2948 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
presented; but there is no excuse for continuing this misconception in the 
presence of known facts accessible to all. 
There is no doubt whatever that Montezuma was treated with great 
consideration by all classes of persons. Indians respect and venerate their 
chiefs. As their principal war-chief, Montezuma held the highest official 
position among them. He is represented as amiable, generous, and manly, 
although unnerved by the sudden appearance and the novel and deadly arms 
of the Spaniards. He had charge of the reception and entertainment of 
Cortes and his men, who requited him savagely for his hospitality and 
kindness. But when his home-life is considered, he fared no better than 
his fellow-householders, sharing with them their common dinner. These 
accounts, when divested of their misconceptions, render it probable that 
Montezuma was living with his gentle kinsmen in a house they owned in 
common; and that what the Spaniards saw was a dinner in common by this 
household, which, with the women and children, may have numbered from 
five hundred to a thousand persons. When the scattered members of the 
household had been summoned, the single daily meal was brought in by a 
number of persons from the common cook-house in earthen bowls and dishes, 
and set down upon the floor of an apartment used as a place for dinner in 
the fashion of Indians. Indians as they were, they doubtless took up these 
bowls one by one, each containing the dinner of one person divided at the 
kettle. They ate standing, or it may be sitting upon the floor, or upon the 
ground in the open court. Indians as they were, the men ate first and by 
themselves, and the women and children afterwards. After dinner was 
over, they were diverted, probably, with music and dancing, and made 
themselves merry, as well-fed Indians are apt todo. That the same dinner, 
conducted in a similar manner, occurred at all the houses in the pueblo, 
large and small, once a day, there can scarcely be a doubt 
The dinner of Montezuma which has gone into history, and been read 
for three centuries with wonder and admiration, is an excellent illustration 
of the slender material out of which American aboriginal history has been 
made. It shows, moreover, as a warning, what results flow from great mis- 
conceptions through the constructive faculty of authors. 
A confederacy of three Indian tribes, speaking dialects of the same 
