The Way to Rainy Mountain
...Although my grandmother lived out her long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, the immense landscape of the continental interior lay like memory in her blood. She could tell of the Crows, whom she had never seen, and of the Black Hills, where she had never been. I wanted to see in reality what she had seen more perfectly in the mind's eye, and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage....
Native American poet, writer, and artist. Momaday grew up on several reservations in the Southwest, but he drew the greatest influence from the Kiowa people of his native Oklahoma. After studying at the University of New Mexico and Stanford University, he began a teaching career that led him to the University of Arizona, where he is currently a professor of humanities. Momaday's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, House Made of Dawn (1968), was a breakthrough not only for him but for American Indian writers in general. Momaday has written several volumes of poetry, including The Gourd Dancer (1976) and In the Presence of the Sun (1992); autobiographical works including The Names: A Memoir (1976) and The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages (1997); and two collections of Kiowa folktales, The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969) and In the Bear's House (1999). See also english.illinois.edu/maps. 