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During my lifetime I witnessed the sharp transition between two different worlds.
My family had been farmers for hundreds of years. By the time my brothers and sisters
were born, the world had changed so completely that family farms were no longer an
option. Now, I carry around pictures in my mind of a world that no longer exists. I still
remember what it means to "slop the hogs," but I'd have to explain that to most people I
know.
The last person in my family who fully lived the farming lifestyle was my
grandmother. She sewed clothing by hand and planted the garden each year, but she
didn't slop the hogs. That was a man's work. What she did do was make the best
biscuits that I've ever tasted. One of things that I've tried to hold onto in my life is the
ability to cook the simple kinds of foods that my family ate. I've never been able to
duplicate her recipe for biscuits. I think it was the lard that did the trick.
Some time ago there was another person who handed out hot bread--hot bread
from heaven. His name was Johnny Chapman, but everyone called him Johnny
Appleseed. Most people know him because he planted trees. We know him because
the hot bread he handed out through Ohio and Indiana was the writings of
Swedenborg. Johnny Appleseed is special to me because he was one of the few
people in American history who treated the Indians with respect.
One thing you have to know is that the Indians saw Johnny as one of their own.
We know this because he travelled among them without fear, and he visited them often.
The Seneca and Munsee saw Johnny as a holy man.
The Indians believed, and still believe, that everyone has the ability to be holy,
but not everyone can. Indians have actual standards by which they know that a person
is holy. First of all, holy people are people who have a closer sense of the spirit world
than others. Did Johnny wear plain clothes because he was a tramp? Or was it because he saw the ultimate lack of worth of material things?
The second reason that the Indians saw Johnny as a holy man was that he had
a proper sense of humililty. Indians call all the things in nature their "relatives,"
because they know that without animals and trees and birds, they can't exist. There
are many stories about Johnny, and they all talk about how he didn't have an
exaggerated sense of his own importance.
The third reason Johnny was considered a holy man is that he had a respect for
life. Johnny's respect for life extended to the proverbial "beasts of the field."
Johnny Chapman was ahead of his time, and other Christian churches are only
now beginning to discover his wisdom. He may have been the first cross-cultural
missionary in America, and he was certainly the best. Let me tell you how he did it.
While Johnny was feeding the frontier people with hot bread from heaven, he ate from
the supper of the Indians. This was no little thing. Sharing food is a religious act for
Indians. Even today, one of the gravest insults you can give an Indian is to refuse to
eat with him. But he allowed the Indians he met to share not just their food, but their
world with him. He did not see the Devil behind every Indian face. He listened to their
sacred stories and respected their cultures.
Although non-Indians could do that, it wouldn't take as much to show respect for the Indians. People could just say "thank you" to the Indians. Did you have coffee this morning? You can thank the Indians. Do you
like to eat popcorn when you go to the movies? The Indians gave you that. I doubt if
anyone here likes french fries more than I do, or for that matter, any potatoes. Russet
potatoes used to have the nickname "Irish potatoes." Just remember the next time you
have tater tots that Indians were eating potatoes in North America long before the Irish
or any other Europeans knew about them. Perhaps all this is just giving you a
headache, and you want to take an aspirin. Just remember to thank the Indians when
you do it. Aspirin is a derivative of red willow bark, and we Indians still use it in tea for
headaches. A European scientist got the credit for it, but it came from the Indians. If
it weren't for us Indians, you wouldn't have any junk food at all. In fact, most of the
foods that are now considered staple foods came from North and South America. In
this century, a Southwestern Indian variant of corn was successfully introduced into
Africa to reduce famine there. Oh, and by the way, that chocolate that you love so
much? Well, you get the idea.
What was Johnny's secret? How was he respectful to the Indians? You'll notice that unlike other missionaries,
Johnny wasn't trying to make the Indians into white people. He didn't distribute the
writings of Swedenborg to Indians as he did the settlers (and if you're wondering,
many Indians that Johnny knew did know to read). Johnny did a revolutionary thing, one that hardly ever
happens to Indians, either then or now. He listened.