The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday the author teaches us about his ancestral roots, the Kiowa Indians. The book is set on the Rainy Mountain, were the Kiowas lived and were Momaday returned to mourn his grandmother and the loss of his culture. The Way to Rainy Mountain uses a unique narrative system by splinting the main chapters , The Setting Out, The Going on, and The Closing In, into sections that each start with Folklore, then actual Kiowa history, and finally end with the author own personal experience. This gives the reader a deeper way to learn about the Kiowa Indian’s culture. The story starts out with Momaday returning to Rainy Mountain, because of the death of his grandmother. “I wanted to see in reality what she had seen more perfectly in the mind’s eye, and travel fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage” ( p. 131) Here Momaday explains how the death of his grandmother made him want to explore his ancestral …show more content…
In the first story, a family is surrounded enemies, the father comes up with a plan and when his wife hears his bird call she throws a flaming pot of fat onto her enemies and the family escapes. In the other story an arrow maker sees an enemy in hiding. He then pretends to check an arrow and shoots his enemy in the heart. Momaday then talks about an arrow maker from his father’s past. In the next section Momaday tells us about a Kiowa storm sprit that the Kiowas were able to speak to and ask it too pass over them. The net story is about Quoetai a good-looking warrior who took a bear’s wife away. In the fooling story warrior kills a buffalo with steel horns by hitting its weak spot with an arrow. Momaday explains how women were viewed as lesser than men and could be referred to as bad women, but he then explains how from slavery his ancestor rose up to be a strong member of her