Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/17

Rh mended the courtesy of our aborigines. The manners which the Europeans brought with them to this country were vastly different from the manners they found here, yet both must have had some elements in common. In the smiling faces of the dark hosts, in their prompt service, their free hospitality, and their generous gifts, the white guests at once recognized the essentials of good manners. I have spoken elsewhere ("Navaho Legends," p. 58) of the professional ethics of the shamans.

The Navaho myths do not tell us as much of the manners as they do of the morals of the people, yet they are not silent on the subject of manners, both good and bad. They indicate the deference due to age,—even among twins, the younger must defer to the elder,—the duties of hospitality, the modes of addressing a stranger and applying to him the appropriate terms of kinship, the forms of greeting; and they show us, too, with evident disapproval, the language and conduct of intentional slight and insult. Among some Indian tribes, it is said there is no word for thanks; but the Navahoes have one, and employ it on all occasions which we would consider appropriate. It appears, too, in the myths.

Perhaps some of their seemingly senseless rules of ethics might with profit be adopted by civilized people. I once told a young Benedict, a friend of mine, that in many Indian tribes it was not good manners for a man to meet, speak to, or even look at his mother-in-law, and that neither was it polite for her to recognize in any way her daughter's husband. "Ah," he said, with a sigh of deep feeling, "would that such rules of etiquette prevailed among ourselves." Washington Matthews.