Indians don’t talk to fill time. When they don’t have anything to say, they don’t say it. When they don’t say it, they leave the impression of being a little ominous. In the presence of this Indian silence, whites sometimes get nervous and feel forced as a matter of politeness or kindness to fill the vacuum with a kind of small-talk which often says one thing and means another. But these well-mannered circumlocutions of aristocratic European speech are “forked-tongue” talk to the Indian and are infuriating. They violate his morality. He wants you to either speak from the heart or keep quiet.
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