Sweetgrass

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Sweetgrass

JAN HUDSON
1984

INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
PLOT SUMMARY
CHARACTERS
THEMES
STYLE
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
CRITICAL OVERVIEW
CRITICISM
SOURCES
FURTHER READING

INTRODUCTION

Although Jan Hudson's Sweetgrass (1984) is an historical fiction, based on events that took place during the winter of 1837-1838, it is a novel that has contemporary themes. Part love story, part coming-of-age story, and part intergenerational conflict story. Hudson's novel continues in the long tradition of historical fiction aimed at juvenile audiences. Recounting the story of a young girl's struggle for autonomy in a traditional culture that is itself in transition, Sweetgrass is a novel notable, too, for its careful attention to the details of daily life of First Nations women.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Janis (Jan) Mary Hudson was born on April 27, 1954, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Her parents, Laurence and Mary Wiedrick, moved north to Edmonton soon after Jan's birth, so her father could assume the position of head of library services for the Edmonton Public School Board; he would later become a professor of School Librarianship at the University of Alberta. Hudson attended school in Edmonton, before returning to the University of Calgary where she completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1978. She headed north again and completed a law degree at the University of Alberta in 1984.

Curiously, it was during one of her father's professional sabbaticals that Hudson's writing career began in earnest. Moving with the family to Eugene, Oregon, for a short period when she was in eleventh grade gave Hudson the opportunity to meet Allan Woods, an English and drama teacher who recognized her talent for writing. He encouraged her to enter her work in local and state competitions, which she did. Although she was recognized only as one of two runners up in a competition organized by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Hudson had her first real taste of the writing life, which she was determined to return to as often as possible in the coming years.

During her law studies, Hudson found the inspiration to spark her first major project. Taking a course in First Nations treaties in Western Canada, she encountered several discussions of the historical period that would later provide the setting for Sweetgrass. Having decided to write the story from the perspective of a young girl, Hudson spent more than a year researching the period in which the novel is set. Even the names of the characters, with the exception of Sweetgrass, were chosen from documents that deal with Blackfoot stories.

When she finished the manuscript in 1979, Hudson discovered that American publishers had no interest in the book. Two years later she tried another strategy to get the story noticed, entering Sweetgrass in the inaugural Alberta Writing for Young People competition, where it placed second. While she continued to approach Canadian publishers who might be interested in the novel, Hudson was approached by Allan Shute, one of the competition judges who was also the publisher of Edmonton's small Tree Frog Press.

Sweetgrass was finally published in 1984 by Tree Frog and was promptly recognized with two of Canada's most significant awards for juvenile literature: the Canada Council's Children's Literature Prize and the Canadian Library Association's Book of the Year Award. Released in the United States in 1989, the American edition was well received, too. The American Library Association recognized it with a Best Book for Young Adults citation, and it received the Parent's Choice Award for Children's Books.

Jan Hudson died in Edmonton on April 22, 1990, from sudden respiratory failure associated with viral pneumonia. That same year her second and last novel, Dawn Rider, was published.

PLOT SUMMARY

Set mostly in southern Alberta but on occasion in northern Montana and based on events that occurred during the winter of 1837-1838. Sweetgrass opens with a struggle between fifteen-year-old Sweetgrass and her father, the respected but stubborn Shabby Bull. The central point of their conflict, as Sweetgrass explains to her closest friend Pretty Girl, hinges on Shabby Bull's belief that his daughter is too young to take on the responsibilities that come with marriage. Sweetgrass wants to marry her childhood friend Eagle Sun but is fearful that her parents will arrange a marriage with an older, wealthier man. Her greatest fear, as she confesses to Pretty Girl, is that she will be matched with "some older man with ten wives already." As the novel opens the girls spend time discussing the restrictions that weigh upon their lives and how their generation of young women have so many more limits to their autonomy than previous generations of Blackfoot women have had.

When the warriors return from a horse raid, the marriage question is complicated even more as the girls recognize that Pretty Girl's boyfriend, Shy Bear, is unable to match skills with the older warriors and, therefore, will never be able to compete with them in the marketplace for the young girl's hand in marriage. The tensions build as a Sun Dance gathering approaches, which will bring all branches of the Blackfoot nation together and provide the perfect opportunity for marriages to be arranged. As the extended family gathers for the Sun Dance, Sweetgrass reconnects with various other women, including her aunt Robe Woman and her supportive and strong-willed paternal grandmother She Fought Them Woman. Her grandmother is a balancing figure in the novel, a woman who remembers the traditions of the past but also recognizes that times are changing and attitudes will have to follow.

With the appearance of her grandmother, Sweetgrass finds support for her debates with her father. But intelligent and wise She Fought Them Woman enters into a series of conversations with Sweetgrass during which the younger woman is asked to think more about her demands for autonomy and come to understand her dreams in the context of Blackfoot history and future. Similar conversations accumulate as Sweetgrass spends time with various other members of her family, including Favourite Child. Sweetgrass observes during this time, too, the arrangement that is made for marrying Pretty Girl to Five Killer and how her younger friend deals with her disappointment.

The conversations are interrupted when the Blackfoot band comes under attack by Assiniboin warriors. Following the lead of her grandmother, Sweetgrass helps her family survive the attack by hiding in the grass that surrounds the settlement. Although no one is killed, the experience proves to be one of the first tests that the maturing Sweetgrass faces.

As the Sun Dance unfolds and conversations between the women of the band continue, the novel describes the women's daily routines and domestic rituals (gathering berries, for instance). Sweetgrass remembers her childhood experiences at previous gatherings while she looks forward to her life as a young woman. The Sun Dance also offers her a chance to listen to the stories of Blackfoot glories, of great raids and past victories in battle. Although she is bored by much of what she hears, Sweetgrass does come to understand more fully the cultural heritage of which she is part.

Pushing her father for more freedom to make decisions (about marriage, most obviously) about her own life, Sweetgrass is offered a test by her father that he believes will prove if she is strong enough physically and emotionally to become a wife. The task is a daunting one: to single-handedly prepare thirty buffalo hides in a single winter season. As winter draws near, the family is threatened with starvation, a condition that means that Shabby Bull is forced to head out to a nearby camp in an attempt to find food. As her Almost-Mother grows sicker and weaker, Sweetgrass is forced to step into the role of decision maker and primary caregiver, during which she exhibits both maturity and ingenuity that proves her status as a woman in the new generation of Blackfoot.

