N. Scott Momaday is one of the foremost contemporary Native American writers. His works reflect upon the folk traditions of the Kiowa people, particularly the storytelling traditions associated with a rich repertoire of oral narrative.
N. Scott Momaday, professor of English at Stanford University, California, ca. 1990. The son of a Kiowa father and a Cherokee mother, Momaday has been awarded both a Guggenheim fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A great American writer by any standard, Momaday is especially noteworthy for his employment of mythic and folkloric material, as well as oral narrative techniques, drawn from Kiowa traditions. (AP Photo)
N. Scott Momaday was born on February 27, 1934, in Lawton, Oklahoma. During his youth, Momaday resided in places throughout the American southwest, accompanying his parents as they relocated to teach school children residing on Apache, Navajo, and Pueblo Indian reservations. His mother, Mayme Natachee Scott Momaday, was an author of children’s literature. His father, Alfred Morris Momaday, was a painter. Both of these influences helped shape Momaday’s creative life, as did his Native American identity. Momaday has Kiowa heritage on his father’s side of the family and Cherokee heritage on his mother’s side.
Momaday earned a BA. in political science at the University of New Mexico. Following that degree, he spent a year teaching at Jicarilla on the Apache reservation. On the strength of his writing, Momaday received a poetry fellowship from Stanford University. Working closely with poet Ivor Winters, he went on to earn an MA in English in 1960 and a PhD in English literature from Stanford in 1963.
Since that time, N. Scott Momaday has pursued a career as an academic, including appointments at such institutions as Columbia University; Princeton University; the University of California, Berkeley; and University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1982, he joined the faculty in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. Since 1970, Momaday has also served as a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian.
In addition to his professorial role, Momaday has maintained an active agenda in creative writing. He has published works in a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, drama, and memoir. Like many writers of color, Momaday often explores the poignant and sometimes painful legacy of his cultural heritage. For example, his novel The Way to Rainy Mountain functions as both homage to Kiowa mythology and a remembrance of his childhood.
The writer’s major works include The Journey of Tai-me (1967), House Made of Dawn (1969), The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), Colorado: Summer/Fall/Winter/Spring (1973), Angle of Geese and Other Poems (1974), Owl in the Cedar Tree (1975), Before an Old Painting of the Crucifixion: Carmel Mission, June 1960 (1975), The Names: A Memoir (1976), The Gourd Dancer (1976), We Have Been Lovers, You and I (1980), The Ancient Child: A Novel (1989), In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961–1991 (1992), Circle of Wonder: A Native American Christmas Story (1993), The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages (1997), In the Bear’s House (1999), Three Plays: The Indolent Boys, Children of the Sun, the Moon in Two Windows (2007), and Again the Far Morning: New and Selected Poems (2011).
For his achievements in writing and scholarship, N. Scott Momaday has received numerous accolades. He received the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for House Made of Dawn, making him the first Native American to receive this honor. This text relates the story of a protagonist who finds himself pulled between two ways of life, a powerful motif throughout multicultural literature. In this instance, Momaday explores the struggles of a Pueblo man following military service during World War II. As he returns from his tour of duty, this individual finds himself challenged on several levels, including in terms of resuming his life as a civilian and reconnecting to his Native American identity.
Other recognitions for Momaday include an Academy of American Poets Prize, the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award, the National Medal of Arts, and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The author has been recognized with several fellowships, including from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Guggenheim Foundation. In addition, he has been named poet laureate of his native state of Oklahoma and a UNESCO Artist for Peace. On the basis of his celebration of Kiowa heritage, Momaday was also featured in The West, a PBS series by Ken Burns.
Along with figures such as Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor, N. Scott Momaday stands among the most distinguished Native American authors currently publishing. Some credit Momaday with stimulating an upturn in production and publication of Native American writings during the late 1960s and 1970s, a phenomenon sometimes termed the Native American Renaissance.
Over a long and illustrious career, his contributions to American literature and higher education have proven both numerous and noteworthy. Also an accomplished visual artist, Momaday has exhibited his drawings, paintings, and prints widely. Examples of his artistic work also appear in some of his publications, such as Circle of Wonder and In the Presence of the Sun. Bridging the realms of art and advocacy, Momaday founded the Buffalo Trust, a nonprofit initiative designed to promote and preserve Native American cultural heritage.
With his creative practices, N. Scott Momaday pays tribute to tribal legacies of language, landscape, and spirituality. Through his work, the author instills in readers an appreciation for Kiowa history and culture. By featuring traditional Native American elements such as stories, songs, ceremonies, and customs, Momaday’s writings preserve and creatively interpret Native American myths and folklore, while promoting cultural awareness and cross-cultural understanding.
Linda S. Watts
See also Folklore and Folktales; Written or Printed Traditions
Further Reading
Charles, Jim. 2007. Reading, Learning, Teaching N. Scott Momaday. New York: Peter Lang.
Momaday, N. Scott. 1976. The Names: A Memoir. New York: Harper and Row.
Schubnell, Matthias. 1985. N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Schweninger, M. 2001. N. Scott Momaday. Detroit: Gale.