Noted for the publication of his first novel House Made of Dawn in 1968, which won him the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and brought him critical attention, N. Scott Momaday is “undoubtedly the best known American Indian writer world-wide”
(Owens 24). After the publication of House Made of Dawn (1968) and The Way to
Rainy Mountain (1969), Momaday became the most influential Native American
writer in the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s. Moreover, House Made of Dawn marked the inauguration of the Native American Renaissance.1 According to scholar and author of Native American and Chicano/a Literature of the American Southwest, Christina M. Hebebrand observes that the important issues Momaday incorporated in his works include “alienation felt by tribal people due to the failed assimilation into the dominant U.S. society, and the search for a sense of identity in order to reflect the difficulties indigenous people face in the modern U.S. society” (24), which are the central motifs in both novels House Made of Dawn and The Ancient Child. My goal in this thesis is to delve into the issue of mythology as it relates to the imagination and creation of Native identities in the novel. I wish to demonstrate that by re-imagining the Native mythology, Momaday reformulates Native identities and heals the wounds of the losses of land, language, religion, and culture, which are the most crucial elements of Native cultural identities. I propose that Momaday’s purposes in re-creating the mythology are threefold: first and foremost, it is relevant to Native worldviews, which highlight the cyclical nature of life. As Hebebrand states, in1 The Native American Renaissance was a term originally coined by critic Kenneth Lincoln in his 1983 book of the same title. According to Lincoln, The Native American Renaissance targeted less than two decades of published Indian literature, is a written renewal of oral traditions translated into Western literary forms (8).
contrast to the Western linear notion of time, in which all events occur in a straight line with a clear beginning and end, in the native understanding of time, history is
“looked upon as cyclical … events are thought—and expected—to repeat themselves”
(11). In The Ancient Child, the bear myth is repeated from generation to generation, and reenacted by the male protagonist Set. By re-creating the myths, the native traditions and beliefs are passed down to the new generation to emerge again.
Secondly, by means of retelling and re-imagining the traditional myths, Native spirituality and beliefs are not only passed down but revitalized through imagination.
Lastly, I propose that through recreating cultural myths, Momaday aims to cope with dual heritage in establishing the hybrid Native identities. As Hebebrand comments on contemporary Native Americans of mixed bloods, descendents of more than one Indian tribe and Europeans, “because they are often marginalized as one group among the miscellaneous ethnic people that comprise the melting pot—the United States, the similar problem they are faced is to establish a sense of self by mediating among the various cultural, tribal, and spiritual factors that shape their identities” (4). Clifford E.
Trafzer similarly depicts such hybrid nature in Native identities as multifaceted, suggesting it is “like a braid of hair,” which consists of three sources: “individual identity and community history are woven together with a philosophical system that gives meaning to the world. This braid is the tripartite link among our ancestors, our communities, and individuals”(233). Such philosophical system, I suggest, would be like the bear myth, which binds present individuals to their communities as well as to their ancestors. In this thesis I intend to explore how this philosophical system functions as a tripartite link that binds the three elements together and constitutes the sense of self-identity in The Ancient Child.
The Kiowa myth of a boy turning into a bear penetrates The Ancient Child
2(1989), Momaday’s semi-autobiographical novel that continues his personal vision quest for the essential “bear nature” within himself (Frischkorn 23). Descended from Kiowa himself, the ancestral bear nature represented by the bear myth enables both the writer Momaday as well as his fictional character Locke Setman to come home to the Kiowa tribal culture. Set’s home-coming, however, is triggered by inner torture and agony. As critic Jason W. Stevens contends, the bear is “a buried part of Set that rises up against his Euro-American ego for betraying his Kiowa father’s memories and his Kiowa people’s experiences” (606). Such conflict between his own cultural heritage and the culture in which he is brought up results in the inner pain and loss.
Such is the case with Set, the protagonist, who is the reincarnation of the boy from the Kiowa myth, the “ancient child” who becomes the bear. In going through the crisis of his lost identity and disorientation, Set begins to perceive himself as “the bear,”
eventually transforming himself into his destiny, and he reconstructs the ancient Kiowa myth as his own story. An account of the plot is in order before we further our analysis of the text.
Born to father Cate Setman and mother Catherine Locke, Set is orphaned when his mother dies in childbirth, and his father follows her seven years later in a car accident. Instead of living with his paternal Kiowa relatives, Set is sent to an orphanage, resulting in a state of alienation from his tribal community and ignorance of his tribal culture. He is later adopted by a retired philosophy professor and becomes a successful artist in the white art world in San Francisco. As a well-known artist in San-Francisco, Set becomes “sick and tired” (AC 38). His growing anxiety and feelings of disorientation are aggravated by the loss of home and self. On receiving a telegraph about the death of Kope’mah, his Kiowa grandmother Agabai’s close friend,
2 The edition cited in the thesis is published by HarperCollins (1990). It is hereafter abbreviated as AC in the parenthetical documentation.
Set is summoned back to his tribal home in Oklahoma, where he finds his father’s grave, learns about his Kiowa culture, and gains a sense of his Kiowa identity. He begins the journey of restoration and transformation as he’s given the medicine bundle and instructions from Kope’mah. Set gradually receives bear power and identifies with the Kiowa culture as a bear.