Sweetgrass's position is made even more dramatic when Almost-Mother is stricken with smallpox. The young woman must find food and water for her family while others (including Pretty Girl, She Fought Them Woman, and Dog Leg) succumb to the disease as the winter unfolds. To protect her family she throws out her father's traditional robes, which are infected with the deadly virus. It is a decision that in usual circumstances would be seen as disrespectful but during the winter of the epidemic proves her strength and ingenuity. As her father is proud to announce upon his return, Sweetgrass has past the most dramatic tests of all and there is little doubt that she is now a woman who can balance her desire for autonomy with a respect for Blackfoot tradition. Despite her bright future, Sweetgrass is willing always to acknowledge the strength of those who came before her: "More than half my people were blackened and gone," she remembers at novel's end. "In some big camps everyone had died, some of them starving to death when no men had the strength to hunt. Others died because no one had nursed them. Some had hurled themselves into icy lakes and rivers to cool their fevers.… And there were those many young warriors who, in their agony and their fear, had followed their brothers under the waters." In the end, Sweetgrass is recognized as a warrior woman who will make her own decisions about marriage and family.

CHARACTERS

Bent-over-Woman

An older woman whom Sweetgrass knows as her almost-mother, Bent-over-Woman dies during the winter epidemic during which Sweetgrass proves herself a woman.

Cuts Both Ways

Sweetgrass's uncle, Cuts Both Ways is the husband of Robe Woman and father of Favourite Child and Dog Leg.

Dog Leg

Dog Leg is Sweetgrass's young male cousin and brother of Favourite Child. Dog Leg and Otter show what young men face by contrast to the young women.

Eagle Sun

Sweetgrass's childhood sweetheart and the man she wants to marry, Eagle Sun is a brave raider, a fine hunter of buffalo, and generally respected by the elders. He is a fine physical and spiritual representative of the Blackfoot heritage and a key marker of the path of the future: "His skin was tanned red-brown, the deep red-brown that is the colour of buffalo-calf fur in the autumn. Slim with rope-tight muscles, he rode his horse bareback." Following the Sun Dance, he heads north to trade at Fort Edmonton, the English trading post.

Favourite Child

Favourite Child is Sweetgrass's cousin and the daughter of Robe Woman. She is the minipoka, or the favorite child, of a powerful and respected family and is used to getting whatever she wants whenever she wants it.

Five Killer

Five Killer is a "tall and well-bodied" horse raider.

Otter

Otter is Sweetgrass's twelve-year-old stepbrother, whom she calls her almost-brother.

Pretty Girl

Pretty Girl is Sweetgrass's best friend and confidante, who, at thirteen, awaits information about the man whom her parents have selected to be her husband. Whereas her friend Sweetgrass is a romantic in her views on love and marriage, Pretty Girl is a realist, willing to accept the traditions of her people and her place in the arranged marriage. She recognizes, for instance, that because her family is kimataps (from a poor background) she will be married to the man willing to pay the highest price, which excludes her boyfriend Shy Bear who has not had time to collect the number of horses that it might take to buy Pretty Girl in marriage.

Robe Woman

Robe Woman is Sweetgrass's aunt and Shabby Bull's sister. She visits the band as they prepare for an important Sun Dance gathering.

Shabby Bull

Shabby Bull is the father of Sweetgrass and is a respected elder of the Blackfoot tribe. Despite his daughter's love for her childhood friend Eagle Sun, he does not believe that she is old enough to accept the responsibilities of marriage.

She Fought Them Woman

She Fought Them Woman is Sweetgrass's paternal grandmother and one of the strongest influences in the young girl's life. She is a strong figure of transition; she preserves memories of Blackfoot traditions while at the same time she recognizes that times are changing. Because the grandmother is a powerful advocate for Sweetgrass, her granddaughter believes She Fought Them Woman is "one person who cares" about the struggles that she is facing.

Shy Bear

Shy Bear is the boy whom Pretty Girl wants to marry. He has not yet accumulated enough wealth (measured in the number of horses that he owns) to compete with the older men whom Pretty Girl's parents are considering as a marriage match for their daughter. In an attempt to gain status within the band, he goes on a number of horse raids aimed at nearby Crow tribes. He is shot with a musket ball during the Assiniboin attack.

Sweetgrass

Sweetgrass is the fifteen-year-old protagonist of the novel. Watching as her friend, Pretty Girl awaits details of a marriage being arranged by her parents, Sweetgrass becomes increasingly concerned that her father will ignore her desire for a marriage based on love rather than one based on more practical concerns. She dreads the idea that she may be married to an older man who already has many wives. She is a romantic character in this regard, juxtaposed in the novel with the more pragmatic Shabby Bull and the more realistic Pretty Girl.

In order to prove to her father that she is strong enough to marry, Sweetgrass agrees to take on a test that he designs for her: to single-handedly prepare thirty buffalo hides during one winter season. An even greater test occurs when she suddenly finds herself caring for her family members when they are threatened by starvation and an epidemic of smallpox.

THEMES

Child-Parent or Intergenerational Conflict

Sweetgrass is a fifteen-year-old Blackfoot girl who resists the pressures brought to bear upon the new generation of women in her band. The tensions come to a head when she enters into a debate with her father over her marriage partner. She is in love with her childhood friend, Eagle Sun, but her parents seem to have other plans for her that involve a wealthier man and a dowry of many horses.

What Sweetgrass sees is that her life has become restricted in significant ways by changes brought about through sustained contact with white culture. Through her conversations with her paternal grandmother, She Fought Them Woman, Sweetgrass recognizes that her autonomy (the ability to make decisions for herself) is quite limited when compared with the relative freedoms of an earlier generation of women. Unwilling to accept this fate, she is determined to "make [her] life be what [she] wanted." Pushing her elders for greater freedoms, Sweetgrass finds herself responding to a test designed by her father, who sees the challenge as a traditional rite of passage. Should she succeed in preparing thirty buffalo skins during one winter season, Sweetgrass will prove herself worthy of greater autonomy. Should she fail to do so, she will reinforce her elder's concerns about her physical and intellectual maturity.

