Born of mixed blood, Natachee began to identify with her Indian heritage around the age of sixteen. A beautiful girl, she called herself "Little Moon" while her cousins referred to her as "Queen of Sheba"--both of which pleased her mightily. To pursue a degree and to learn more about her Indian heritage, Natachee attended the Haskell Institute, the Indian school at Lawrence, Kansas, in 1929. Her intense love of books and English literature was a great pleasure that she passed on to her son. Through their shared experiences, Momaday learned to develop a mental repository for his vast collection of memories. As Momaday recalls, "Memories ... qualify the imagination, to give it another formation, one that is peculiar to the self. I remember isolated, yet fragmented and confused, images--and images, shifting, enlarging, is the word, rather than moments or events--which are mine alone and which are especially vivid to me."
Cultivates Vivid Early Memories
Momaday remembers that the first notable event in his life occurred when he was just six months old and he accompanied his parents on a journey to the Black Hills in Wyoming to see Devil's Tower. Referred to in Kiowa as Tsoai ["Rock Tree"], Devil's Tower became the source of Momaday's Kiowa name, Tsoai-talee, given to him by Pohd-lohk ["Old Wolf"], a Kiowa elder.
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