The Making of Sacagawea: A Euro-American Legend

Rating:
Summary: A Scholarly Debunking of a Classic American Myth
Review: As a student of Colonial history and a professor of economics, I have often been amazed at the historical errors and myths one finds in Early American literature. Donna J. Kessler has taken on one such myth that will amaze you in its depth. She reveals how some infrequent references by Lewis and Clark to the Indian woman's helpfulness are embellished and just plain ignored by novelists and other writers during the past two centuries. These writers have turned a simple woman into a princess, an early American feminist and maybe a suffragette. I plan to use this material when teaching courses in "Critical Thinking" to illustrate how easily we can be mislead by zealous misrepresentations from the past. Ms Kessler's definitive work is very difficult to read. I suspect it was her dissertation for a Ph. D. Nonetheless let me heartily recommend it to you as a classic example of fine scholarship. It is one that any truth seeker can learn from. Just don't plan to speak on it at a feminist convention.

Rating:
Summary: What a find!
Review: I just finished reading this book as part of some research I am doing on Sacagawea. I couldn't put it down from the moment I read the first page. Ms Kessler does a wonderful job of placing her literature review in a coherent theoretical framework. I have read most of the books and articles written about Sacagawea cited in Ms Kessler's work; I deeply appreciated her analysis of how each of these authors fits into the larger picture.

Best of all, Ms Kessler provides a thoughtful discussion of Native American contributions to the literature. Most of the Native American authors she cites do not specifically address the question of Sacagawea. Rather, they provide an essential (but usually overlooked) point of view of the Native American experience over time.

Thank you, Ms Kessler!!