A much more dramatic test unfolds, though, when Sweetgrass must find a way to stay safe and keep her family safe following a raid from another tribe, during a period of winter starvation, and while coping with a smallpox epidemic. The terms of her earlier conflict with her father are pushed aside as Sweetgrass works to save her family, which she accomplishes using the same skills that her father had set out to test: self-reliance, ingenuity, and courage. Tellingly, and in a twist that teaches a lesson to a generation of elders that had overlooked the changing conditions of the world around them, Sweetgrass succeeds by breaking a number of the tribal rules that had restricted all women in the tribe for many years. In the end, Sweetgrass overcomes the conflict with her elders in ways that will serve to redefine the traditional belief that a "good Blackfoot girl is always obedient, quiet, hardworking, and … never says what she feels."

Coming of Age

Sweetgrass continues in the long tradition of juvenile literature that explores a young person's development from youthful innocence to a more mature and more knowledgeable understanding of the world. Such novels are often called coming-of-age stories or, to use the German term, bildungsroman. Traditionally, the subject of these novels is a balanced development of the protagonist's mind and character, often involving passage through a life-altering crisis that might be spiritual, intellectual, or emotional. Such classic novels as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) and Charles Dickens's David Copperfield (1850) and Great Expectations (1861) are excellent examples.

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

One of the earliest publishers considering Sweetgrass for publication wanted Hudson to delete the character of Pretty Girl from the novel. Hudson refused, believing that she was crucial to the development of the story. Write a letter to an imaginary publisher in which you either support the decision to keep Pretty Girl in the story or support the idea that the character can be cut with little damage to the novel.
Names take on special importance in Blackfoot culture, as they do in all cultures. Research the history of the name of a character or characters in Sweetgrass and write a report in which you discuss its historical and symbolic meanings.
Throughout Sweetgrass Hudson uses such terms as almost-mother and almost-brother to refer to relationships that readers would call stepmother and stepbrother. Think about familiar terms that your culture uses today that might be reconfigured in this way and compile a list in which you bring together the familiar and the reconstructed labels for certain relationships.
In the early stages of writing Sweetgrass, Hudson originally structured the story as told from the perspective of an adolescent male Blackfoot rather than an adolescent female. Rewrite one chapter of the novel, shifting the perspective from that of Sweetgrass to that of an imagined male counterpart. What changes would you have to make to the telling of the story and why?

For Sweetgrass, coming of age is a complicated and culturally specific exercise that takes on a traditional three-part structure: her debate with her father over the conditions of her marriage, the formal test that he develops for her, and the struggles she faces as she takes on the responsibilities of caring for a family stricken with smallpox. Read symbolically, each of these stages in Sweetgrass's development marks the acquisition of skills that she will need later in life to ensure not only her own future prosperity but in many ways the continuance of a Blackfoot band entering into its own transitional phase. She learns, through her conflict with her father, how to negotiate using her intelligence and words in order to take control of her life. She learns the limits of her physical strength and the extent of her autonomy as she sets out to complete the test set out by her father. Finally, all of these skills come together when Sweetgrass is forced to care for her family as the potentially fatal infection sweeps through the band.

STYLE

Narrative Point of View

Told with a first-person narrator, Sweetgrass hinges on the personality and perspective of a single subjective position, in this case that of the fifteen-year-old protagonist Sweetgrass. Referring to herself consistently as I, she provides the attitude and perspective that shape the novel and the reader's perception of events as they unfold. In this sense, readers see the world through her eyes, both in moments of good judgment and in those when she is unthinking or overly emotional. As Sweetgrass matures and begins to see the world differently, so, too, can readers begin to understand better the pressures that she feels and the struggles that she endures.

Dialogue

One of the strengths of Hudson's writing is her use of dialogue (conversation between two or more characters) as a strategy for illuminating both the complexities of Blackfoot culture and the emotional landscape of her characters, especially the women of the novel. Throughout the novel, conversations highlight the immediacy of the historical setting, most notably through Hudson's attention to speech rhythms and word choice. Talking with Favourite Child, for instance, Sweetgrass makes this observation, speaking in a rhythmic, almost poetic prose: "Eagle Sun says his mother wants to pick berries first, in the valleys, before they hunt for buffalo. But his father has promised to follow our bands later. So Eagle Sun says he will see you again before the moon has grown and faded."

Having two or more voices speaking at once in the story also allows for multiple conflicts to appear, reinforcing one of the novel's primary themes, child-parent conflict. Statements can be made and challenged, untruths told and challenged, and messages misunderstood, all of which adds to the dramatic tension of the story. Sweetgrass's conversations with her father, Shabby Bull, and her grandmother, She Fought Them Woman, are excellent examples of such moments, allowing for the similarities and differences between the generations to be articulated by representatives of each group.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Blackfoot History

The common name Blackfoot is technically the name of a subtribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Piegan (Aamsskaapipiikanii), the Kainai (Blood), and the Siksika (Blackfoot). Historically, Blackfoot territory was relatively large, extending from what later became Edmonton, Alberta, in the north to Yellowstone River, Montana, in the south, and from the Canadian Rockies to the eastern boundary of the Saskatchewan River, near what later became Regina, Saskatchewan. Primarily nomadic buffalo hunters and warriors, the Blackfoot were considered part of the British colonies and were not usually involved in the negotiation or signing of American trading agreements or treaties. During the period in which Hudson's novel is set, the Blackfoot leader was usually recognized to be Gros Blanc, who was succeeded around the mid-nineteenth century by the tripartite leadership of Old Swan, Old Sun, and Three Suns.

The basic political unit of the Blackfoot was the band, which varied from between ten and thirty lodges and usually were populated by between 80 and 240 people. Each band consisted of a respected elder who served as leader, though members of the tribe were free to migrate from band to band, which was often the case. Tribal gatherings took place in the summer, during which a dozen or so orders or societies would meet to discuss future plans and to celebrate past glories.

The traditional nomadic life continued well into the nineteenth century, at which point the imminent extinction of the great bison herds and growing pressure of white people for the Blackfoot to settle on reserves put an end to Blackfoot culture as it had been known. In the United States, white people initially assigned land to the Blackfoot under the Fort Laramie Treaty (1851) and later relocated them under the Sweetgrass Hills Treaty of 1887. In Canada, the Blackfoot settled on reserves in southern Alberta following their signing of Treaty 7.

