50 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN. ABORIGINES. 
leave them with a good impression on his mind; the sick and the poor 
because they have a right to be helped out of the common stock, for if the 
meat they have been served with was taken from the woods it was common 
to all before the hunter took it; if corn or vegetables, it had grown out of the 
common ground, yet not by the power of man, but by that of the Great 
Spirit.” 
This is a clear and definite statement of the principle of hospitality as 
it was observed by the Indian tribes at the epoch of their discovery, with 
the Indians’ reasons on which the obligations rested. We recognize in this 
law of hospitality a conspicuous virtue of mankind in barbarism. 
Lewis and Clarke refer to the usages of the tribes of the Missouri, 
which were precisely the same as those of the Iroquois. ‘It is the custom 
of all the nations on the Missouri,” they remark, ‘‘to offer every white man 
food and refreshments when he first enters their tents.”” This was simply 
applying their rules of hospitality among themselves to their white visitors. 
About 1837~88 George Catlin wintered at the Mandan Village, on 
the Upper Missouri. He was an accurate and intelligent observer, and his 
work on the ‘‘ Manners and Customs of the North American Indians” is a 
valuable contribution to American ethnography. The principal Mandan 
village, which then contained fifty houses and fifteen hundred people, was 
surrounded with a palisade. It was well situated for game, but they did 
not depend exclusively upon this source of subsistence. They cultivated 
*maize, squashes, pumpkins, and tobacco in garden beds, and gathered wild 
berries and a species of turnip on the praries. ‘‘ Buffalo meat, however,” 
says Mr. Catlin, ‘is the great staple and staff of life in this country, and 
seldom, if ever, fails to afford them an abundant means of subsistence. 
* * * During the summer and fall months they use the meat fresh, and 
cook it in a great variety of ways—by roasting, broiling, boiling, stewing, 
smoking, &c., and, by boiling the ribs and joints with the marrow in them, 
make a delicious soup, which is universally used and in vast quantities. 
The Mandans, I find, have no regular or stated times for their meals, but 
generally eat about twice in the twenty-four hours. The pot is always 
1 Heckewelder, Indian Nations, Philadelphia ed., 1876, p. 101. 
2 Travels, ete., London edition, 1814, p. 649. 
