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.
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