Buffalo Hunting

The plot of Hudson's Sweetgrass hinges on a test that Shabby Bull designs to assess his daughter's strength, namely to prepare thirty buffalo hides during one winter. It is a test that underscores the centrality of the North American bison (colloquially known as buffalo) to the culture of such tribes as the Blackfoot, as well as hinting at the pressures put on traditional hunting cultures by the near extinction of the great herds by the end of the nineteenth century.

With excellent meat and a superior hide, the buffalo was an essential component of tribal life, providing food, leather, sinew for bows, grease, dried dung that could be used for fire fuel, and even a traditional form of glue that was rendered by boiling the hooves. In 1800, it appeared as though the buffalo would flourish indefinitely, with huge herds grazing on the prairies. Estimates suggest that at the turn of that century there were between fifty and sixty million buffalo moving across the North American prairies.

As the nineteenth century progressed, however, the white people increasingly destroyed buffalo habitat and buffalo populations. Supported and often paid by the railway companies that saw buffalo herds as an expensive nuisance, hunters descended on the massive herds slaughtering countless animals. Professional white hunters often killed hundreds of animals in a single day, and many boasted of killing thousands in their careers. The hunt reached its height in the 1870s when the commercialization of the hunt peaked, with several hundred hunting outfits estimated to have taken thousands of the remaining buffalo in a single day. By the mid 1880s, the North American buffalo, which had once numbered in the tens of millions, was close to extinction, marking an end to the great herds and to an ancient way of life for such nomadic tribes as the Blackfoot.

Smallpox and First Nations History

Smallpox, a highly contagious viral infection, was one of the first and most potent diseases introduced into the New World by European settlers. Arriving in North America sometime early in the seventeenth century with white people, it spread quickly through eastern native settlements, wiping out entire populations of indigenous peoples on its course westward. The disease remained a perpetual threat through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with epidemics appearing repeatedly.

As Hudson's novel suggests, Blackfoot history is riddled with the horrors of smallpox. The Blackfoot suffered great losses in 1780-1781, in 1837-1838, in 1845, in 1857-1858, and again in 1869. (During these years, white people repeatedly infected native populations; a particularly severe measles epidemic occurred in 1864, which caused devastating losses to the tribe.)

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

In one positive review of Hudson's Sweetgrass, Yvonne Frey declares the work a "masterpiece," summing it up as "an historical, a native American, a survival, and a coming-of-age novel set in the 19th-Century western Canadian prairies." A "welcome addition to fictional works on the American Indian because of its point of view and … its rich detail of Indian life," it is a book, Frey concludes, that "will invite re-reading." One of the reasons for this enthusiastic response is what Frey sees as the "message" of the novel: "maturity is not measured by one's physical growth alone but by the manner in which one faces both the emergencies of life and the ordinary and practical chores of everyday living." Perhaps it is this explicit message that leads Alleen Pace Nilsen and Ken Donelson to state that Sweetgrass is "more like a children's book" than a novel aimed at juvenile audiences.

Surveying recent award-winning juvenile novels for the English Journal, Terry C. Ley calls this novel "an unusual story [that] is powerfully told in the lyrical voice of the young Blackfoot maiden." Although concerns might arise from Hudson's decision as a white person to adopt the voice of a girl from an indigenous culture, opening her to charges of cultural appropriation or disrespect, Ley actually sees the decision as one of the novel's strengths. "This technique," he argues, "provides an intimate look at the daily life among North American Indians during the early 1800s." Despite the fact that "the setting is historical," he concludes, "contemporary young readers will relate to the themes of parent-child conflict and coming of age as Sweetgrass is cruelly tested."

CRITICISM

Klay Dyer

Dyer holds a Ph.D. in English literature and has published extensively on fiction, poetry, film, and television. He is also a freelance university teacher, writer, and educational consultant. In the following essay, he discusses Hudson's Sweetgrass in terms of the long tradition of social history stories for juvenile readers.

Although Jan Hudson's Sweetgrass is often described in terms of its relationship to traditional coming-of-age novels or adventure stories, it is also a novel that fits into the broadly defined genre of stories that focus on social history. Building generally on the theme of wilderness adventures in a historical setting, historical survival novels like Sweetgrass are representative of a particular shift in Canadian juvenile fiction that began in the 1970s. Earlier examples of such stories usually blended freely imagined characters and events with more factual accounts of familiar events in North American history. Alternatively, these early works used the past as a backdrop for more familiar tales of adventure, family, or pioneer life, mysteries, or even animal stories.

For the new generation of writers of juvenile fiction, though, the challenge has been to develop strategies that bring new dimensions to this traditional pattern. Faced with increasingly sophisticated readers whose taste in historical stories is more informed and more critical than previous generations, these writers sought strategies that might bring new dimensions to the already established genre of historical fiction. Turning away from overly elaborate plots and heavily romanticized stories that had little or no connection to contemporary concerns, they wrote novels that could reflect current ideas about youth and issues associated with the maturation.

The result broadened the established genre of historical novel to include elements of social realism (representations of the common and the everyday), mysticism (elements having to do with a divine spirit), and psychological portrayal of protagonists experiencing a life-changing rite of passage. Whereas traditional historical stories often represented the wilderness as a place of threat or challenge, for instance, the newer generation of writers portrayed it as an external parallel to the internal struggles of adolescence. The wilderness was also seen as a haven or place of respite where tests could be faced, usually with a more emotional or spiritual focus than a physical one. As the process and politics of growing were understood differently with the unfolding of the twentieth century, so, too, did the stories written about children and young adults.

WHAT DO I READ NEXT?

Although Hudson was often approached with requests to write a sequel to Sweetgrass, she never did so. She did, however, write a second novel, Dawn Rider (1990), which picks up Blackfoot history in the mid-eighteenth century. Focusing on another female protagonist, Kit Fox, this novel explores the changes that come to traditional culture in the years following the appearance of the first horse in Kit Fox's tribe.
Suzanne Fisher Staples's Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind (1989), a Newbery Honor Book, is often compared with Sweetgrass because of its focus on the attitudes of another culture (in this case, Pakistan) toward marriage arrangements for daughters.
Readers interested in the stories and myths of the Blackfoot people will enjoy Percy Bullchild's The Sun Came Down: The History of the World as My Blackfoot Elders Told It (1985) and Sharon Oakley's Black Plume's Weasel People: Native American Stories as Told by Blackfoot Nation Elders (2006).
For the slightly older reader, Hugh A. Dempsey's The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories (2006) is an eclectic collection of Blackfoot Indian stories.

