Whenever I read historical fiction based on real events or people, I like to know where the facts came from. Did the author consult primary sources? or is it historical fiction in the sense of movies “inspired by true events?”
This becomes all the more important when the plot contains enough drama for five novels, as is the case for Scott O’Dell’s Streams to the River, River to the Sea, which is about Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who guided Lewis and Clark through much of their westward journey. The book starts with a kidnapping, when 15-year-old Sacagawea is taken by the Minnetaree tribe after they kill her mother. We’ve barely had time to absorb the trauma before Sacagawea is kidnapped again (by a rival Minnetaree village). Several random turn of events later (including a season of solitary life, Island of the Blue Dolphins style), she’s married off to a white trader named Toussaint Charbonneau, gives birth to a son, then she and Charbonneau are hired by Lewis and Clark. So off she goes on the 4,000-mile journey, during which she falls in love with Clark.
It’s hard to tell how much of this actually happened, because Scott O’Dell lists just two sources in the preface: The Journals of Lewis and Clark; and Lewis and Clark, Partners in Discovery. He doesn’t say if he read anything written by Sacagawea, or if she left any kind of written record. I have no problems with historical fiction that’s mostly fiction, but when it happens, I expect the author to be up front about it.
My biggest complaint, though, is that O’Dell squashed so many events into so few pages that Sacagawea came off as a stock character with little personality, at least in the first third of the book before she meets Lewis and Clark. After the initial kidnapping, it takes her about three pages to accept the fact that she’s destined to live as a Minnetaree slave. It certainly shows her strength, but it happened too quickly to be believable. To make things worse, the next 40 pages are taken up by endless marriage proposals. Almost every man she meets wants Sacagawea as his first, second or third wife. O’Dell does a great job of showing how powerless women were in that situation, but again, things moved so quickly it almost becomes a farce (I can barely recall the mens’ names, let alone their personalities). At one point, three men compete for her hand through a guessing game that involves plum pits (Charbonneau wins). Later, when Sacagawea finally reunites with her brother, do they reminisce about their childhood or grieve over their mother? Nope. Their joy is cut short by–you guessed it–another prospective husband. As a kid, Sacagawea was promised in marriage to a young Shoshone, and now that her brother is a tribal chief, it’s his duty to honor such promises. Except by this point Sacagawea is already married to Charbonneau. So what should have prompted a family reunion turns into another jealous squabble.
Things do improve after Sacagawea meets Clark. It seems the westward journey is what O’Dell wanted to write about, because the rest of the book proceeds at a much more reasonable rate. We get a chance to fully appreciate Sacagawea’s bravery: not only does she survive the threat of constant danger (bears, storms, starvation, exhaustion), she does it all while burdened with an infant and a lazy, abusive husband. No wonder she falls in love with Clark. Compared to most of the men in she’s met, he’s Prince Charming. But this is no fairy tale. The ending, while abrupt, was perfect, and easily the highlight of the book. It’s where Sacagawea emerges as a complex, sympathetic character, one who finally trusts the reader enough to let us into her head. Too bad it didn’t happen sooner.