There was doubtless some variation in different localities, and even in the same household; but as a general rule, from what is known of their mode of life, one prepared meal each day expresses very nearly all the people in this condition of society can do for the sustenance of mankind.
Although the sedentary Village Indians were one ethnical period in advance of the Northern Indians, there can be but little doubt that their mode of life in this respect was substantially the same. Among the Aztecs or ancient Mexicans a dinner was provided about midday, but we have no satisfactory account of a breakfast or a supper habitually and regularly prepared. Civilization, with its diversified industries, its multiplied products, and its monogamian family, affords a breakfast and supper in addition to a dinner. It is doubtful whether they are older than civilization; and even if they can be definitely traced backward into the older period of barbarism, there is little probability of their being found in the Middle period. Clavigero attempts to invest the Aztecs with a breakfast, but he was unable to find any evidence of a supper. "After a few hours of labor in the morning," he observes, "they took their breakfast, which was most commonly atolli, a gruel of maize, and their dinner after midday; but among all the historians we can find no mention of their supper." [Footnote: History of Mexico, ii, 262.]
The "gruel of maize" here mentioned as forming usually the Aztec breakfast suggests the "hominy of the Iroquois," which, like it, was not unlikely kept constantly prepared in every Mexican house as a lunch for the hungry. Two meals each day are mentioned by other Spanish authors, but as the Aztecs, as well as the tribes in Yucatan and Central America, were ignorant of the use of tables and chairs in eating their food, divided their food from the kettle, placing the dinner of each person usually in a separate bowl, and separated at their meals, the men eating first and by themselves, and the women and children afterwards, this similarity of usage renders it probable they were not far removed from the Iroquois in respect to the time and manner of taking their food. Montezuma's dinner, witnessed by Bernal-Diaz and others, and elaborately described by a number of authors, shows that the Aztecs had a smoking hot dinner each day, prepared regularly, and on a scale adequate to a large household; that the dinner of each person was placed in one bowl, and all these bowls to the number of several hundred were brought in and set down together upon the floor of one room, where they were taken up one by one by the male members of the household, 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 household 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 Montezuma's dinner a cook-house or kitchen is mentioned, in which the dinner for the large household of the "Tecpan" 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 Tecpan or official-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." [Footnote: History of America, New York ed., 1856, 178.]
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 traveled in the Indian country, I have never seen an Indian woman eating with her husband. Men form the first group at the banquet, and women and children and dogs all come together at the next." [Footnote: North American Indians, i, 202.] And Adair "for the men feast by themselves and the women eat the remains." [Footnote: History of the American Indians, p. 140.]
Herrera remarks that "the woman of Yucatan are rather larger than the Spanish and generally have good faces … but they would formerly be drunk at their festivals, though they did eat apart." [Footnote: History of America, iv, 175.] And Sahagun, speaking of the ceremony of baptism among the Aztecs, observes that "to the women, who ate apart, they did not give cacao to drink." [Footnote: Historia General, lib. iv, 36]
With these general references to the universality of the practice on the part of the men of eating first, and leaving the women and children to come afterwards, according to the manners of barbarism, we leave the subject.
[Relocated Footnote 1: Torquemada (Lib. II, cap. LXVIII, p. 194) "Estaba de ordinario, recogido en una grande Sala (el calpul)." (Lib. III, cap. XXVII, p. 305. Lib. IV, cap. XIX, p. 396) (que asi llaman las Salas grandes de Comunidad, o de Cabildo). We find, under the corrupted name of "galpon," the "calpulli" in Nicaragua among the Niquirans, which speak a dialect of the Mexican (Nahuatl) language. See E. G. Squier ("Nicaragua," Vol. II, p. 342). "The council-houses were called grepons, surrounded by broad corridors called galpons, beneath which the arms were kept, protected by a guard of young men". Mr. Squier evidently bases upon Oviedo ("Hist. general," Lib. XLII, cap. III, p. 52). "Esta casa de cabildo llaman galpon…." It is another evidence in favor of our statements, that the kinship formed the original unit of the tribe, and at the same time a hint that, as in New Mexico, originally, an entire kin inhabited a single large house. See Molina's Vocab. (p. 11).]
[Relocated Footnote 2: There is no evidence of any tribute or prestation due by the quarters to the tribe. The custom always remained, that the "calpulli" was sovereign within its limits. See Alonzo de Zunta ("Rapport sur les differentes classes de chefs de la Nouvelle-Espagne," pp. 51-65). Besides, Ixtlilxochitl says: ("Hist. des Chichim," cap. XXXV, p. 242), "Other fields were called Calpolalli or Altepetlalli." Now calpulalli (from "calpulli," quarter or kinship, and "tlalli," soil), means soil of the kin, and altepetalli ("altepetl," tribe), soil of the tribe. Clavigero even says that the lands called "altepetlalli," belonging to the communities "of the towns and villages, were divided into so many parts as there were quarters in the town, each quarter having its own, without the least connection with the other." (Lib. VII, cap. XIV.) This indicates plainly that the kinships held the soil, whereas the tribe occupied the territorial expanse. The domain, either as pertaining to a "lord," or to a "state", was unknown among the Indians in general. Even among the Peruvians, who were more advanced than the Mexicans in that respect, there was no domain of the tribe.]