Remembering a Literary Giant

Throughout my life I have always turned to other writers to gain inspiration as I attempted to find my muse, as it were. During the years I have met writers in person in various places. I met and worked closely with a writer of Civil War history in New Hampshire, attended a book signing event with a writer from Vermont and met a writer of one of my favorite genres, mystery and proudly have a personally signed book from that author. I enjoy attending literary events with authors and poets from all around the globe.

As part of that exploration, I try to familiarize myself with local and regional authors of all genres, whenever I move to a new place. One of those authors enlightened me to a new culture the first time I picked up one of his books in a local bookstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico. That book was the 1968 House Made of Dawn by Pulitzer-Prize winning Native American author, poet and storyteller N. Scott Momaday, who died recently at his home in Santa Fe.

House Made of Dawn inspired generations of Native artists and helped make him a revered presence on the nation’s literary scene. He was 89. His recent death was announced by his publisher HarperCollins, who told Associated Press he had been in failing health in recent years.

Born Navarre Scott Momaday in Lawton, Oklahoma, Momaday was Kiowa but grew up in New Mexico’s Jemez Pueblo. He spent much of his life writing about the Indigenous cultures of the American Southwest and the Bear Clan from which he descended.

The Pulitzer-winning House Made of Dawn - the story of a young Native man who returns to Jemez Pueblo seeking healing after serving in World War II amid a struggle to reconcile his identity with life in the modern world - has been credited with ushering in a period referred to as the Native American Renaissance. Observers say the movement was marked by a rise in literary works by Native writers eager to tell their stories to an audience that often knew nothing of the Indigenous experience in the United States.

He laid the groundwork for Native American writers. He was a legend not only in literature but in support of Native American culture and traditions. He paved the way for all the Native writers of today.

There had been Native American writers and storytellers, but they had never been acknowledged for their importance or contributions until Scott Momaday came along.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in English at University of New Mexico in 1958, Momaday won a poetry fellowship to the creative writing program at Stanford University, where he earned a doctorate in English literature in 1963, according to National Endowment for the Arts.

Momaday lectured, taught and wrote throughout the country and the world, including University of New Mexico; University of California, Berkeley; Stanford; University of Arizona; and University of Puget Sound.

In 1974, he became the first professor to teach American literature at Moscow State University in Russia, according to National Endowment for the Arts, and during this time began drawing and painting. He later exhibited his works across the United States, including at Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe.

He wrote more than a dozen books, essays and collections of poems - including The Way to Rainy Mountain in 1969 and The Names in 1976. His poetry included “In the Presence of the Sun” in 1992 and “In the Bear’s House” in 1999. He also produced three children’s books.

In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for House Made of Dawn in 1969, he received innumerable awards and honorary degrees over the years. He was named a UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2003 and received the National Medal of Arts in 2007.

In a 2014 interview, Momaday acknowledged the notoriety of House Made of Dawn was a double-edged sword for a time.

He called the Pulitzer Prize “a welcome thing, but it had its burdens.”

People who knew him remembered Momaday as warm and witty, a captivating storyteller whose deep voice - both literally and metaphorically - compelled anyone within earshot to listen.

He was a giant, of course, of Indigenous literature but a giant of any literature - not just regionally, not just nationally, [but] internationally. His voice was powerful, prescient, meaningful and timeless. Momaday spoke of thousands and thousands of years of life and nature and traditions.

Momaday wanted to be remembered as a poet, first and foremost, because he felt that was the essential language … Even when he was writing prose, poetry was a part of it.

Momaday was married several times and had four daughters, one of whom proceeded him in death. Several of his relatives - including his daughter, writer and filmmaker Jill Scott Momaday, two granddaughters and a great-granddaughter born last July - live in Santa Fe.

Gray - who released her own book of poetry last year - said that while growing up, Momaday had always been just her “granddad,” but after taking one of his courses on storytelling at University of New Mexico during her sophomore year, she finally saw the man others revered as a living legend.

To everyone else, he was The Man Made of Words. The voice of God. The Bear. He was larger than life. He always told the creation story of the seven sisters and the boy who turned into a bear at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, a sacred site to the Kiowas. Gray likes to think that he went back to the earth, and he emerged a big brown bear, like he always said he would.

The greatest tribute one can give to Momaday is the passage from his book Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land published in 2020:

May my heart hold the earth all the days of my life. And when I am gone to the farther camps, may my name sound on the green hills, and may the cedar smoke that I have breathed drift on the canyon walls and among the branches of living trees. May birds of many colors encircle the soil where my steps have been placed, and may the deer, the lion, and the bear of the mountains be touched by the blessings that have touched me. May I chant the praises of the wild land and may my spirit range on the wind forever.