I believe that N.Scott Momaday means that it was navigation to a new world , but also a transition in time that led to new important discoveries when he describes Christopher Columbus's voyage as “a passage from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.”
His reasons for this characterization is that part of the irony consists of people Eurocentric understanding of history. But also since “it is everywhere a common designation of the Americas but also because it represents one of the greatest anomalies in history” (Momaday 199). To which this is because it demonstrates the irony of how the "new world" is everybody is coming to is actually very ancient and that the New World itself was ancient.
The ethos he establishes in the next several paragraphs
His reasons for this characterization is that part of the irony consists of people Eurocentric understanding of history. But also since “it is everywhere a common designation of the Americas but also because it represents one of the greatest anomalies in history” (Momaday 199). To which this is because it demonstrates the irony of how the "new world" is everybody is coming to is actually very ancient and that the New World itself was ancient.
The ethos he establishes in the next several paragraphs