Nature and Human Nature

by Thomas Chandler Haliburton

“Oh, yes,” she said, “no day like this; it never came before, it don’t return again. It dies to-night, but will never be forgotten.”

“Why not live where you are? Why not have your home here by this lake, and this mountain? His tastes are like yours, and yours like his; you can live two lives here,—the forest of the red man around you—the roof of the white one above you. To unite both is true enjoyment; there is no eye to stare here, no pride to exclude, no tongue to offend. You need not seek the society of others, let them solicit yours, and the doctor will make them respect it.”

It was a subject on which her mind appeared to have been made up. She seemed like a woman that has lost a child, who hears your advice, and feels there is some truth in it, but the consolation reaches not her heart.

“It can’t be,” she said, with a melancholy smile, as if she was resigning something that was dear to her, “God or nature forbids it. If there is one God for both Indian and white man, he forbids it. If there are two great spirits, one for each, as my mother told me, then both forbid it. The great spirit of the pale faces,” she continued, “is a wicked one, and the white man is wicked. Wherever he goes, he brings death and destruction. The woods recede before him—the wild fowl leave the shores—the fish desert their streams—the red man disappears. He calls his deer and his beaver, and his game (for they are all his, and were given to him for food and for clothing), and travels far, far away, and leaves the graves and the bones of his people behind him. But the white man pursues him, day and night, with his gun, and his axe, and fire-water; and what he spares with the rifle, rum, despair, and starvation destroy. See,” she said, and she plucked a withered red cone from a shumack that wept over the water, “see that is dyed with the blood of the red man.”

“That is prejudice,” I said.

“No, it is the truth,” she replied. “I know it. My people have removed twice, if not three times, and the next move will be to the sea or the grave.”

“It is the effect of civilization, and arts, and the power of sciences and learning, over untutored nature,” I said.

“If learning makes men wicked, it is a bad thing,” she observed; “for the devil instructs men how to destroy. But rum ain’t learning, it is poison; nor is sin civilization, nor are diseases blessings, nor madness reason.”

“That don’t alter things,” I said, “if it is all true that you say, and there is too much reality in it, I fear; but the pale faces are not all bad, nor the red all good. It don’t apply to your case.”

“No,” she said, “nature forbids the two races to mingle. That that is wild, continues wild; and the tame remains tame. The dog watches his sleeping master; and the wolf devours him. The wild-duck scorns confinement; and the partridge dies if compelled to dwell with domestic fowls. Look at those birds,” she said, as she threw a chip among a flock of geese that were floating down the lake, “if the beautiful Indian wild bird consorts with one of them, the progeny die out. They are mongrels, they have not the grace, the shape, or the courage of either. Their doom is fixed. They soon disappear from the face of the earth and the waters. They are despised by both breeds;” and she shook her head, as if she scorned and loathed herself, and burst into a passionate flood of tears.