>>Major funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Additional funding was provided by Vision Maker Media, the Chickasaw Nation, the Frost Foundation.

Additionalsupport was provided by the following funders >>My name is Jill Momaday.

Khoat-tday day mah is my Kiowa name.

It means standing solidly.

My father, N. Scott Momaday, a writer and poet, made an important journey, many years ago, as he was writing his book "The Way to Rainy Mountain."

His experience was personal and profound.

I've always wanted to experience these things he's shared with me and written about.

I've carried my father's words and writings with me throughout my life.

Now, I'm following in the footsteps of our ancestors who made this journey thousands of years >>The journey began one day, long ago, on the edge of the northern plains.

It was carried on over a course of many generations and many hundreds of miles.

In the end, there were many things to remember, to dwell upon, and talk about.

You know, everything had to begin.

For the Kiowas, the beginning was a struggle for existence in the bleak northern mountains.

It was there, they say, that they entered the world, through a hollow log.

>>The great adventure of the Kiowas was a going forth into the heart of the continent.

They began a long migration from the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, eastward to the Black Hills and south to the Wichita Mountains.

Along the way, they acquired horses, the religion of the Plains, a love andpossession of the open land.

Their nomadic soul was set free.

>>In alliance with the Comanches, they held dominion in the Southern Plains for a hundred years.

In the course of that long migration, they had come of age as a people.

They had conceived a good idea of themselves.

They had dared to imagine and determine who they were.

The journey led from the headwaters of the Yellowstone River in what is now western Montana, to the Southern Plains, to Rainy Mountain in present southwestern Oklahoma.

There, the journey ended.

When I think of my Kiowa people, they are always on horseback and moving, travelling across the landscape, hunting, camping, telling stories.

Ah-keah-de.

They were camping.

I think it's fascinating to think of the Native American as being on the North American continent for 30,000 years.

I dream of crossing the Bering Strait.

I can see things there.

We have a genetic memory.

And, at times mine reaches back to the ice age.

And, I like to think of that evolution, that migration of peoples, Native Peoples, who made that most important journey some thousands of years ago.

I want my children to think of it in the way that I do and be fascinated by it, as I am.

I like to think of my Kiowa people as they migrated across these great mountains and plains, following the buffalo, thousands of years ago.

They saw these landmarks, like Devil's Tower, just jutting up out of the landscape, and they camped there.

And, they told stories about it.

>>People come across this trail, came across the Bering Strait, when it was a land bridge.

And, that's many, many thousands of years ago.

They worked their way down along the mountain range.

The Blackfeet people called it the backbone of the world.

It is a landscape of great clarity.

Its vastness is that of the ocean.

It is the near revelation of infinity.

Antelope were everywhere in the grassy folds, grazing side by side with horses and cattle.Hawks sailed above.

Crows scattered before us.

>>As I make my journey, and follow the migration of my Kiowa people, I'm moved to make prayers at the sacred landmarks along the way.

This helps me complete the circle, the sacred hoop for generationsto come.

>>If I close my eyes, I can see dragonfly there beyond the hedge.

I can see my young parents walkingtowards the creek in the late afternoon, a coppery light on the path.

I can hear my grandmother's voice in the rooms of the house and in the cool corners of the arbor.

And, these are sacred recollections of the mind and heart.

It's so important to me, to come to this place.

This homestead here was built by my great grandfather Mammadaty.

My grandfather, Alfred Morris Momaday was born in a teepee that they pitched over on the corner over here as he was building the homestead.

When I come back to this place, I realize how important our cultural histories are.

When my dad was growing up here he was told the old stories ofthe Kiowa people.

Mammadaty saw to the building of this house.

Just there by the arbor, he made a camp in the old way.And in the evening when the hammers had fallen silent and there were frogs and crickets in the black grass, and a low hectic wind upon the pale, slanting plane of the moon's light, he settled down deep in his mind to dream.

He dreamed of dreaming and of the summer breaking upon his spirit, as drumsbreak upon the integrals of the dance, and of the gleaming gourds.

I love to think of Mammadaty speaking in Kiowa.

What language and culture mean to all of us, and howimportant it is.

Family would gather out here in the summer times, and they would tell stories.

It was a gathering of family, elders, kids running all over the place, and my Dad loved those stories.

It's places like this where the Kiowa oral tradition came alive, and it's still alive because we hadthese people coming together and telling the stories.

Family, passing it on from generation to generation.

My father was my storyteller.

He had considerable knowledge of Kiowa oral tradition.

