Rainy Mountain Project

"There are on the way to Rainy Mountain many landmarks, many journeys in the one"

Momaday links the survival of his people to their ability to remember, preserve and pass on stories. Taking the idea one step further, Momaday models necessary personal involvement in the stories through the use of imagination. That is, to make sense of and find a place in the contemporary world, one must connect on a personal level with the stories of one's past.

All families have their Rainy Mountain, the end of their journey, their spiritual "Home." In this assignment you will be studying part of your family's journey.

Your final product will be a written triadic following Scott Momaday's model.

Procedure:

1. After reading and discussing several folk legends or myths, you will research either online or in the classroom library or school library for folk tales for your ethnic background. After reading the tale, you will rewrite it in your own words. This will be your first “story” part of your triadic.

Some places you might look at include:

http://members.aol.com/pmichaels/glorantha/foolsparadise.html#euro

http://members.aol.com/surlalune/frytales/banbeast/other.htm#BELLE

http://members.aol.com/rocketrder/frytales/boots/other.htm#BLOODY

http://www.gwu.edu/~folktale/GERM232/bearskin/web%20pages/variantindex.html

More folk tales

2. You will interview an Elder of your family. Did a member of your family

immigrate here from another country, another state? What important

myths or stories have been handed down in your family? What was the

most significant event in your Elder's life? This is the second part of your triadic.

3. In the third part of your triadic telling, compose a personal response, a

"memory picture" of the story and/or the story teller. Link the story to a

personal memory of some element of the story or storyteller.

4. You will take your triadic writing through a peer conference, revision and final edit. Do a good job as these stories will be compiled in a class book.

5. Print your stories in the same format as the book with your legend on one page and your other two stories on a second page. We will choose a separate font for each section so that we will be consistent throughout the book.

6. If you wish, you may illustrate your story for bonus point. Look at illustrations in Momaday’s book for examples of style and simplicity.

Assessment Rubric:

Legend Story......................................................25 Points

Interview Story.................................................25 Points

Personal Story....................................................25 Points

Peer Conference & Revision.............................10 Points

Final Project on Time.........................................10 Points

Mechanical Correctness.................................... 5 Points

Total..........................100 Points

Illustration............................................................10 Points Extra Credit

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Model Response to Literature

Several of you have had some problems responding to the different sections of this book. I realize that the approach of telling a story in three voices is difficult. I thought that having a model to go by might help you in your own responses. I have chosen Chapter III on page thirty because some of you had a problem with the "talking dogs." Read the response below, and then read the directions below for the responses I want you to write.

In chapter III the three voices are tied together by the importance of dogs to the Kiowa. The storyteller emphasizes the early days before the Kiowa had acquired horses. This would be at the beginning of their journey before their contact with the Plains tribes. He emphasizes how closely the people used to live in contact with nature. The statement "That was a long time ago, when dogs could talk" emphasizes this close relationship. Early hunters and gatherers had to read and understand the behavior of animals in order to survive. Hunters today must be able to understand the "language" of dogs in order to understand their signals. Anyone who has ever hunted with a dog knows that man and dog do indeed "talk" to each other.

The historian points out how the Kiowa honored the importance and bravery of the dog by naming their principal Warrior Society "Real Dogs."

After acquiring horses, the dog was not as important to the Kiowa, but Momaday, speaking in his own voice, comments on the number of dogs around his grandmother’s house, and shows the change in the role of the dog from protector, guardian and burden bearer to companion.

When I was growing up on the farm, we always had English Shepherds, also known as Border Collies. These dogs were developed in Scotland for herding sheep. We had no sheep, but we did have cattle, and those little dogs were amazing at herding the cattle in for milking, branding, shipping, or moving from pasture to pasture. We communicated with the dogs by hand signals, whistles and words. We talked to the dogs and the dogs talked to us. When I was thirteen, my great uncle received a severe head injury while changing a tire on a car. The metal part blew off and struck him in the head. He suffered permanent brain injury and had to come live with us for the rest of his life. He loved to walk and would wander off down the country road. One of our old dogs, Nicki, appointed herself his guardian and accompanied him on all of his walks. She walked beside him, between him and any traffic, and if he wandered too far toward the center of the road, she gently "herded" him back to the side. If he became disoriented, Nicki would lead him home. The communication between that old dog and that old man, for me, mirrors the communication between the man and the dog in the Kiowa legend.

Hunters, shepherds, cattle herders, all can attest to the importance of dogs in their work and the close communication that develops between man and dog. Even those who have only had dogs as pets have experienced the times their dog sensed their mood, shared their joy, or offered comfort in their sorrow. While not as important to survival to modern man as it was to the ancient Kiowa, the close relationship between human and dog still exists.

Assignment:

Choose two chapters from each of the three sections of On the Way to Rainy Mountain. Using my response above as a model, write your own reflective response to each chapter. You should have a total of six responses each. Notice that the only use of "I" or any other first person pronoun is when you make a personal connection between your own life and experience with the text. Sorry, class, but "This is stupid," or "This is weird" is not a reflective response.

Let yourselves go. Think about your response. This about what the author is saying. Connect it to your own experience and life. As you will notice, a response is more than one or two sentences. Make sure you cover all three voices in each chapter.

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