Niska's Ethical Dilemma

Elijah has grander and more dangerous dreams. Having been largely acculturated by a residential school upbringing before escaping into the forest to live with Xavier and Niska, he has acquired the dubious skills of public relations and boastfulness as much as the crafts of the hunter. His English, learned from the nuns, is impeccable, and he makes his mark among the men in the trenches as much by the flash of his storytelling as by his murderous midnight prowls in no man’s land.

Gradually Elijah becomes imprisoned by two great obsessions: a need for morphine, whose use is rampant up and down the lines, and an insatiable hunger for killing. Some French soldiers suggest that if he really wants to gain respect for all his kills, he should scalp his victims as evidence. He decides to do so, much to Xavier’s disgust.
Niska is part of the sad but admirable remnant of traditional natives who refused to enter the reserves in the 19th century, choosing instead to live by their wits and traditional teachings in the woods.

Subject to what modern medicine would call epileptic seizures, Niska is deemed by her tribe to have inherited her father’s skills as a shaman and a windigo-killer. Since windigos manifest themselves in humans who have practiced cannibalism, getting rid of them involves what white society would call murder, and indeed Niska’s father was executed as a murderer by the white courts. The constant crossing of the moral lines between the worldviews of native and white society is one of the many strengths of this fascinating