- guardrailnounChapter 2 →
A protective railing or barrier along the edge of steps, a road, or a platform, meant to prevent people from falling off.
“He was drunk, and he fell against the guardrail of the steps.”
- ditchesnounChapter 2 →
Narrow channels dug alongside fields to carry irrigation water to crops; a common feature of Pueblo farming landscapes.
“the fields were green and the ditches full of water”
- loomsnounChapter 2 →
Frames or machines on which threads are woven together to make cloth or rugs; here used as an image for how weavers compose patterns the way a poet composes words.
“the way the women of Torreón made songs upon their looms out of colored yarn”
- middle worldphraseChapter 3 →
In Pueblo and related Native cosmologies, the earthly realm between the spirit world above and the underworld below, where human beings live out their ordinary lives.
“He was old and he was a man of the middle world, and he knew the land and the ways of the land.”
- albinonounChapter 3 →
A person born without the pigment that gives skin, hair, and eyes their normal color, resulting in very pale or white coloring; in this novel the term also carries an aura of spiritual strangeness and threat.
“He had seen the albino, and he had not looked away.”
- kivanounChapter 3 →
A circular or rectangular underground ceremonial chamber used by Pueblo peoples for religious rituals, community meetings, and the tending of sacred fires.
- deicidenounChapter 5 →
The killing of a god or a divine being; here it refers to the U.S. government's forcible suppression of the Kiowa Sun Dance, which the narrator's grandmother experienced as the destruction of something sacred.
“Without bitterness, and for as long as she lived, she bore a vision of deicide.”
- Sun DancenounChapter 5 →
A major annual religious ceremony of the Plains tribes, including the Kiowas, involving communal prayer, fasting, and ritual sacrifice; the U.S. government banned it in the late nineteenth century.
“She had lived long enough to have seen the last of the great Kiowa Sun Dances”
- literaturesnounChapter 5 →
Here used in the broad sense of written and spoken verbal traditions — stories, sacred texts, and oral records — that a culture takes for granted as the natural medium of meaning.
“The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted”
- commonplaceadjectiveChapter 5 →
So ordinary and familiar that it is no longer noticed or valued; taken completely for granted as part of everyday life.
“nothing in his world is so commonplace”
- knollnounChapter 7 →
A small, rounded hill rising gently above the surrounding flat land; a modest but distinct landmark on an open plain.
“A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range.”
- longhairnounChapter 7 →
A term used in the novel for a Native man who keeps traditional ways, including wearing his hair long in the old style, as opposed to those who have adopted Anglo-American customs.
“He was a longhair, like his grandfather, and he knew what it was to be a longhair in a place like this.”
- landmarknounChapter 7 →
A natural or man-made feature of the landscape that a people recognize and name as a fixed point of reference, giving it cultural and historical meaning beyond mere geography.
“For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain.”
- peyotenounChapter 7 →
A small cactus whose buttons contain a hallucinogenic substance used in the religious ceremonies of the Native American Church; participants consume it as a sacrament to seek visions and spiritual healing.
- road mannounChapter 7 →
The ceremonial leader who conducts a peyote meeting in the Native American Church, guiding participants through the night-long ritual; the term reflects the idea of walking a sacred spiritual path.
- relocation programphraseChapter 7 →
A mid-twentieth-century U.S. federal policy that moved Native Americans from reservations to cities such as Los Angeles, ostensibly to help them find work, but which often left them isolated and disconnected from their communities.
- diminishedverbChapter 7 →
Made lesser in spirit, understanding, or humanity; reduced in one's inner life by failing to appreciate the full weight and power of language.
“the white man takes such things as these for granted, and he is diminished, and he is diminished”
- ancient memoryphraseChapter 9 →
A deep, inherited sense of a people's history and identity, felt not as learned knowledge but as something carried in the blood across many generations.
“I think she had the ancient memory of the Kiowas.”
- pollennounChapter 10 →
In Navajo ceremonial language, pollen is a sacred symbol of life, fertility, and blessing, used in rituals and prayers to invoke beauty and wholeness; not merely the biological powder of flowers.
“House made of pollen, house made of dawn.”
- Night ChantnounChapter 10 →
A major Navajo healing ceremony, also called the Nightway, lasting several nights and involving songs, prayers, and sand paintings intended to restore a sick person to harmony with the world.
- BeautywaynounChapter 10 →
A Navajo ceremonial chant and healing ritual whose prayers invoke a state of hózhó — harmony, balance, and beauty — in the person being healed and in the world around them.
- stream-of-consciousnessphraseChapter 12 →
A narrative style that presents a character's thoughts and feelings in a continuous, flowing, often unpunctuated rush, as they actually occur in the mind rather than in tidy, ordered sentences.
- beadworknoun
Decorative objects or garments made by sewing or weaving small beads together, a traditional art form among many Native American peoples used to mark ceremonial and cultural identity.
- regaladjectiveChapter 6 →
Having the dignified, commanding presence of a king or ruler; here describing the eagle's bearing as naturally authoritative and worthy of deep respect.
“The eagle was there, regal and still, and the men were wary of it, respectful, as they ought to have been.”
- waryadjectiveChapter 6 →
Cautious and watchful because of a sense of potential danger or the need for respect; alert without being hostile.
“the men were wary of it, respectful, as they ought to have been”
- sheeradjectiveChapter 1 →
Pure and absolute, with nothing else mixed in; used here to emphasize that running itself — the bare physical act — is the entire focus of Abel's being.
“All of his being was concentrated in the sheer motion of running on the earth.”
- swiftadjectiveChapter 1 →
Moving very fast and with force; here describing the speed and energy of the dark river water flowing through the canyon.
“He could see the moving water, dark and swift, and the pale rocks along the bank.”
House Made of DawnNovel by N. Scott Momaday