With its combination of detailed social history, traditional survival story, and psychological maturation tale, Sweetgrass is clearly part of this next generation of writing. The realities of social history provide the foundation for Hudson's novel. Resisting conventional restrictions on her autonomy, Sweetgrass gradually comes to see her life as shaped by changes caused by technological change (in the form of muskets), economic pressures (the presence of the trading post), and by increasing contact with European settlers (the smallpox epidemic that takes the lives of many of her extended family). Heightening this frustration is Sweetgrass's sense that her own grandmother, the respected She Fought Them Woman, enjoyed relatively more freedom during her adolescence and young adulthood. Once a "famous warrior," She Fought Them Woman has a honorable past whose story "still was told" by the new generation of women. Yet Sweetgrass wonders "what did it have to do with [her]."

Confused and frustrated by her situation, Sweetgrass searches for ways to challenge traditional expectations and to take responsibility for her own decisions. Like the reader of the novel, she discovers that living in the past (that is, living within a traditional structure) depends in large part on her ability to make that past relevant to her own present and to revitalize traditions so that they allow her the freedom to move forward with her own life. It is a tough negotiation that she enters into, and one that allows her to interpret the past alone or with the help of elders (notably her grandmother and her father, the respected Shabby Bull). Alternatively, she can attempt to ignore the past, to recognize in it a set of rules and assumptions that are no longer pertinent to her sense of her own future. She hopes, in this sense, to move beyond the bounds of the past, to "find the signs, the power to control [her] own days" and to "make [her] life be what [she] wanted." It is a journey, as she comes to understands, that must be undertaken as much with respect and wisdom as with tenacity and will power.

Between the competing pulls of past and future, and tradition and autonomy, Sweetgrass struggles to find a psychological and emotional position upon which to make a firm stand. Avoiding the path of disobedience or even open rebellion, which would allow her to obtain her goal of marrying Eagle Sun, she finds herself forced to prove her mettle initially through conversations with her grandmother. In these moments, past and present fuse, as the two women remember stories and rituals en route to rewriting them, renegotiating them within the terms and conditions of a new generation. The dual nature of their discussions is important, allowing Sweetgrass to become steeped in the lore and traditions of her Blackfoot ancestry while at the same time moving forward to establish herself as a model for the next generation of Blackfoot women.

Covering a single year, Sweetgrass presents a richly drawn world that reflects both the historical cycle of the prairie seasons and the spare, seemingly tireless cycle of women's struggle with domestic routine and patriarchal assumptions. Pushing historical fiction forward, just as Sweetgrass strives to push her own life and own story toward a dreamed of freedom, Hudson does not adjust or alter the attitudes of the day. Historical verisimilitude is maintained as Hudson describes both the protagonist's psychology and the women's routines and chores. The emotional ebb and flow of Sweetgrass's life parallel the ebb and flow of the Blackfoot people. Her struggles with her father are reflected in the conflicts with the attacking Assiniboin, and her growing sense of a lack of control is captured in the hopelessness associated with the smallpox epidemic that sweeps through the band. As Sweetgrass struggles, so too does the community in which she lives.

Sweetgrass, then, is both an historical story, drawing as it does on the actual events of the winter of 1837-1838, and a history of a psychological rite of passage. It is a novel that blends a respectful observance of the past with a vivid exploration of a more personal history. As Sweetgrass states in the final sentence of the novel, the future holds much promise: "Strong with the dignity of a full-grown woman, I lifted my burden and went forward from the scorched land, into the years ahead."

Source: Klay Dyer, Critical Essay on Sweetgrass, in Novels for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009.

Laura Pryor

Pryor has a B.A. from the University of Michigan and over twenty years experience in professional and creative writing with special interest in fiction. In the following essay, she compares and contrasts the title character of Sweetgrass with the main character of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet.

At first thought, it would seem that a teenage Native American girl living a hard life on the Canadian western plains in 1837 would have little in common with a genteel young Englishwoman of 1813. However, the title character of Jan Hudson's Sweetgrass and Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, do share some of the same frustrations and face some of the same barriers, because both are women living in societies steeped in ritual and tradition.

Everyday life for Sweetgrass is often harsh, filled with hours of manual labor, and, in the winter, even survival cannot be taken for granted. At just fifteen, Sweetgrass tells the reader that next year, at sixteen, she "will probably be the oldest unmarried girl among all the Bloods." With the perpetuation of the tribe at stake, the Blackfoot girls do not have the luxury of a long childhood but are expected to marry and begin bearing children as soon as they are physically capable. In contrast, Elizabeth lives in relative comfort; though her family is not considered wealthy, they are far from poor, and Elizabeth's mother is quick to point out to a dinner guest that they employ a cook and that "her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen." This idleness, a point of pride for Mrs. Bennet, would be a source of shame for Sweetgrass, who is expected to work hard to help ensure the family's survival.

Though their everyday life is drastically different, both Sweetgrass and Elizabeth are preoccupied with the search for a husband. In both the Blackfoot tribe and nineteenth-century English society, a woman of a certain age without a husband is an object of both pity and derision. When Sweetgrass asks her grandmother if she will soon be married, her grandmother tells her to be patient, but Sweetgrass replies, "But what is a woman without a husband?" Elizabeth is less impatient to be engaged, but Mrs. Bennet is eager to marry her daughters off. Mr. Bennet's estate has been entailed away from his daughters, because he has no male heir, and so the quality of life for the Bennet sisters in the future is determined solely on their husbands' financial resources (or lack thereof). Wealth and status play an equally important role in finding a husband for Blackfoot girls; Sweetgrass's best friend, Pretty-Girl, comes from a poor family, so her father gives her hand in marriage to Five-Killer, an older, wealthier man who can give more horses in exchange for her than Shy-Bear, the young man whom Pretty-Girl loves. Sweetgrass has higher hopes because her father was a great warrior and as such has greater status than Pretty-Girl's father. Still, Sweetgrass fears that her father will not let her marry her love, Eagle Sun, and that she, too, may end up with an older husband. The young Blackfoot bride is treated as a commodity to be purchased. Sweetgrass tells her cousin Favorite-Child that in her grandmother's day, "the price for a wife was lower."