He used to tellme stories, from the time I could first understand language.

Some of the stories really made an impression on me as a child, and I made him tell them to me again, and again, and again, until I had them really secure in my mind.

And, I didn't realize they were so fragile, that they were a generationaway from extinction, if they weren't written down.

The arbor was the center of summer.

When the weather turned hot, we lived in the arbor.

Along the south and east walls were broad wooden benches.

On these we slept at night.

I'd come back here in the summers, when we lived in New Mexico, and visit my grandmother here.

She was always so glad to see us.

There were prayer meetings in the arbor on summer nights, and these were wonderful occasions.

The older people came in their finery, and they brought good food in abundance.

They sang hymns in Kiowa and gave testimony to their faith in the rich oratory of the Native American oral tradition.

I can still hear the singing and the laughter and the lively talk floating on the plain.

(singing) >>Dad, you've told me the stories of the prayer meetings in here.

>>I was always outside, probably by choice, because I wanted to play with my cousins outside.

So between here and the house, we ran around and this place was lighted with kerosene lamps.

So, there wasa casting of light outside and we could see each other and play.

We loved to hear the songs, the Kiowa hymns, Christian hymns in Kiowa.

(singing) >>Everybody brought food and my grandmother cooked elaborate meals.

The visitors I liked best, besides the children of my own age, were the old people, for they were exotic.

They spoke only Kiowa.

And, they imaged for me the bygone and infinitely exciting time of the centaurs, the warriors, and the buffalo hunters.

"Cohn.

Tso to hah, Tsoai tallee come here, I want to tell you something!"

I sit at an old man's knee.

There are many people in the arbor.

Everyone listens.

And my Dad was saying that when his father and he talked to the old woman Kosahn, that she sat in this corner over here.

And, she must have been about a hundred years old or something, and she was just hunched over, real tiny and quiet.

She remembered being at the "Sun Dance" as a young girl.

So, they talked about that.

And she spoke in Kiowa.

And then, my grandfather would translate back to my Dad and tell the stories that way, through the old woman, Kosahn.

And those stories were the history of the Kiowa people.

Those are the stories that defined really who he was and who we are culturally as a people.

It really connects us to the past and if we don't have that, then we can't move forward and we can't pass those stories on to the next generations.

And that's really what the oral tradition is all about.

>>I like to think of my grandparents, in 1934, travelling across the country from Oklahoma to Wyoming to bring their baby son to this very powerful and sacred place that represents in our Kiowa culture, this great story, this great oral tradition that's been passed down through the generations.

>>My parents took me to Tsoai, Rock Tree, Devil's Tower, Wyoming, from Oklahoma.

I don't know how they managed to get the car and drive there, and so on, but they did because they must have felt it was important.

And, indeed it was.

They brought me into the presence of this sacred place in Kiowa tradition.

>>And then the extraordinary thing about it was that my father was given the name.

He was forever linked to his Kiowa history and culture through this story.

George Poolah, who was called Kiowa George, had lived across the creek.

He came over when my parents and I returned from Devil's Tower.

He picked me up, out of the cradle, held me in his hands, and he began to talk.

And, he told stories.

This was the name giving ceremony, and when he was finished he looked at me and said and now you are...Tsoai tallee >>Which means rock tree boy.

>>And, the Kiowas have a story about Devil's Tower.

They say that there were some children playing in the woods, Kiowa children.

8 children, 7 sisters and their brother.

The boy was pretending to be a bear and he was chasing his sisters through the woods.

And they were pretending to be frightened.They were running and a terrible thing happened.

The boy actually turned into a bear, and when the girls saw that, they were truly terrified and they ran.

And, as they were running they passed a stump of a tree, a huge tree stump.

The tree spoke to them and said, "If you will climb up on me, I will save you."

The little girls scampered on top of the tree stump and it began to rise into the air.And, the bear came to kill them but they were beyond his reach, so he reared up and scored the barkall around.

And, the story ends the girls were born into the sky and became the stars of the big dipper.

That's it.

We are told nothing more of the boy.

The girls, of course, achieved stardom, but the boy, we don't know what happened to him.

But, I am that boy.

I identify with the boy because of my name.

I love that story, not only because my name is in it, but because it is a quantum leap of the imagination.

Not only does it explain this feature in the landscape, but it also relates us to the stars.

>>I'm at the top of Mt.

Scott.

My Kiowa people were drawn here, and you can see forever.

I remember that my grandmother, when we were up at the top looking down at that vast expanse of landbelow us, she pointed to a place, or she pointed in a direction and she said she was born there.

"Oh, I was born over there," she said.

As I look out across the expanse of the land and landscape and sky, I can see the buffalo roaming the plains.

You know when I go up to Mt.

Scott and I go to the very top and I look out across that vista, I can see.

I can see the herds.

>>Well did you know when you're on the mountain that the buffalo are under you?

The buffalo had goneback into Mt.

Scott, and there they remain.

>>OK, so tell me that.

Tell me that story, because I love that story.

>>Yeah.

There was an old woman, I think her name was Horse.

And, she had a vision.

She said she went out one morning and it was misty, and she saw a great herd of buffalo coming, and they passed herby, and she said they went on and on, and they went into Mt.

Scott.

And she said, they're there andthey will return some day.

>>As I look across this great expanse of time, I have something that my Dad calls blood memory.

It takes me back to the beginnings of my Kiowa people.

We still have our spirits, and we still hold thisplace, and this landscape as Holy Ground.

(singing) >>The Medicine Wheel is a ring of stones, some 50 feet in diameter.

We do not know as a matter of fact who made the wheel, or to what purpose.

It has been proposed that it is an astronomical observatory, a solar calendar, or the ground design of a Kiowa sun dance lodge.

What we know without doubt, is that it is a sacred expression, an equation of man's relation to the cosmos.

My father's words, his stories and writings, take me to these places.

I am at once enveloped in his words, experiencing the place he so eloquently describes.

It is powerful and sacred.

(chanting) >>The Kiowa Gourd Dance is really a time of great festivity.

(clapping and cheering) >>And pride, and historic continuity, and storytelling.

And, it's a time that we all gather together as a people.

It's a coming together of that wonderful celebration of story and history.

It gives me a real sense of who I am.

And, I'm looking around at the faces of my Kiowa people and we're all feeling the same way.

And, it is a powerful feeling.

Dancing, he dreams he dreams.

The long wind glances, moves forever as the music to the mind.

The gourds are flashes of the sun.

He takes the inward mincing steps that conjure old processions and returns.

Dancing, his moccasins, his sash and bandolier contain him in insignia.

His fan is powerful, concise according to his agile hand, and holds upon the deep ancestral air.

(singing) >>What's it like when you're out there and you're dancing and you're hearing the drums, and you've got your rattle and you're in your regalia, and you're dancing on the earth there, that red earth?

What is that like for you?

>>It's like going into another world.

It's like making contact with a line of tradition that has gone on for many years, and even before that.

Even before there was a gourd dance, I think there was still dancing and something that the Kiowas brought all the way from Asia.

Imagine.

For me, it's very sacred and it's moving, and it's a kind of homage to forebears.

The experience of being at the gourd dance, for me, is a real understanding of the journey.

The journey itself.

It's a long journey of my people, of the migration, of the stories, of the generationscoming together.

And my father talks about this journey, and he says the journey is really about three things in particular: a landscape that is incomparable, a time that is gone forever, and the human spirit which endures.

>>A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range.

For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name, "Rainy Mountain."

Loneliness is an aspect of the land.

All things in the plain are isolate.

There is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree, or one man.

To look upon this landscape in the early morning, with thesun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion.

Your imagination comes to life.

And this, youthink, is where creation was begun.

>>This is Rainy Mountain.

And it's holy to my Kiowa people.

>>When they got their rations, they all packed up and went to the Rainy Mountain.

>>And we would set up our teepees, and we would camp here for days, That's where they loved to stay and camp.

And our horses loved this rich, beautiful grassland.

History says that the grass is green and all along the bottom there was beautiful grass.

And it was a perfect place for their horses.

And when I come here to Rainy Mountain, I have this great feeling.

It revives me.

It feeds my spirit.

It gives me strength.

Every time I go to Rainy Mountain, I think of what Fred Tsoodle once told me, that he remembers the camp, the Kiowa camp on the north side of Rainy Mountain.

He said there were so many teepees.

When we come here together and we like to sit and walk around, and sometimes I climb up to the top of Rainy Mountain, and I can see all across the landscape, all the way around.

>>It's just beautiful!

>>So it is.

It's a beautiful place.

And, a very sacred place.

>>I do, I have dreams of climbing to the top and just sleeping out under the stars, maybe on a full moon.

>>Why don't you do that?

>>I'm going to do that.

I think it's a full moon tonight, but, I would.

I would do that, Dad.

>>Well, don't talk about it, do it.

Wake up really early in the morning and look east.

>>Yeah... >>With the rising sun.

You can