The Sign of the Beaver Study Guide

Speare grew up in New England, surrounded by her extended family and spending a lot of time outdoors. She began writing at age eight and completed her undergraduate degree at Smith College. Speare then went on to finish a master’s degree in English at Boston University. While teaching at several private schools, Speare met her husband, with whom she had two children. It wasn’t until her children were entering their teen years that Speare returned to writing. Her first published works were magazine articles. However, she’s best known for her children’s historical novels. Her first, Calico Captive, was published in 1957. Her second, 1958’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, won the Newbery Medal, as did her 1961 novel The Bronze Bow. Aside from The Bronze Bow, all of Speare’s novels take place in New England, where she lived until her death in 1994.

The Sign of the Beaver alludes to several 18th-century events, most notably the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Fought between the French and British settlers with the support of several New England tribes, the French and Indian War is sometimes considered the American theater of the Seven Years’ War, a worldwide conflict that officially began in 1756. The war saw both sides fighting over land in New England. With the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France ceded nearly all of New France (which includes parts of contemporary Canada and the U.S.) to the British. Several characters also discuss Massachusetts Colony offering bounties for Native American scalps. The colony (and others) offered bounties at various points during the colonial period, sometimes targeting specific tribes and other times targeting Native Americans in general. Ben also mentions the steep decline of Native populations during the colonial era. Some of this was due to conflict between tribes and with European colonizers, while European diseases like smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis (to which Native Americans had no immunity) also decimated tribes.

Like The Sign of the Beaver, all but one of Speare’s other children’s novels take place in colonial New England. Her most famous is The Witch of Blackbird Pond, while her first, Calico Captive, is about a New Hampshire family captured by Native Americans. The Sign of the Beaver is one of many survival novels for young readers. It shares similarities with Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, and James Fenimore Cooper’s classic novel The Last of the Mohicans. A more contemporary novel about a white boy learning indigenous survival methods and coming to respect the natural world is Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelson. Within the novel, Matt reads Daniel Defoe’s 1719 classic Robinson Crusoe, which in turn inspired many other books. The most famous of these is The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss.