The Sign of the Beaver is a children's novel written by renowned author Elizabeth George Spear. The story is set in the 1760s in the woods of Maine, close to the Penobscot River. It is commonly set as required reading for elementary school children in various parts of the USA. It tells the story of Matt, a resourceful and plucky twelve-year-old boy who is left alone by his father to guard their newly-constructed cabin in the wilderness whilst his father returns home to bring the rest of the family back to the cabin.
Initially understandably apprehensive, Matt quickly comes to like his life of solitude in the wilderness where he is too busy with daily tasks to feel lonely. After a renegade traveler called Ben tricks Matt into offering him hospitality and steals Matt's gun, the boy realizes that he now has no way of protecting himself or of hunting for food. After a terrifying encounter with a nest of angry bees, Matt is tended back to health by an Indian chief of the Beaver clan, named Saknis. He becomes friends with Attean, the chief's grandson, and through him learns how to survive in the wilderness. He also begins to understand the Indian heritage and the way of life that makes it almost impossible for them to accept and adapt to the white settlers who are coming and taking over their lands. The story ends with Matt’s family eventually arriving, and Matt needing to find a way to return to his old way of life and explain the story of all that has happened in their absence.
The book is named in honor of the sign which represents Saknis and Attean’s clan – the Beaver clan. At face value, this is just a drawing found on trees, but it comes to represent Matt’s growth from apprehensive boy to confident young man.
This novel is both adventure story and history lesson, teaching the reader in great detail about life of the settlers and the Indians in the 1700s. This was a time during which many white settlers were exploring various parts of the American colonies, leading to conflicts with Native Americans as they encroached on their land. The story told in The Sign of the Beaver was inspired by a short anecdote found by the author in a book called The History of Milo, which she found while exploring the town of Milo, which was near a fishing camp where she and her husband were vacationing. The anecdote related to a man named Benjamin Sargent, who arrived in Maine with his teenage son with the idea of building a home before returning to Methuen, Massachusetts to fetch the rest of their family. As happens in The Sign of the Beaver, the son is left on his own, surviving largely by means of hunting and fishing. In this boys’ case, his life was not disrupted by having a rifle stolen, as happens to our protagonist in The Sign of the Beaver, but he has a similar experience of a black bear invading his cabin and destroying his supplies. The boy’s plight was noticed by a tribe of Indians, and the chief offered assistance, leaving his son Ateon (as opposed to The Sign of the Beaver’s deuteragonist, Attean) to help the newcomer.
Elizabeth George Speare (1908-1994) is one of the nation's most successful children's authors, having twice been awarded the prestigious Newberry Medal. These medals were awarded to two of her earlier works, The Witch of Blackbird Pond (1959) and The Bronze Bow (1962). The Sign of the Beaver (1984) earned Speare the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, as well as a Newbery Honor Medal from the American Library Association. In 1989, Elizabeth George Speare received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in recognition of her historical accuracy and outstanding writing skills. Historical fiction was her passion, and she is the author of numerous magazine articles as well as two one-act plays and her award-winning novels. Her books capture the spirit of exploration and survival of early American settlers and always include characters of great determination and strength.
Speare has always resided in New England, using the history in her surroundings as the inspiration for her novels.
