House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

First published: 1968

Type of work: Mystery

Themes: Coming-of-age, death, family, friendship, nature, race and ethnicity, and religion

Time of work: From July, 1945, to February, 1952, nonchronologically

Recommended Ages: 15-18

Locale: Walatowa, Canon de San Diego, and Los Angeles

Principal Characters:

• Abel, a young Indian having returned to his reservation after World War II
• Ben Benally, Abel’s best friend and distant relative, who takes care of Abel throughout the book
• Milly, a social worker on the reservation who loves both Ben and Abel, whose husband has abandoned her and whose young daughter has died
• Francisco, Abel’s grandfather
• Father Olguin, a priest, neither a blessing nor a curse to the people he serves
• John Big Bluff Tosamah, an intellectual priest who understands both the Indian and the white mentality
• Angela St. Martin, a white woman, living apart from her husband, who seduces Abel

The Story

In House Made of Dawn, plot and character development are far less important than the narrative patterns and unifying symbolism. Much of the story is told in memory rather than in a straightforward chronological narrative line. In fact, author N. Scott Momaday begins and ends his story in the same place, on the same day in February, 1952, with Abel naked to the waist and smeared with ashes, running in an annual race at daybreak.

Part 1, “The Longhair,” portrays Abel as a reservation Indian reluctant to adapt to urban life and includes four important scenarios. In the first, Abel kills a jackrabbit to use as bait to snare an eagle, and his success in capturing and strangling the bird fills him with shame and disgust. Abel has acted according to the traditional values of his people, the once persecuted and dwindling tribe of Bahkyush, but Abel is jolted between past tradition and present sensibilities.

Angela St. Martin, a white woman living apart from her doctor husband, hires Abel to chop wood for her and seduces him. Momaday paints her as a sympathetic character about whom Abel thinks periodically throughout the book and who, much later, visits him in the hospital. Meanwhile, Father Olguin visits Angela. He is proud of himself for being able to resist her charms but is, at the same time, upset that she can so easily resist him. Momaday presents a perceptive picture of the priest and, through entries in an old journal, of his predecessor. Both priests, outsiders of the village, are unconscious of their prejudice against the Walatowa people and resent the small part they play in the life of the village. They are puzzled about why the Walatowa do not give up their old ceremonial religious practices in the face of their recent conversion to Christianity.

There is much drama in Abel’s encounter with the albino Indian. Although he is, in appearance, “a white man,” Abel sees him as a symbol for the Anglo, and, as such, a hated enemy, insensitive and brutal, who is trying to steal Indian land. Abel is confused by the albino’s quickness and strength in much the same way that he finds it difficult to deal with the modernized white culture of Los Angeles. His response, the way of his people, is to challenge the “evil” with his knife, and he kills the albino. The American legal system, however, mandates that he be imprisoned for the crime. Of the six years that Abel spends in prison, Momaday gives only one fleeting image (in part 2); Abel has repressed the experience.

Part 2, “The Priest of the Sun,” more resembles a lyrical prose poem than a chapter from a novel. It begins with the recurring image of a small silver-sided fish. It includes bits of Kiowa legend, ancestral history, and a sermon on “the Word” by the Indian priest John Big Bluff Tosamah, which Abel recalls as he lies delirious on the beach, in darkness and in pain, with both of his hands broken. He had become severely intoxicated and then was beaten. His musings also include memories about the love and life of the social worker Milly and visions while eating peyote buttons after Tosamah’s sermon. The segments in this part seem disjointed, and part 3 is needed to make sense out of them. Ben Benally’s vision of blue and purple horses and a “house made of dawn” are significant images that come out of the peyote ceremony. This complex section ends with Abel’s excruciatingly painful journey back to Ben’s apartment.

