Momaday tells us this in the first two paragraphs of his Introduction. Rainy Mountain is a special place to the Kiowa people, the author’s Native American ancestors. It is a rounded hill that stands alone but near the Wichita Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma. Below is a link to the nearby national wildlife refuge. Rainy Mountain is not part of this protected land; yet looking at the photographs on this site will give you an idea of the terrain.
The author goes back to Rainy Mountain one July, after his grandmother has passed away. She was his last living link to the traditional ways of the Kiowa. He wanted to honor and remember her as well as the many others who had gone on before. The cemetery is located near the mountain. Momaday’s return was part of his longer personal journey of tracing the historic migration of the Kiowa from the headwaters of the Yellowstone River in western Wyoming and Montana, east and south through the Black Hills and plains to Oklahoma.
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