Though Elizabeth and her sisters have more say in their choice of a mate, they cannot help but be aware of the importance of choosing carefully. Just as financial considerations force Sweetgrass's friend Pretty-Girl to marry someone she would rather not, Elizabeth's good friend Charlotte Lucas accepts the proposal of Elizabeth's cousin, Mr. Collins, "a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man," in order to secure a comfortable home for herself. Because she is plain and comes from a large family, she does not have Elizabeth's greater expectations for a marriage and thinks along more practical lines. In both Elizabeth's and Sweetgrass's worlds, love is not considered sufficient reason for marriage, but rather a bonus for those fortunate enough to fall in love with someone who is already a suitable candidate. Love and happiness are secondary considerations to comfort, freedom from want, and in the case of the Blackfoot tribe, survival. As Pretty-Girl tells Sweetgrass, "Nobody gets married to be happy." Elizabeth Bennet, in insisting on marrying for love, is unusually independent for her era and milieu. In fact, when Elizabeth refuses the odious Mr. Collins's offer of marriage, he is incredulous, not because he fancies himself so handsome or charming, but because, as he puts it, "it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you. Your portion is so unhappily small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications."

This lack of control over the future results in frustration and anxiety for both characters. Sweetgrass thinks to herself, "The only things that happened, it seemed, were things I could not touch or change." More than once, Sweetgrass wishes she were a man: "A warrior can move with dignity against his fears. But there was nothing I could do." Elizabeth relieves this frustration through her outspoken, independent nature. When Lady Catherine de Bourgh, a woman most of the characters treat with the utmost deference due to her status, demands to know if Elizabeth plans to marry her nephew, Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth replies defiantly, "I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me." Sweetgrass is similarly determined to direct the course of her own life, regardless of others' wishes: "I would find the signs, the power to control my own days. I would make my life be what I wanted."

Both cultures rely heavily on ritual and custom, which further restricts the young women's behavior. Sweetgrass often refers to these rules, as though she is trying to convince herself she should follow them, though she would rather not. "A good Blackfoot girl is always obedient, quiet, hard-working, and she never says what she feels"; "Wanting is not right for a young woman"; and "Staring is not proper for a young woman." Elizabeth's mother laments pitifully when Mr. Bennet refuses to introduce himself to Mr. Bingley, their new neighbor, because according to custom, this means that the rest of the family cannot then be properly introduced to him either, and she is hoping that Mr. Bingley may fall in love with one of her daughters.

Though Sweetgrass and Elizabeth's behavior is restricted by the mores of their respective society, it is interesting to note that the role a woman plays in the Blackfoot society commands a great deal of respect, and it is acknowledged that their contribution is critical to the survival of the tribe. Sweetgrass's grandmother, speaking of the men in the tribe, says, "Their lives without our lives are worth less than our lives without theirs…. We Blackfoot women must expect our men to die at any moment, and we must be strong to do our part." Later, after the smallpox epidemic decimates the tribe, Sweetgrass notes that many young warriors committed suicide when afflicted with the disease: "They found death the easier trail, the one for which they had trained." The men have been brought up to face the threat of a quick death in battle, but the women have been conditioned for endurance and survival. Women in the middle class world of Elizabeth are encouraged to be ornamental; they are bred to be polite and pleasant companions. To a Blackfoot warrior, a wife is a necessity, key to his comfort and survival, whereas men like Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, with the means to hire servants, could remain bachelors and live comfortably as such.

Both Sweetgrass and Elizabeth begin their stories with simplistic worldviews that mature as a result of the trials they experience. Elizabeth, quick-witted and observant, trusts her first impressions of Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham and hastily makes black-and-white judgments concerning their characters. Through a series of revelations, she learns that while Mr. Darcy is certainly not without fault, he is not deserving of her early wholesale condemnation and that Mr. Wickham is likewise not deserving of her quick praise. Her error in judgment is fully revealed when Wickham elopes with Elizabeth's younger sister, though he has no real intention of marrying her. Elizabeth comes away from these events with a more realistic view of people in general and the knowledge that a man's entire character cannot be fully known from just a few encounters. Sweetgrass, likewise, has simple views that have been handed to her from her tribe, views that she defends at first, even when faced with contrary evidence. Sweetgrass believes, for example, that a girl's marriage is a joyous occasion and that every girl should be excited and thrilled to leave her parents and live with her husband. When her friend Pretty-Girl laments tearfully that she will be Five-Killer's slavewife and do all the hardest work, Sweetgrass thinks, "Tears are the wrong way to greet the marriage that every Blackfoot girl longs for. What could I say to make her act the right way?" When Sweetgrass is left alone to care for her stricken mother and brother during the smallpox epidemic, she learns that strength and wisdom lie not in blind adherence to rules but in knowing when to choose a different path. By feeding her family fish—a food strictly forbidden by Blackfoot beliefs—Sweetgrass keeps her family alive through the bitter winter and epidemic. The rules she has been given are now tempered by her own hard-won wisdom: "Maybe someday the river demons would come for me. Who knows, but I doubted it."

The likelihood that women are indeed the weaker sex seems to decrease given the amount of work there is to be done. In Austen's privileged middle-class sphere, women were more likely to be viewed as delicate creatures with fragile constitutions. However, in the Blackfoot tribe, the men were likely to be gone for long periods hunting, and women were expected to shoulder the rest of the work involved in ensuring the tribe's survival. Sweetgrass's grandmother tells her daughter-in-law, "Be strong and mighty like a true Blackfoot." It is unlikely that "strong and mighty" would be used to describe a woman of Austen's world.

Sweetgrass and Elizabeth Bennet are admirable because they find a way to chart their own course and achieve their goals while still working within the confines of their own society. Elizabeth does not flaunt convention like her sister Lydia, who brings disgrace to the family, but she still maintains her independence and individuality. Sweetgrass's resourcefulness and unwavering belief in her own strength, brings her through an ordeal that kills many others. In the end, each gets her man, but more importantly, each gains a greater knowledge of herself in the process.

Source: Laura Pryor, Critical Essay on Sweetgrass, in Novels for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009.