In part 3, “The Night Chanter,” Ben is the narrator, speaking at times to himself and at times to the reader. He genuinely cares for Abel and faithfully nurtures him, providing him with physical necessities and comforts, a chance at a job, and the spirit and emotion of the Indian religion and traditions. Ben tries to live the white men’s way by embracing their material values, and his character seems to imply that the old ways are dead. The chapter chronicles Abel’s difficulties and failures in holding a job and in communicating meaningfully with other Indians, and it also includes the prayer song “House Made of Dawn,” which Ben has sung to Abel. Part 4, “The Dawn Runner,” concentrates on six memories that Abel’s grandfather, Francisco, has as he lies dying. Abel is with him at the moment of death and then attends to the burial rites. The book closes with Abel running at daybreak, singing “House Made of Dawn.”

Context

Late adolescent readers should not let themselves be overwhelmed by the difficulty and complexity of House Made of Dawn. When the events described seem puzzling or unrelated, the reader should always bear in mind that the literal and intricate story line is far less important than three larger conceptual issues. One is that the novel describes coming of age, groping with the challenges of entering adulthood. It is also a story of gaining respect for and reaffirming pride in one’s heritage, claiming one’s roots. Additionally, the novel will be especially meaningful for readers who have experienced two different cultures and who are wrestling with the conflicts of trying to integrate into their own lives two very different ways of thinking and being. Keeping these three perspectives in mind will ensure a valuable and informed reading of a remarkable novel.

House Made of Dawn was the first novel written by Momaday, a Kiowa Indian, tribal dancer, and university professor. It is a landmark novel in chronicling the Indian experience in America and earned for Momaday the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1969. The themes of strength of the Indian culture and its identification with the land in the search for knowledge and wholeness also appear in Momaday’s non-fiction. He blends personal and historical experience in The Journey of Tai-me (1967), the story of the tribal Kiowa god whose death his grandmother witnessed, and The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), where exile brings with it truth. Taken together, House Made of Dawn and The Way to Rainy Mountain are complementary, each contributing to the meaning of the other. Both invite close contemplation of the earth as the way to spiritual wholeness. In fact, the second section of “The Priest of the Sun” in House Made of Dawn, with its underlying philosophy of humankind’s sacred bond to the land, appears as the introduction of The Way to Rainy Mountain.

Momaday’s second novel, The Ancient Child (1989), includes Indian legend, Wild West lore, emblematic characters, and archetypal undercurrents that carry forth the concerns in his previous writing. It fuses myth with story by alternating short, epigrammatic chapters with long narrative passages in a structure that is as fragmentary as that of House Made of Dawn. Momaday’s memoir, The Names (1976), sets his feelings of childhood against the backdrop of his ancestors. He writes about growing up in the Southwest and having a strong spiritual relation to the wilderness there. Most important is the ritual of the naming of animals, plants, places, and people that is so significant to the American Indian. Momaday has published two books of poetry—Angle of Geese and Other Poems (1974) and The Gourd Dancer (1976) — which continue the themes of Indian heritage, animals, and the land.

Bibliography

Bevis, William. “American Indian Novels: Homing In.” In Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature, edited by Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Discusses House Made of Dawn alongside other important American Indian texts.

Coltelli, Laura. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. An interview with Momaday concerning his fiction and the issues informing it. Especially useful in understanding the ideas at work in House Made of Dawn.

Momaday, N. Scott. “The Man Made of Words.” In The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature, edited by Geary Hobson. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980.

Owens, Louis. Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Places House Made of Dawn in relation to other novels by American Indians. Provides an insightful reading of the novel and its characters.

Scarberry-Garcia, Susan. Landmarks of Healing: A Study of “House Made of Dawn.” Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. A book-length study of the Navajo and Jemez Pueblo religious and cultural symbols that shape the novel. Important for understanding the novel’s cultural context and its subtle allusions.

Schubnell, Matthias. N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. Contains a biographical sketch and chapters that discuss the roles of nature and of language in Momaday’s work. One chapter, “The Crisis of Identity,” examines House Made of Dawn in particular. Also includes a history of the novel’s reception and an extensive critical bibliography (up to 1985).

Trimble, Martha Scott. “N. Scott Momaday.” Fifty Western Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book, edited by Fred Erisman and Richard W. Etulain. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.

Velie, Alan R. Four American Indian Literary Masters. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.