In the Preface, Momaday reflects on how The Way to Rainy Mountain has remained relevant for 25 years. He connects its vitality to the timelessness of oral tradition. He provides information about the structure of the stories in the book. Each is told in three voices: the first is the ancestral voice of oral tradition, including as told by his father. The second provides historical commentary. The third voice is his own personal memory and observations. He dedicates the book to his parents, whose language and storytelling inform it.

The Prologue tells the history of the Kiowas from the beginning, when they entered the world through a hollow log in the northern mountains, until they moved out onto the plains for a 100-year “golden age” that ended with the destruction of the buffalo by colonizers. Momaday explains how the Kiowas came of age as a people on the plains and “conceived a good idea of themselves” (4). He calls this act of self-revelation the miracle, and describes the oral tradition, though fragmentary, as a continuation of this self-determination.