N Scott Momaday Research Paper

On February 27, 1934, N. Scott Momaday was born to mother, Mayme Scott who was a teacher and a writer, and to father Alfred Morris Mammedaty who was a teacher and an artist. Momaday’s father later reduced the family’s surname to the present day spelling of Momaday. N. Scott Momaday was specified as seven-eighths Native after birth, and a tarrying one-eighth of pioneer lineage. In Native American tradition, presenting a name for a person is significant as in determining the person's life course. Momaday was given three different names. In the english translation, he was named Rock Tree Boy, Eagle Alone, and Kiowa for Red Mountain. Although English was his predominant language, his family encouraged him to pursue the tribal cultures that surrounded
Later in his life, the Momaday family moved to New Mexico, where they settled in Jemez Pueblo and lived up until N. Scott reached his senior year in high school. As substructure for college, Momaday sought a more demanding educational experience, which he found at Augusta Military School, Virginia.
Momaday’s involvement with his culture and education lead him to writing about his characters in a way that English and American Indians could understand both respective cultures. Both languages learned by Momaday, as well as the culture influence he experienced have emerged in his writing. N. Scott Momaday spent his entire life learning about the cultures that molded together around him. The influences a family has on a child can be great. Most times, the outcomes of the
At a very young age, education proved to be of a high importance, mostly due to the fact that both of his parents held the occupation of teachers. Over the eleven year span, Momaday attended the University of New Mexico, and Stanford University, where he earned his Ph.D. “Describing a personal quest inspired by the death of his grandmother, Aho, Momaday’s chronicle of Kiowa tribal history from emergence to demise coalesces racial memory, legend, and personal experience into a life-giving renewal of Kiowa spirituality,” (Mills and Macdonald). Momaday’s novel is in honor of his late grandmother, who obviously influenced his life culturally. Though she may not have been around for his entire life, growing up, she was still a huge piece of his life that he couldn’t ignore. His novel, The Way to Rainy Mountain, he manages to capture an environment that shares similarities to the story of his