The War-chief here reached for the pipe again for a minute, and then continued—
“My Friends,—I hope my talk does not offend you; we are children, and you will forgive us for our ignorance. The Great Spirit expects us to feed the poor; our wives and children at home are very poor; wicked white men kill so many of our hunters and warriors with fire-water, that they bring among us, and leave so many children among us for us to feed, when they go away, that it makes us very poor. Before they leave our country they destroy all the game also, and do not teach us to raise bread, and our nation is now in that way, and very poor; and we think that the way we can please the Great Spirit first, is to get our wives and children something to eat, and clothes to wear. It is for that we have come to this country, and still we are glad to hear your counsel, for it is good.”
The reverend gentlemen, and several ladies who had accompanied them, here bestowed some very beautiful Bibles and other useful presents upon the Indians; and thanking them for their patience, were about to take leave of them, when Mr. Melody begged their attention for a few moments while he read to them several letters just received from reverend gentlemen conducting a missionary school in this tribe, giving a flattering account of its progress, and presented them a vocabulary and grammar, already printed in the Ioway language, by a printing-press belonging to the missionary school in their country. This surprised them very much, and seemed to afford them great satisfaction.
The comments of the press, as well as the remarks of the public who had seen them, now being made upon the superior interest of this party, they were receiving daily calls from distinguished persons, and also numerous invitations to gentlemen’s houses, which daily increased their consequence, and, of course, their enjoyment. Amongst the first of these kind invitations was one from Mr. Disraeli, M.P., for the whole party to partake of a breakfast at his house, in Park Lane.
This was for the next morning after the interview just described; and, not knowing or even being able to imagine what they were to see, or what sort of rules or etiquette they were to be subjected to, they were under the most restless excitement to prepare everything for it, and the greatest anxiety for the hour to approach. They were all up at an unusually early hour, preparing every trinket and every article of dress, and spent at least an hour at their toilets in putting the paint upon their faces. The Doctor had been told that he would sit down at the table amongst many very splendid ladies; and this, or some other embarrassment, had caused him to be dissatisfied with the appearance of the paint which he had put upon his face, and which he was carefully examining with his little looking-glass. He decided that it would not do, and some bear’s grease and a piece of deer-skin soon removed it all. He spent another half hour with his different tints, carefully laying them on with the end of his forefinger; and, displeased again, they were all demolished as before. Alarm about time now vexed him, and caused him to plaster with a more rapid and consequently with a more “masterly touch.” The effect was fine! He was ready, and so were all the party, from head to foot. All their finest was on, and all were prepared for the move, when I came in at about eight o’clock to advise them of the hour at which we were to go, and which I had forgotten to mention to them the evening before. I then referred to the note of invitation, and informed them that the hour appointed was twelve o’clock. The whole party, who were at that time upon their feet around me, wrapped in their robes, their shields and quivers slung, and the choice tints upon their faces almost too carefully arranged to be exposed to the breath of the dilapidating wind, expressed a decided shock when the hour of twelve was mentioned. They smiled, and evidently thought it strange, and that some mistake had been made. Their conjectures were many and curious: some thought it was dinner that was meant, instead of breakfast; and others thought so late an hour was fixed that they might get their own breakfasts out of the way, and then give the Indians theirs by themselves. I answered, “No, my good fellows, it is just the reverse of this; you are all wrong—it is to breakfast that you are invited, and lest their family, and their friends whom they have invited to meet you, should not have the honour of sitting down and eating with you, they have fixed the hour at twelve o’clock, the time that the great and fashionable people take their breakfasts. You must have your breakfasts at home at the usual hour, and take your usual drive before you go; so you will have plenty of time for all, and be in good humour when you go there, where you will see many fine ladies and be made very happy.”
My remarks opened a new batch of difficulties to them that I had not apprehended, some of which were exceedingly embarrassing. To wait four hours, and to eat and to ride in the meantime, would be to derange the streaks of paint and also to soil many articles of dress which could not be put on excepting on very particular occasions. To take them off and put them on, and to go through the vexations of the toilet again, at eleven o’clock, was what several of the party could submit to, and others could not. As to the breakfast of huge beefsteaks and coffee which was just coming up, I had felt no apprehensions; but when it was on the table I learned that the old Doctor and Wash-ka-mon-ya and one or two others of the young men were adhering to a custom of their country, and which, in my rusticity (having been seven or eight years out of Indian life), I had at the moment lost sight of.
It is the habit in their country, when an Indian is invited to a feast, to go as hungry as he can, so as to be as fashionable as possible, by eating an enormous quantity, and for this purpose the invitations are generally extended some time beforehand, paying the valued compliment to the invited guest of allowing as much time as he can possibly require for starving himself and preparing his stomach by tonics taken in bitter decoctions of medicinal herbs. In this case the invitation had only been received the day before, and of course allowed them much less than the usual time to prepare to be fashionable. They had, however, received the information just in time for the Doctor and Wash-ka-mon-ya and the Roman-nose to avoid the annoyance of their dinners and suppers on that day, and they had now laid themselves aside in further preparation for the feast in which they were to be candidates for the mastery in emptying plates and handling the “knife and fork” (or “knife and fingers”), the custom of their country.
In this condition the Doctor particularly was a subject for the freshest amusement, or for the profoundest contemplation. With all his finery and his trinkets on, and his red and yellow paint—with his shield, and bow and quiver lying by his side, he was straightened upon his back, with his feet crossed, as he rested in a corner of the room upon his buffalo robe, which was spread upon the floor. His little looking glass, which was always suspended from his belt, he was holding in his hand, as he was still arranging his beautiful feathers, and contemplating the patches of red and yellow paint, and the tout ensemble of the pigments and copper colour with which he was to make a sensation where he was going to feast (as he had been told) with ladies, an occurrence not known in the annals of the Indian country. He had resolved, on hearing the hour was twelve, not to eat his breakfast (which he said might do for women and children), or to take his usual ride in the bus, that he might not injure his growing appetite, or disturb a line of paint or a feather, until the hour had arrived for the honours and the luxuries that awaited them.
I reasoned awhile with these three epicures of the land of “buffaloes’ tongues and beavers’ tails,” telling them that they were labouring under a misconception of the ideas of gentility as entertained in the civilized and fashionable world; that in London, the genteel people practised entirely the opposite mode from theirs; that light dinners and light breakfasts were all the fashion, and the less a lady or gentleman could be seen eating, the more sentimental he or she was considered, and consequently the more transcendently genteel: and that when they went to breakfast with their friends at 12, or to dine at 7 or 8, they were generally in the habit of promoting gentility by eating a little at home before they started.