Bryan Aubrey

Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English. In the following essay, he discusses the ways in which Sweetgrass accurately portrays the customs, practices, and beliefs of the nineteenth-century Blackfoot.

One of the many merits of Jan Hudson's Sweetgrass is that it succeeds in telling a story that is solidly rooted in a remote time and an unfamiliar culture and yet is also fully alive to twenty-first century American sensibilities. Fifteen-year-old Sweetgrass is a heroine whom young English-speaking readers can quickly take to their hearts. She is like many an American teenager, in love for the first time, squabbling with her younger brother, fed up with being treated as a child by her father, and resenting what she sees as the limited role ascribed to her simply because she happened to have been born a female: "A good Blackfoot girl is always obedient, quiet, hard-working, and she never says what she feels," she says, heavy with regret. Like a proto-feminist, Sweetgrass is determined to rewrite the social contract that determines the conditions of her life. Desiring to go beyond the traditions of her tribe and live her life on her terms, she resolves, "I would find the signs, the power to control my own days. I would make my life be what I wanted." She feels the strength of a warrior in herself.

It might seem at first blush that these are unlikely thoughts for a young Blackfoot girl in the 1830s to have and that they are attributed to her only because the author needs to bridge the gap between the time and culture in which the story is set and the need of a modern young female reader, accustomed to seeing powerful female role models on television and in movies, to identify with the heroine of the tale. But closer examination of the historical records suggests that Sweetgrass's desire to break out of the traditional gender role in her tribe was not unheard of among Blackfoot women of the period. As Hugh A. Dempsey explains in the introduction to his book, The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories, the place of women was not quite as fixed as one might have supposed. He points out that although it was customary for young girls to spend their days learning their appointed tasks of collecting firewood and water, tanning hides, and cooking meals, "occasionally, some girls broke out of that mold to become warriors and were ultimately accepted in their chosen roles." He gives historical examples of such women, who were called awau-katsik-saki, ("warrior woman") including a woman from the Blood tribe named Running Eagle. Running Eagle swore revenge when her husband was killed by Crows. She went to war and showed great bravery, killing an enemy and capturing many horses. Men began to follow her, and she organized her own raiding parties. Another warrior woman was named Trim Woman, who was also accepted and honored by the men of her tribe. Dempsey quotes a Blood elder who recalled, "That kind of woman is always respected and everyone depends on them…. They are admired for their bravery. They are lucky on raids so the men respect them."

Hudson lists Dempsey's book in her extensive bibliography, and the information about the warrior women was no doubt the inspiration for the character of Sweetgrass's grandmother, who in her time had been a famed warrior known as She-Fought-Them-Woman: "She had ridden like the wind, stolen horses, and counted coup on the dead." The story of her deeds is still told. Not surprisingly, it is Grandmother who becomes Sweetgrass's role model. She sees the warrior courage and strength that the old woman still exudes and longs to emulate it. Indeed, it is Grandmother who predicts that Sweetgrass will become a warrior, and she also shows her the way. During the raid mounted by the Assiniboin, Grandmother stands firm in her resolve, telling her frightened daughter, Sweetgrass's Almost-Mother, to "Stand and save your children. Be strong and mighty like a true Blackfoot." Young Sweetgrass, listening, draws courage from Grandmother's example.

Although there is no corresponding example in Sweetgrass, in which all the men (with the possible exception of Shy-Bear) are very much men, Dempsey also points out that just as a few Blackfoot women adopted masculine roles, some males opted out of their prescribed warrior role, wore dresses and helped the women in their daily tasks. Others dressed as women but were still warriors. There is a specific term in the Blackfoot language, a'yai-kik-ahsi, to describe a man who "acts like a woman." (This does not refer to homosexuality.) Dempsey tells the story of a man named Four Bears, who wore women's clothes and believed he had been given holy powers by the sun. Four Bears was a warrior who apparently had great success in horse raids, partly due to the fact that if the enemy saw him they took no notice of him because he was dressed as a woman.

As the example of Grandmother the warrior shows, Sweetgrass is a well-researched novel, and the result is an authentic story that seems genuinely to capture the flavor of Blackfoot life in those long-gone times, before the existence of Indian reservations, when relations between Native Americans and white men were still tolerable (as is shown by the trips the Blackfoot in the story make south to the American trading stations at Fort McKenzie and Fort Union, and north to the English Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Edmonton).

One central element in Blackfoot life at the time, as will be well apparent from Sweetgrass, was war. In the 1830s, when the story is set, the Blackfoot tribes were at war with the Crows and had been for generations. A regular part of the warfare was the horse raids; in fact, the desire to obtain horses appears to have been the principal inducement to go to war. Sweetgrass must have witnessed many times the return of the young warriors of her tribe with their stolen horses, just as she reports in chapter 2, when the "victorious young men of our band and Five-Killer's band walked their new horses back and forth with smug dignity." According to Dempsey, the young men would plan the raids in the spring and would travel on foot for hundreds of miles to the enemy camp. During the night they would creep up on the best horses, which were tied to the owners' tipis or otherwise secured nearby. Cutting the bonds that tied the horses, the raiders would then lead them out of the camp and ride back home. Dempsey reports that if the raids went wrong, the consequences might be fatal:

But if the snapping of a twig, the growling of a dog, or any other noise, awoke the owner, then the results might be different. Gunfire, screams of rage, and defiant war cries might echo through the still night as the raiders rushed for the safety of darkness. If they were lucky, they escaped. If not, their scalps adorned the lodges of their adversaries.

Ownership of horses was thus a vital part of Blackfoot life and became a criterion of wealth. Some Blackfoot in the early nineteenth century owned thirty or forty horses, according to John C. Ewers in his book, The Blackfoot: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains. By the 1860s, wealthy Blackfoot owned fifty to a hundred horses. Poor families, however, would own only one or two horses, which provided them with a much lower standard of living than others in their tribe. Horses were essential for moving camp, which the Blackfoot did frequently during spring, summer, and fall. A horse could move four times the load that a dog could manage and carry it twice as far in a day. The average family of eight (two men, three women, and three children) needed ten horses to move camp efficiently.

