The Way to Rainy Mountain

Story XIX. The ancestral voice tells of a warrior who, after his brother is captured in a raid on the Utes, sneaks into the camp to free him. The warrior is also captured, but the Ute chief respects his bravery and agrees to free both men if the warrior can carry his brother on his back over a row of greased buffalo heads. The warrior succeeds, and the two brothers return to the Kiowas on horseback. The historical voice describes the slaughter of 800 ponies and the dispersal of 2,000 more when the Kiowas surrendered at Fort Sill. It also includes Mooney’s account of the famine of 1879, after the extermination of the buffalo, when the Kiowa had to kill and eat their horses to survive. This event is also recounted in the Kiowa calendar. The personal voice describes how intimately Momaday, as a child, knew the land of New Mexico from traveling it on horseback.

Story XX. The ancestral voice tells of a fearless hunting horse that died of shame after its owner turned it aside during a charge. The historical voice describes two incidents in which horses are sacrificed, and in the personal reflection, Momaday imagines his way into the latter incident, in which a man named Gaapiatan sacrifices a fine, black-eared horse, whom Momaday is sure he must have loved, when asking for the lives of his family to be spared during a smallpox epidemic.