72 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
Whether these tribes at this time were organized in gentes and phra- 
tries is not known. At the time of the Wilkes expedition (1838-1842) the 
gentile organization did not exist among them; neither does it now exist ; 
but it is still found among the tribes of the Northwest Coast, and among 
the Indian tribes generally. The composition of the household, as here 
described, is precisely like the household of the Iroquois prior to A. D. 1700. 
The Mandan village contained at the time of Catlin’s visit (1832), as 
elsewhere stated, about fifty houses and about fifteen hundred people. 
“These cabins are so spacious,” Catlin remarks, ‘that they hold from 
twenty to forty persons—a family and all their connections. * * * 
From the great numbers of the inmates in these lodges they are necessarily 
very spacious, and the number of beds considerable. It is no uncommon 
thing to see these lodges fifty feet in diameter inside (which is an immense 
room), with a row of these curtained beds extending quite around their 
sides, being some ten or twelve of them, placed four or five feet apart, and 
the space between them occupied by a large post, fixed quite firmly in the 
ground, and six or seven feet high, with large wooden pegs or bolts in it, on 
which are hung or grouped, with a wild and startling taste, the arms and armor 
”1 The household, according to the cutsom of 
of the respective proprietors. 
the Indians, was a large one. The number of inhabitants divided among 
the number of houses would give an average of thirty persons to each house. 
It is evident from several statements of Catlin before given that the house- 
hold practiced communism in living, and that it was formed of related 
families, on the principle of gentile kin, as among the Iroquois. Elsewhere 
he intimates that the Mandans kept a public store or granary as a refuge 
for the whole community in a time of scarcity.” 
In like manner Carver, speaking generally of the usages and customs 
of the Dakota tribes and of the tribes of Wisconsin, remarks that ‘they 
will readily share with any of their own tribe the last part of their provis- 
ions, and even with those of a different nation, if they chance to come in 
when they are eating. Though they do not keep one common store, yet 
that community of goods which is so prevalent among them, and their gen- 
‘North American Indians, Philadelphia ed., 1357, i, 139. 
2Tb., i, 210. 
