With us the unit of our social organisation is the family: father, mother, children. With the Amerind the unit was generally the clan (or gens) as we call it, a group of several families related on the mother's side, for descent was usually counted in the female line. The Omahas and some others had changed to descent in the male line. The clan held property in common exactly as one of our families does to-day; that is not all property, but general property and food. There were articles and objects which were exclusively individual property and did not belong to the clan any more than certain articles a daughter or a son may individually possess belong to the parents in one of our families. Hunting, farming, and such affairs were conducted, as a rule, for the clan, hence food was clan property free to all members, or for that matter to almost any one, because in the Amerind village, or camp, every house was open to the hungry guest. The white man was always fed as well as the supplies would permit; special stews of dog, or buffalo, or succotash, were prepared for his special delectation, and he was expected to eat all given him or take it away. To these people, therefore, it was a rather painful surprise when, as they began to unravel the peculiarities of their new acquaintances, they found that the white man was perfectly willing to accept the boundless hospitality of the native, but when the latter visited fort or camp, he was received as a beggar. When the hospitality he expected was not granted, he asked for it; and this, to a white man, was begging. In dealing with Amerinds the white man went on the principle of what is yours is mine and what is mine is my own. Perhaps there were two exceptions to this, the early French, and the great Hudson Bay Company. Marriage within the clan was forbidden, therefore a man had to seek a wife in another clan or another tribe. A violation of this rule, or of any other moral precept of their code, brought punishment from the clan of the individual or from the officers of the tribe. Sometimes this was nothing more than a flogging; sometimes it was death. A man always retained allegiance to his own clan and the wife to hers, the children belonging to their mother's clan. As a rule there was no limit to the number of wives a man could have, though polygamy was not general. In the Amerind code the _bona fide_ acceptance of a wife was a marriage, and the husband was expected to assume the duties of a husband seriously. The white adventurer did not do it. He was quite apt to abandon his wife as cheerfully as he had taken her. [Illustration: A Dakota of the Plains. Figures from Photograph by U. S. Government.] [Illustration: A Uinta Ute. Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.]