N. Scott Momaday, "whose portrayal of a disaffected World War II veteran's journey to spiritual renewal in his novel House Made of Dawn won a Pulitzer Prize, the first for a Native American author, heralding a more prominent place in contemporary literature for Native writers," died January 24 at age 89, the New York Times reported. Momaday "also wrote critically acclaimed poetry, memoirs and essays. His explorations of identity and self-definition, of the importance of the oral tradition in literature, and of his Kiowa heritage were interwoven with reverent evocations of landscape in passages of soaring lyrical prose."
Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain, a book based on tales told to him by his grandmother, "drew on ethnology, history and personal recollection to reimagine the southward migration of his nomadic Kiowa forebears from the headwaters of the Yellowstone River to their ultimate home near a small rise called Rainy Mountain in Oklahoma," the Times noted.
His other books include The Death of Sitting Bear; Earth Keeper; The Man Made of Words; The Names: A Memoir; Angle of Geese and Other Poems; The Way to Rainy Mountain; The Ancient Child; and Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961-1991, which included 60 drawings by the author.
Native American author Sherman Alexie called Momaday "one of the primary foundations for all Native American literature" and credited his Pulitzer with bringing Native writing into the mainstream. "Momaday was a multigenre writer--poetry, fiction, nonfiction--as were nearly all the Native writers of his era," Alexie said. "I write multigenre because Momaday made it seem like it was the thing that Native American writers do. Like it was a natural part of our identity."
House Made of Dawn "was a World War II story that resonated with a generation protesting the Vietnam War," the Associated Press wrote. "In 1969, Momaday became the first Native American to win the fiction Pulitzer, and his novel helped launch a generation of authors, including Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch and Louise Erdrich. His other admirers would range from the poet Joy Harjo, the country's first Native to be named poet laureate, to the film stars Robert Redford and Jeff Bridges."
"He was a kind of literary father for a lot of us," Harjo said. "He showed how potent and powerful language and words were in shaping our very existence."
Jennifer Civiletto, Momaday's editor at HarperCollins, observed: "Scott was an extraordinary person and an extraordinary poet and writer. He was a singular voice in American literature, and it was an honor and a privilege to work with him. His Kiowa heritage was deeply meaningful to him and he devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially the oral tradition."
In 2007, President George W. Bush presented Momaday with a National Medal of Arts "for his writings and his work that celebrate and preserve Native American art and oral tradition." Other honors included an Academy of American Poets prize and, in 2019, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A 50th anniversary edition of House Made of Dawn is available from Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
