University of Virginia Library

THE SACRED WHITE DEER.

There is a very old superstition, still extant among our people, that white, or albino deer—which are very rare—are sacred. They have for time out of mind been called Manito sucsee wabe ("the sacred white deer").

It is believed that if anyone should shoot at and miss a white deer, he would be sick in consequence; and, that should he kill one, death would soon be the result. I once encamped while hunting with a white man for partner. Returning to our lodge one night, I told him how, during the day, I had had a chance to kill a most beautiful white buck, having the most perfect antlers I had ever seen, but that I had not had the heart to take his life, for I had always heard our old hunters say that the white deer was sacred, and that they never knew a hunter who killed one to live long. He called me many hard names, and among other things, said: "Pokagon, you are as superstitious as an uneducated redskin. Don't you know anything? Why, we could have sold that deer for more than fifty dollars!"

Yet this same man, a few days later, when we had started on our morning hunt, went back to the lodge, a distance of at least half a mile, to get an old horse-chestnut which he claimed had brought him good luck for years. He would not hunt on Friday; fearing he might get shot. I suggested to him one Friday morning that, if he should fill his pockets with chestnuts, he would be perfectly safe. He talked very eloquently to me for some time; but he did not thank me for my advice.

In conclusion, permit Pokagon to say that he once thought that man's proneness to trust in superstitions was such a reflection on his natural ability, as to declare him unworthy of being considered spiritual and immortal. But, after having associated with the dominant race, as well as his own, for more than fifty years, and after having learned that trust in superstitions creeps into the hearts of all races, whether savage, or civilized and enlightened, he has been forced to a contrary opinion; and he now believes with all his heart, that such trust in superstitions most emphatically declares that man is spiritual and immortal, and has a higher life beyond the grave. In fact, it appears to him just as natural for man to trust in some intelligence higher than himself, who he believes brought him into being, as it is for children to trust in their parents.

As reasonable beings, without prejudice, we cannot for a moment believe that heathen who bow down to idols, or savages who trust in totums, or the civilized who have faith in mascots, believe there is any power in the object itself, but simply that there is somehow or other, a spiritual intelligence connected with it, which they cannot understand or explain, independent of the thing itself. They only know that it satisfies their nature to confide in it. As beings of common sense, we cannot believe otherwise than that their feelings are akin to those of the little girl who pets and caresses her doll, sleeps with it; and embraces it with all the tenderness of a devoted mother, and yet not for a moment believes it real. She is actuated to love and caress it in order to satisfy that parent love born in her own soul, which the God of nature has so wisely implanted in the breast of all human-kind.

Those mother-like caresses of the little girl, as she plays with her doll, declare no more emphatically to our reason that she inherits maternal love, than do those acts of rational beings who idolize totums and mascots declare that they are spiritual beings connected in some way with a higher Intelligence, who created them and governs all, and to whom all are accountable in this life and in the life to come. Pokagon does not wish to be understood, because he has reasoned by way of analogy in proof of spirituality, that he wishes to encourage idol-worship, after the relation between God and man has been revealed to men. Nor can he understand how it is possible for true Christians to trust or confide in anything this side of eternity beyond the revealed God of Heaven, to satisfy their spiritual wants.