Canoeing with the Cree by Eric Sevareid

Trade Paperback.  An adventure story on the order of Call of the Wild or White Fang!  75th Anniversary Edition.

In 1930 two novice paddlers--Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port--launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay.

Without benefit of radio, motor, or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and surviving exceedingly bad conditions and even worse advice, the ragged, hungry adventurers arrived in York Factory on Hudson Bay--with winter freeze-up on their heels. First published in 1935, Canoeing with the Cree is Sevareid's classic account of this youthful odyssey.  They succeeded in becoming the first Americans on record to complete this route, which was over 2,250 miles long and required an entire summer, and their regular dispatches were published by the Minneapolis Star.

During the last leg of the trip, when they found themselves ill-equipped to endure the climate, scarcity of food, and unanticipated hazards, they depended heavily on assistance from traders and the Cree, of whom Sevareid sometimes speaks disparagingly. The book focuses on adventure and personal experience rather than natural description or ethnographic information. Severeid himself viewed his journey as a rite of passage from adolescence into manhood. 

Praise for Canoeing with the Cree

"Canoeing with the Cree is an all-time favorite of mine." --Ann Bancroft, Arctic explorer and co-author of No Horizon Is So Far

"Two high school graduates make an amazing journey . . . showing indomitable courage that carried them through to their destination. Humor and a spirit of adventure made a grand, good time of it, in spite of storms, rapids, long portages and silent wildernesses." --Library Journal