44 Chapter 3 • WRITING AN ESSAY
Exercise: A Selection for Study
The selection that follows is the conclusion to N. Scott Momaday's book The Way to Rainy Mountain. The book is a long narrative of a journey that took Momaday from the mountains of Yellowstone to the plains of southwest Okla-homa. Momaday, a writer and professor of English, is of Kiowa and Cherokee heritage. He grew up in New Mexico. Later in life, he undertook this journey to his ancestral homeland in a quest to discover for himself what it means to be a Kiowa. The end of his journey is his grandmother's grave at Rainy Mountain.
_ev N. SCOTT MOMADAY My Grandmother's House
Houses are like sentinels in the plain, old keepers of the weather watch. There, in a very little while, wood takes on the appearance of great age. All colors wear soon away in the wind and rain, and then the wood is burned gray and the grain appears and the nails turn red with rust. The window panes are black and opaque; you imagine there is nothing within, and in-deed there are many ghosts, bones given up to the land. They stand here and there against the sky, and you approach them for a longer time than you expect. They belong in the distance; it is their domain. Once there was a lot of sound in my grandmother's house, a lot of coming and going, feasting and talk. The summers t1ere were full of ex-citement and reunion. The Kiowas are a summer people; they abide the cold and keep to themselves, but when the season turns and the land be-comes warm and vital they cannot hold still; an old love of going returns upon them. The aged visitors who came to my grandmother's house when I was a child were made of lean and leather, and they bore themselves up-right. They wore great black hats and bright ample shirts that shook in the wind. They rubbed fat upon their hair and wound their braids with strips of colored cloth. Some of them painted their faces and carried the scars of old and cherished enmities. They were an old council of warlords, come to remind and be reminded of who they were. Their wives and daughters served them well. The women might indulge themselves; gossip was at once the mark and compensation of their servitude. They made loud and elaborate talk among themselves, full of jest and gesture, fright and false alarm. They went abroad in fringed and flowered shawls, bright beadwork and German silver. They were at home in the kitchen, and they prepared meals that were banquets. There were frequent prayer meetings, and nocturnal feasts. When I was a child I played with my cousins outside, where the lamplight fell upon the ground and the singing of the old people rose up around us and carried