Sweetgrass

JAN HUDSON
1984

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 …