This fictional autobiography begins with Momaday setting the scene. He lives in Oklahoma nearby Rainy Mountain. It's Kiowa territory, as it has been for some time. The climate has its difficulties and there isn't much to look at, but he notices the strange desolation of the land has transcendental qualities, and he thinks maybe God started here when he designed the earth.
When Momaday's grandmother Aho died last July, he returned to these lands. Aho was from the last strong generation of Kiowas before they lost their land permanently. Years ago, the white armies came through and desolated the land and forced the natives to surrender their lands. Aho's life was long and difficult because of the frontiersmen.
Momaday explains some basic Kiowa history, describing their immigration from Montana to Oklahoma hundreds of years earlier. Their language is particular and unique. During their journey, they befriended another tribe who helped them in their journey and shared their resources, tools, strategies and religious beliefs including the worship rites of the Sun Dance. They also gained horses. Their creation myth is that the tribe came from the hollow log of a felled tree.
He discusses his grandmother again, telling of the beautiful stories she shared and her relationship to nature. In her honor, he decides to embark on a similar journey to his ancestor's great migration. He starts at Yellowstone and begins walking south and east. The land becomes flat and less forested. He rediscovers why his ancestors worshiped the sun, because it's so beautiful and un-ignorable each day in the plains without trees to obscure its light. He passes Devil's Tower and recounts the legend of a bear scratching the trunk of a divine tree.
Momaday also tells us that his grandmother actually did end up converting to Christianity later in her life, but that never changed her cultural relationship to her past. The final Sun Dance was broken up by white men who viewed the native religions as barbaric and violent, so they were no longer allowed to openly celebrate their religion, and their culture slowly began to decay. He remembers the sparky personality of his wonderful grandmother, and he mourns the silence of her absence. She is buried within sight of Rainy Mountain according to Kiowa customs.