Horses were also important in marriage bargaining, as Sweetgrass makes clear. The more horses a warrior could acquire, the greater would be his chances of finding a desirable wife, since the horses could be offered as gifts (payment, in effect) to the girl's father. This is why in the novel, Sweetgrass's friend Pretty-Girl never has a chance of marrying her sweetheart, Shy-Bear. He is not much of a warrior and can only come home from the horse raid with packhorses rather than riding horses, unlike the formidable Five-Killer, whom Pretty-Girl does not find attractive because he is much older than she. But Pretty-Girl is powerless to prevent the match being made. In a contest between a girl's desires for a love-match and a father's desire and need for horses, there could be only one outcome.

Sweetgrass also provides historically accurate insight into other aspects of marriage practices among the Blackfoot. Polygamy was common, according to Ewers, "because it was a practical means of caring for the excess of women created by heavy war losses." To possess several wives was a sign of social status, and more than half the men had at least two wives. In the novel, Sweetgrass's father has three wives, all sisters. This too was common, since it was thought that sisters would be less likely to be jealous of each other. A man who married the eldest sister might later expect the younger sisters to be offered to him as additional wives. Girls were usually married by the time they reached their mid-teens, although some became wives when they were younger than twelve. Sweetgrass, then, at the age of fifteen, has every reason to believe that she is ready for marriage.

Arranged marriages were the most common, but it was also known for couples to make a free choice of each other out of love. Sweetgrass tells her cousin Favorite-Child that her father and deceased mother chose each other of their own free will. Therefore, it was not unreasonable (or historically inaccurate) for Sweetgrass to hope that she would be able to marry the young warrior of her choice, Eagle-Sun. As reported by Kenneth E. Kidd in Blackfoot Ethnography, some Blackfoot couples, desiring each other but meeting opposition from their families, would even take some horses and elope together. Needless to say, this did not go down well with the girl's father and was regarded as theft. The man had to find a way to conciliate the father before he could return to his tribe.

In addition to presenting in her novel some of the common customs and practices of Blackfoot society in the nineteenth century, Hudson unobtrusively manages to convey the distinctive Native American view of the world, in which everything in nature is a living entity imbued with consciousness. There is no split in this view between the human world and what Western thought regards as the inanimate world. Consciousness pervades everything. Nature spirits are everywhere and they interact with humans. As Betty Bastien explains in Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the "Siksikaitsitapi":

The land, animals, and spirits are not separate but an integral part of the Siksikaitsitapi world. [Siksikaitsitapi refers to all Blackfoot-speaking tribes.] They too are the source of science and knowledge. This same relationship exists with the elements, earth, wind, water, and rock—all are within the consciousness of the universe … and make up the circle of life.

This sense possessed by the Blackfoot that everything is alive and interconnected is frequently conveyed in Sweetgrass. "The earth is crying with joy!" exclaims Sweetgrass as she and Favorite-Child thrash around in the river one morning, sending water flying upward. In other words, the earth too possesses consciousness; it is not inanimate; it throbs with joy. In Western thought this is known as the pathetic fallacy, the attribution of human emotions to natural objects or things. To the Blackfoot, however, it is simply the way things are. This way of experiencing the world can be sensed again at the Sun Dance, when "Chief Mountain, Ninastako, looked down from on high" at the camp site, a description that strongly suggests that the mountain itself is a living being.

It is not surprising, then, to discover that Sweetgrass's world is full of spirits. When she looks into the river and sees a fish, for example, she identifies it as "one of the mysterious water people, one of the river spirits." Her brother Otter has a spirit helper who tells him he will become a man soon. The Blackfoot believed that the spirits present everywhere could be enlisted to help them, if approached in the correct manner. The spirits had power to bestow gifts. Horses, for example, were considered to be gifts from thunder, the water spirits, and the morning star. The greatest of the spirits, in the Blackfoot worldview, was the sun. Heroes, says Sweetgrass, get their power "from their offerings to Sun." What should be noted here is the capitalization of Sun and the omission of the definite article, the presence of which tends to objectify the sun as a thing, whereas referring to it simply as Sun evokes it as a living being. "Who but Sun would give them [the heroes] victory?" Sweetgrass continues. In this view, humans can ask the sun for what they want. "A Sun Dance Woman is a great woman who has asked a big thing from the sun, and Sun has made it true," says Sweetgrass. She remembers a story about how, after Grandmother lost four babies, she promised that she would cut off part of her next child's finger as a gift to Sun if Sun would let the baby live. (This explains why Sweetgrass's father has a short left-middle finger.) Favorite-Child expects to give many gifts to Sun when she is married. She must then be alert to how Sun might reward her. According to Kidd, "it was seldom that the Sun answered prayer directly. More often it was a much inferior creature that appeared to a visionary as a helper. Usually it was some bird or animal."

Such is the world inhabited by Sweetgrass in this finely crafted novel, written in crystal-clear prose with a poet's sensitivity to language. In showing how Sweetgrass matures from powerless young girl, gossiping about possible husbands with her friend Pretty-Girl, to a young woman whose courage, steadfastness, and ingenuity save her almost-mother and brother from certain death from smallpox, Hudson gently educates her young readers about a culture and a way of seeing the world that is far removed from the beliefs, habits, and preoccupations of mainstream America in the early twenty-first century.

Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on Sweetgrass, in Novels for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009.

SOURCES

Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice, Borders Classics, 2006, pp. 55, 90, 112, 290.

Bastien, Betty, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the "Siksikaitsitapi," University of Calgary Press, 2004, p. 82.

Dempsey, Hugh A., The Vengeful Wife and Other Blackfoot Stories, pp. ix-x, 29, 48, 57, 59.

Ewers, John C., The Blackfoot: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958, p. 99.

Frey, Yvonne A., Review of Sweetgrass, in School Library Journal, April 1989, p. 102.

Hudson, Jan, Sweetgrass, Penguin Putnam, 1984.

———, Sweetgrass, Philomel Books, 1989.

———, Sweetgrass, Tree Frog Press, 1984.

Kidd, Kenneth E., Blackfoot Ethnography, Archeological Survey of Alberta, Manuscript Series, No. 8, 1937, p. 175.

Ley, Terry C., "Paperback Books for the Teenage Reader: Writing Awards Winners Demonstrate How to Bake Rainbow Poems," in English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 6, October 1991, p. 95.

Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Ken Donelson, "Books for the Teenage Reader: Honor Listing Update, 1989: Some New Kids on the Block," in English Journal, Vol. 79, No. 8, December 1990, p. 79.