MORGAN.) THE LAW OF HOSPITALITY. 45 
IV. The practice of having but one prepared meal each day—a dinner. 
V. Their separation at meals, the men cating first and by themselves, and 
the women and children afterards. 
The discussion will be confined to the period of European discovery and 
to later periods while these practices remained. The object will be to 
show that these usages and customs existed among them when America 
was discovered in its several parts, and that they remained in practice for 
some time after these several periods. 
THE LAW OF HOSPITALITY. 
Among the Iroquois hospitality was an established usage. If a man 
entered an Indian house in any of their villages, whether a villager, a 
tribesman, or a stranger, it was the duty of the women therein to set food 
before him. An omission to do this would have been a discourtesy amount- 
ing to an affront. If hungry, he ate; if not hungry, courtesy required that 
he should taste the food and thank the giver. This would be repeated at 
every house he entered, and at whatever hour in the day. Asa custom it was 
upheld by a rigorous public sentiment. The same hospitality was extended 
to strangers from their own and from other tribes. Upon the advent of 
the European race among them it was also extended to them. This char- 
acteristic of barbarous society, wherein food was the principal concern of 
life, is a remarkable fact. The law of hospitality, as administered by the 
American aborigines, tended to the final equalization of subsistence. Hun- 
ger and destitution could not exist at one end of an Indian village or in 
one section of an encampment while plenty prevailed elsewhere in the 
same village or encampment. It reveals a plan of life among them at the 
period of European discovery which has not been sufficiently considered. 
A singular illustration of the powerful influence of the custom upon 
the Indian mind came to my notice some years ago at the Seneca Reserva- 
tion in New York. A Seneca chief, well to do in the world, with farm 
lands and domestic animals which afforded him a comfortable subsistence, 
had lost his wife by death, and his daughter, educated in the usages of 
