In their hours for eating, the Sioux accommodate themselves to circumstances.

If food be plenty, they eat three or four times a day; if scarce, they eat but once.

Sometimes they go without food for several days, and often they are obliged to live for weeks on the bark of trees, skins, or anything that will save them from dying of famine.
When game and corn are plenty, the kettle is always boiling, and they are invariably hospitable and generous, always offering to a visitor such as they have it in their power to give.
The stars were still keeping watch, when Harpstenah was called by her mother to assist her.

The father's morning meal was prepared early, for he was going out to hunt.

Wild duck, pigeons, and snipe, could be had in abundance; the timid grouse, too, could be roused up on the prairies.
Larger game was there, too, for the deer flew swiftly past, and had even stopped to drink on the opposite shore of the "Spirit Lake." When they assembled to eat, the old man lifted up his hands--"May the Great Spirit have mercy upon us, and give me good luck in hunting." Meat and boiled corn were eaten from wooden bowls, and the father went his way, leaving his wife and daughter to attend to their domestic cares.
Harpstenah was cutting wood near the lodge, when Cloudy Sky presented himself.