa embarked. Though they may never have faced buffalo with steel horns, the ones that they did hunt would have strength that is absent in this animal. In addition to this, the townspeople talk and laugh as they wait for the hunt; the hunt and the Kiowa themselves exist only as a form of entertainment in their minds (55). Yet this decline is not absolute. In his personal narrative, Momaday recalls encountering a “small herd of buffalo” with his father in Medicine Park (55). The buffalo are not simply clinging to life as they slowly but surely die. Instead, they are reproducing, so the herd is growing in size and recovering from the near total destruction with which it had been faced. Momaday describes one of the calves as being “delicately beautiful with new life”, which stands in sharp contrasted to the pitiful state of the buffalo in the historical narrative (55). This encounter takes place in the springtime, which symbolizes rebirth and renewal (55). The whole world is taking part in an emergence of life,