The opportunity was too good to miss, even if my knowledge of American Indian culture has not progressed much since I read Little Plum in the Beano - and even that now removes the word "um" if it reprints old strips.
Gentle humour at the expense of foreigners is a sin I must confess, but I do think a feathered headdress would have suited the Grand Old Man.
You may have read that Lily Gladstone, the star of Killers of the Flower Moon (‘Goes On A Bit’ – High Leicestershire Radical), is the great, great granddaughter of a cousin of the Grand Old Man and grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation until she was 11.
For some reason, the historians rarely touch upon William Ewart Gladstone’s American Indian heritage, but I can reveal that Queen Victoria’s animus towards him was partly occasioned by his insistence on wearing a feathered headdress on state occasions and his habit of calling her “paleface” when she failed to agree with him. My own father told me that the occasional “heap big” cropped up in his conversation to the very end.
All I shall add it is that it’s a great shame that the disputants of the Irish Question did not agree to “smoke um pipe of peace” when he urged the idea upon them.
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