"The Names" is an Indian book, but not a book about wrongs done to Indians. It is a search and a celebration, a book of identities and sources. Momaday is the son of parents who successfully bridged the gulf between Indian and white ways, but remain Indian. In boyhood Momaday made the same choice, and in making it gave himself the task of discovering and in some degree inventing the tradition and history in which he finds his most profound sense of himself….

In the earlier "Way to the Rainy Mountain," Momaday's direction was from himself back to his father's tribe, the Kiowas, and the world they knew…. "The Names," focusing on Momaday and his family rather than on tribal folklore, is an extension of the earlier book. To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, there is not much difference between identifying oneself with one's ancestors and identifying one's ancestors...