N. Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist and poet, was a leader and trailblazer for modern Native American literature, with his award-winning novel, “House Made of Dawn” — the first work written by a Native American author to win the Pulitzer Prize. The book inspired a generation of Native American writers. As the U.S. celebrates the contributions of American Indian and Alaska Native peoples for National Native American Heritage Month, we reflect on Momaday’s life, work, and lasting impact both on the world of literature and beyond. He died earlier this year on Jan. 24, 2024 at age 89.
Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma on Feb. 27, 1934, and was a member of the Kiowa Tribe. His father was an artist descended from Kiowa Indian heritage and his mother a writer descended from European and Cherokee heritage. For most of his childhood, he grew up on the Jemez Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico, where his parents worked as teachers. From a young age, Momaday was drawn to artistic pursuits, following in the footsteps of his father. To this day, Momaday’s artistic works are displayed in museums across the Southwest United States.
At the age of 12, Momaday started writing, having fallen in love with poetry after being introduced to it by his mother. He wanted to combine his passion for writing with the oral traditions of the Kiowa Tribe. Momaday went on to study political science at the University of New Mexico before teaching high school students on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. He later received a fellowship to study creative writing at Stanford University. He would go on to earn his doctorate at Stanford.
Later in life, Momaday would reflect on the influences of his parents on his education and passion for writing, as he had often been the only person in his childhood community who was fluent in English. In an interview with Stanford Magazine in 2017, he said: “I have spent most of my life in two worlds, the Native traditional and the modern. I had a great deal of help in spanning that divide. My parents, of course, were teachers, and my mother had a real command of the English language, and she passed on that knowledge and love to me… In school, that made a real difference. In some ways, I had an advantage that most of my peers did not.” Nevertheless, Momaday noted that he had little formal education in writing poetry prior to his studies in college, telling Stanford Magazine “I was writing out of my knowledge of oral tradition.”
Following his time at Stanford, Momaday would teach at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and transition from poetry to novel writing. In 1966, Momaday pursued the Guggenheim fellowship at Harvard University. During his academic career, Momaday taught and was tenured at Stanford University, the University of Arizona, the University of California-Berkeley. As a teacher, he taught creative writing with a focus on bringing Native American mythology into the literary forefront. Having been inspired by Native American oral folklore and traditions, Momaday was known to combine these inspirations with his poetry.
In 1968, Momaday would publish his first novel, “House Made of Dawn,” which would go on to be his most famous work. Initially intending to publish poetry with his publisher that year, Momaday instead opted to submit a draft of the novel for a writing competition, which ended up being published. The story follows a young Native American man, Abel, who returns to live in his Kiowa pueblo after serving in the military during World War II. Abel’s journey through readjusting to life after experiencing war and personal grief eventually ends in self-discovery and cultural acceptance. As John Motyka notes in his obituary of Momaday in the New York Times, Momaday’s style is a combination of the circular structure of many Native American stories as well as disjointed character perspectives inspired by the works of William Faulkner. This novel proceeded to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969.
Momaday has published a litany of other well-known and well-received works. In his later novel, The Ancient Child, Momaday combines Native American traditional stories with contemporary storywriting. He has written several pieces of poetry and essays inspired by Kiowa folktales and history including collections of folk literature. In 1976, Momaday also published The Names: A Memoir, recounting his early life and the inspirations he draws from. Momaday would proceed to win several awards and lifetime achievements in his career including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2019, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, and the National Medal of Arts by President George W. Bush in 2007. He was also inducted into the Native American Hall of Fame as one of its first inductees.
The legacy of Momaday’s work lives on in the writers he has inspired and the literary genres he has influenced. His writing kick started what is now called the Native American Renaissance, which marked an increase in the number of works published by Native American authors in the late 1960s and the 1970s following Momaday’s publication of “House Made of Dawn.” In an interview with the Associated Press, Momaday said when asked on his impact on other writers, “I’m greatly appreciative of that, but it comes a little bit of a surprise every time I hear it. I think I have been an influence. It’s not something I take a lot of credit for.”
