In this clip from American Masters — N. Scott Momaday: Words From a Bear, the writer discusses how riding his horse on the same plains as his ancestors opened up his imagination.
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TRANSCRIPT
(solemn music) - The Kiowas were a great horse people, and I got to understand that because I got to live it on my own horse.
On that horse, on the back of Pecos, I was in another world.
I related myself to the Kiowas of an earlier time.
I could imagine that I was a Kiowa of the 19th or 18th century riding out on the plains, buffalo hunting.
And I understood something about my ancestors.
The imagination is the power of seeing beyond reality, and so I had the extension of my senses into an imaginary world, and a very colorful one, and a very dramatic one.
The imagination was the thing that enabled me to see into the farther world.
(solemn music) (horse hooves)