About the Author
Scott O'Dell was born on May 23, 1903, in Los Angeles, California. Although he traveled widely, he made his home in southern California, the region in which many of his books are set.
O'Dell attended Occidental College, the University of Wisconsin, Stanford University, and the University of Rome but never completed a degree. Believing that he did not need an academic degree to become a successful writer, he attended these institutions to study the subjects that interested him most: history, philosophy, psychology, and literature.
In addition to being a prolific novelist, O'Dell worked briefly as a movie cameraman, served in the
Air Force, and pursued journalism. He married Jane Rattenbury in 1948.
After publishing several adult novels, O'Dell began a career as an author of novels for young readers with Island of the Blue Dolphins. He went on to write more than twenty novels for young adults, most of which received awards and achieved popularity. One of the best of these is Sing Down the Moon, a Newbery Honor Book. O'Dell's other awards include the 1961 Newbery Medal for Island of the Blue Dolphins, a 1968 Newbery Honor Book citation for The Black Pearl and the 1972 Hans Christian Andersen Award for lifetime contribution to children's literature. Two of his novelsIsland of the Blue Dolphins and The Black Pearlwere adapted to feature−length films. O'Dell died on October 15, 1989, in Mount Kisco, New York.
Overview
O'Dell called Sing Down the Moon an adventure about loyalty. Bright Moming, a young Navaho woman, remains loyal to her family, her homeland, and her people. The book opens with Bright Morning remembering the first time she took her family's sheep onto the mesa at Canyon de Chelly to begin the spring grazing. When a late spring blizzard strikes, she secures the sheep in a grove of trees but becomes frightened and abandons the flock. Although the sheep survive, Bright Morning feels that by leaving, she has betrayed both them and her family. Looking back on the incident a year later and recalling her family's disapproval, Bright Morning understands the importance of loyalty. Her experiences throughout the novel being captured as a slave, being forced to participate in the Navaho "long walk" into exile from Canyon de Chelly, marrying the recently crippled Tall Boy, and returning with her new husband to the canyontest and strengthen her loyalty to the people and places that are part of her identity and her integrity.
Setting
Sing Down the Moon takes place mainly in Arizona and New Mexico between 1863 and 1865. The story begins and ends in Canyon de Chelly, now a national monument. O'Dell is a careful historical novelist. In addition to giving his readers the pleasure of adventures set in another time and place, he offers a glimpse into the life and culture of Navahos in the nineteenth−century Southwest. He creates a vivid sketch of traditional Navaho life, basing his story of "the long march" on an actual historical event. In 1863 the U.S. government removed all the Navahos from the Four Comers region of the Southwest (where the borders of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico all meet) to Fort Sumner, southeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Colonel Kit Carson led U.S. Cavalry troops in destroying Navaho villages and crops and killing those who resisted the three−hundred−mile walk. About ten thousand Navahos were removed; about eighty−five hundred reached Fort Sumner alive. Another fifteen hundred died during two years of exile. Sing Down the Moon captures the horror of this long march from a young Navaho woman's point of view.
Social Concerns
Much of O'Dell's fiction revolves around two major areas of interest: the history of the Southwest and the conflict between Native Americans and white people. Sing Down the Moon deals with the canyons and deserts of Arizona and the attempts to resettle the Navajo people from these, their homelands. Bright Morning, a fourteen−yearold Navajo girl, leads a simple but happy life, caring for her mother's sheep and sharing in the work and celebrations of her community. Her first encounter with whites almost brings an end to this way of life, as Bright Morning and her friend Running Bird are captured by Spanish slavers and taken south to a large city. There the girls are sold as household help and meet young Indian girls from several tribes, even from as far north as the Nez Perce, an indication of the widespread trade in Indian slaves by the Spanish. While some of the young women have adjusted and even enjoy the softer city life, Bright Morning's fierce desire for freedom helps her and Running Bird to escape and return home. This episode, which serves both as an introduction to the abuse of the Indians by the whites and as a demonstration of the determination and love of freedom of the Navajo, deals with a widespread practice of the Spanish in the Southwest to use and abuse the native population for labor. The seemingly idyllic life of the old Spanish families is based on such exploitation of the natives, often under the guise of making them converts to Christianity.
But while Rosarita, another captured Navajo girl, goes willingly to the white man's church, Bright Morning refuses stubbornly during her captivity to have anything to do with the god of her captors.
The second part of the confrontation between whites and Indians occurs when the army, "the Long Knives," forcibly relocates the Navajo and marches them to a reservation, a long, painful journey reminiscent of the Cherokee's Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.
This treatment of the Native Americans is even harsher, and some of Bright Morning's
people suspect that the army tries to eliminate them and does not wish them to survive. Illness, starvation, and lack of shelter take a terrible toll of the Indians at Bosque Redondo, the inhospitable desert where their new reservation is located.
