House made of Dawn

House Made of Dawn

N. Scott Momaday

Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed in the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around. […]

The Canyon is a ladder to the plain. […]

Man came down the ladder to the plain a long time ago. It was a slow migration, though he came only from the caves in the canyons and the tops of the mesas1 nearby. There are low, broken walls on the tabletops and smoke-blackened caves in the cliffs, where there are metates2 and broken bowls and ancient ears of corn3, as if the prehistoric civilization had gone out among the hills for a little while and would return; and then everything would be restored to an older age, and time would have returned upon itself and a bad dream of invasion and change would have been dissolved in an hour before the dawn. For man, too, has a tenure in the land; he dwelt upon the land twenty-five thousand years ago, and his gods before him.

1. altopiano          2. pietra usata per macinare il grano            3. pannocchie di mais