The People Introduction When Dogs Could Talk The Vision Cities of Gold Thunder Rolling from the Mountains Popé Dog Soldiers In the Garden, Before the Fall Corps of Discovery

Thunder Rolling from the Mountains

“Names in the Indian world are very important, as important or more important, I think, than in any other society that I know. Naming coexists with meaning. It is indivisible with being. If something has a name, it is said to be. If it does not have a name, its being is suspect.

I was taken when I was an infant to Devils Tower by my parents. And when I was brought back to Oklahoma, where my grandmother lived, an old man came to visit, an old man whose name was Pul Huh which means Old Wolf. And he picked me up in his hands and he began to tell stories. And this was the name-giving process. And at the end, when he stopped talking, he looked down at me and he said, 'And now you are Zui Tali.' That's my Indian name, and it means Rocktree Boy. Zui is what the Kiowas call Devils Tower, and I was given that name to commemorate my having been taken to this very sacred place."
N. Scott Momaday

Conquering Bear. One Who Yawns. Child of the Wolf. Son of Star. Rock Forehead. Man on a Cloud. Owl Woman. Soft White Corn. The Blind Man's Daughter. Yellow Smoke. The Whirlwind. And Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht -- Thunder Rolling From the Mountains.

Soon, other men, with other kinds of names, would begin to converge on the Indian world. Sir Francis Drake of England in 1579; Sieur de La Salle, from France in 1682; Vitus Bering, sailing for Russia in 1741 -- and they were only the beginning.