That Indians know how to be beautifully courteous to their guests, I have long experienced. I have eaten at banquets at Delmonico’s and the Waldorf-Astoria (New York), the Hotel Cecil (London), the Grand Hotel (Paris), and many and various hotels between the Touraine (Boston) and the Palace of San Francisco and the Hotel del Coronado. And I have seen more vulgarity and ill-breeding at these choice and elaborate banquets, more want of consideration, more selfishness, and more disgusting exhibitions of greediness and gluttony than I have seen in twenty-five years of close association with Indians.
I was once expected to eat at an Indian chief’s hawa, or house. The chief dish was corn, cut from the cob while in the milk, ground, and then made into a kind of soup or mush. A clean basketful was handed to me, with the intimation that I was to share it with two old Indians, one on my right, one on my left. I asked my hostess for a spoon, for I knew I had seen one somewhere on one of my visits. She hunted for the spoon, in the meantime sending to the creek for an esuwa of fresh, clean water. When it was brought, she carefully washed her hands and then gave the spoon seven scrubbings and washings and rinsings before she handed it to me. I felt safer in using it than I do many a time at a city restaurant when the “culled brother” brings me a spoon that he has wiped on the “towel” which performs the multifarious duties of wiping the soiled table, the supposedly clean dishes, the waiter’s sweaty hands, and—far oftener than people imagine—the waiter’s sweaty face.
During the time we were waiting for the spoon the old Indians by my side sat as patiently and stoically as if they were not hungry. When the spoon was handed to me, I marked a half circle on the mush in front of me, in the basket, then divided the remainder for them. Each waited until I had eaten several mouthfuls before he inserted his own fingers, which served as his spoon, and then we democratically ate together.
Now, to me the whole affair showed a kindly consideration for my feelings that is not always apparent in so-called well-bred strangers of my own race. I’ve had many a man light a cigar or a cigarette at a table at which I’ve been compelled to sit in a restaurant with never a “By your leave!” or “Is this agreeable?” From the Indian we imagine that we ought not to expect much of what we call “higher courtesy,” yet I find it constantly exercised; while from the civilized white race we expect much, and, alas! often are very much disappointed.
It is a singular thing that while I am writing these pages about the lessons we may learn from the Indian, the Bishop of London, speaking in Trinity Church, New York, in September, 1907, should enunciate ideas remarkably similar to those held by the Indians. The Indian owns nothing for himself: it belongs to all his tribe. What is this but the stewardship—in a rude and crude fashion perhaps, but nevertheless stewardship—as declared by the bishop, who says:
“The one sentence, which above all others I would say to you, a sentence as yet unlearned in London and New York, and which if adopted would cleanse the life on both sides of the Atlantic is—life is a stewardship, and not an ownership.
“Have you ever thought why there are any rich and poor at all? That is the question I had to face in London. They had asked me how I reconciled my belief in the good God loving all His children, with the wretched millions in East London, seemingly abandoned by both God and man. I had to face that question, and I have had to face it ever since. There is but one answer—the rich minority have what they have merely in trust for all the others. Stewardship, non-ownership, is God’s command to all of us.
“You are not your own. Nothing that you have is your own. We haven’t learned the Christian religion if we have not learned the lesson of stewardship.
“My home has been the home of the Bishop of London for 1,300 years. Suppose I should say that it was my own, and that the Bishop’s income of $50,000 a year was my own. I would be called a madman. The man who thinks he owns what he has in his keeping is no less a madman. This applies alike to the boy and his pocket money, and the millionaire and his millions. Disregard of this trust is the cause of all the social evils of London and New York.”
To resume my experiences with the Indians: