In Sweetgrass, readers were able to see some of the effects that the acquisition of guns and horses had on the Blackfoot way of life. Hudson received many requests from readers to write a sequel to Sweetgrass, but had no plans to do so. "I don't think I would like to move forward in historical time," she said. Part of her reasoning was that "when it gets closer to the time where there are people living who remember, then these people are obviously infinitely more capable of writing about that period than I am." She did say that "I'd like to go back in time and do something on Sweetgrass's grandmother, for she was an interesting person who led an interesting life."

With Dawn Rider, Hudson did in fact return to the Blackfoot of an earlier period: the mid-eighteenth century. However, her protagonist was...