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As I turned the pages of Canoeing with the Cree that first time, however, I suspended judgment on the book’s grandiose claims, and on the racist attitude of its author. After all, when Sevareid and Port made their journey in 1930, indigenous people had only been granted American citizenship for six years (the Indian Citizenship Act having passed in 1924), their religious practices were strictly outlawed, and their culture had been decimated by government policies that forced thousands of Native children into boarding schools, where they were held away from their families, made to dress like white people, and severely punished for speaking their languages.

Instead, I read Canoeing with the Cree that first time as an adventure story. I burned to know the boys’ route. After launching at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers in Saint Paul, they had paddled up the Minnesota River and its tributary, the Little Minnesota River, to Browns Valley, Minnesota. From there, the boys portaged over the Laurentian Divide to Lake Traverse and descended the Bois des Sioux River to the Red River of the North, which led to Lake Winnipeg. Then they had paddled down the Nelson River, across a series of small lakes and portages to Gods River, and down the Hayes River to York Factory on Hudson Bay.