Role of Environment in Shaping American Indian Storytelling Essay

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Memory, a Voyage Into History

N. Scott Monday and Sherman Alexie are both story writers that focus on the environment. Storytelling is an important activity to the Native American culture that passes down information through each generation and imparts wisdom as it is retold. Although the stories told by N. Scott Monday and Sherman Alexie are 25 years apart, they share some similarities along with some differences. Every writer offers a unique spin on a story, and in this case, a setting. But along the way, one can see the nuances and realize the beauty they possess. Settings/environments don't solely have to be the terrain, the plants, the space around, it can include a multitude of things from animals, culture, beliefs, and so forth.

N. Scott Momaday split his book The Way to Rainy Mountain into three chapters. Each chapters consists of a dozen or so numbered sections. These sections are then divided into three parts. The first part of each numbered section is a legend or a story of the Kiowa culture. This changes as the book progresses along with the style and feel of each the stories.

The first passage in the first numbered section tells of the Kiowa creation myth. The story states they came into existence in this world through a hollow log. The second story shows an act of bravery by a dog to a man, as well as how Tai-me integrated into their culture, along with other stories. This section has stories that are timeless with events described to have taken place a long time ago. Each story had a "happy"/positive ending. Thusly, enabling the reader to discover the emergence of the Kiowa culture and their development within their environment.

Towards the end of the first part, the stories become less and longer with the story of the sun child who birthed two children and became sacred to the Kiowa people.

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The typical way Native peoples in the Southwestern part of the United States told their stories was during specific times of the year. For instance, the coyote myth is told during winter. The stories repeat throughout the life of someone, and told during certain times enabling them to take root within the listener's mind. The father of Scott Monday told his son of Kiowa tribe and their emergence from the mountains . This is where The Way to Rainy Mountain takes its influence from. The descriptions of the interactions with animals, like the dog saving the man, or the creation myth at the beginning, help show not only the environment, like which animals were domesticated, but also of the culture and their beliefs.

The last part of the book, the last third, is varies greatly from the first section in that it is mostly narrative. Instead of telling myths to analyze things, Momaday tells stories which relate events without any major ending. Different from the first part of the book, the outcomes are negative and truly examines the way people lived during the time of struggle with the Europeans. It is a gradual evolution. Scott Momaday begins the process of learning who the Kiowa are then relating them to himself and his family, and then finally being Kiowa himself, realizing the stories are about the tribe's past, not so much the morals and lessons.

The stories of the last part do not go into specifics of the Kiowa culture like: dogs or spiders talking to people, or the sun wedding a woman. The final stories explain the Kiowa's beliefs that would help a person ignorant of the culture to be educated in Kiowa history. His environment then becomes the same as Kiowa as evidenced in the first passage of the last numbered section "East of my grandmother's house." (Momaday, and Momaday….....

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