102 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
where they were taken up one by one by the male members of the house- 
hold, and the contents eaten sitting down upon the floor or standing in the 
open court, as best suited them. The breakfast that preceded it, and the 
supper that follows, are not mentioned, from which we infer that there was 
neither a breakfast nor a supper for these inquisitive observers to see. 
Neither is the subsequent dinner of the women and children of the house- 
hold mentioned, from which it may be inferred that as the men ate their 
dinner first in a particular hall by themselves, the women and children took 
their dinner later in another hall, not seen by the Spaniards. 
In the accounts of Montézuma’s dinner a cook-house or kitchen is men- 
tioned, in which the dinner tor the large household of the ‘“'Teepan” or 
‘official house,” so fully explained above by Mr. Bandelier, was prepared. 
This kitchen, and the use of another room, where the bowls containing the 
dinner of each person separately were set down on the floor in a mass by 
themselves—an incipient dining-room—make their first appearance in the 
Middle Status of barbarism. But, as will be noticed, they are but rude 
realizations of the kitchen and dining-room of civilized man. The pueblo 
houses in Yucatan and Chiapas, now in ruins, are without chimneys, from 
which it may be inferred that no cooking was done within them. At Uxmal 
we recognize in the Governor's House the Teepan or ofticial-house, and in 
the House of the Nuns, and other structures which formed the pueblo, the 
joint-tenement houses’ in which the body of the tribe resided. If the truth 
of the matter is ever ascertained, it will probably be found that the dinner 
for each household group, consisting of several families, was prepared in a 
common cook-house outside of the main structure, and that it was divided 
at the kettle to the individuals of each household. 
The separation of the sexes at their meals has been sufficiently referred 
to among the Iroquois. Robertson states the usage as general: ‘‘ They 
must approach their lords with reverence; they must regard them as more 
exalted beings, and are not permitted to eat in their presence”! Catlin 
the same: ‘These women, however, although graceful and civil, and ever 
so beautiful, or ever so hungry, are not allowed to sit in the same group 
with the men while at their meals. So far as I have yet travelled in the 
1 History of America, New York ed., 1856, 178. 
