Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/28

Rh function to perform which differs from the functions of all the others. This law of the organization of sports is universal.

We now reach the fourth group of activital pleasures; these are games played in rivalry of skill and chance. Games have their root in sorcery as it is practiced by wildwood man. It seems at first that arrows or arrowheads are the pieces played—the pawns, knights, castles, kings, and queens of the game, or the cards upon which the actors are painted. In the wide geographical realm of tribal man many of these games are discovered; but they have common elements, that is, they are founded on universal concepts, and everywhere in this stage of society they are rooted in divination or the universal longing of mankind to know the causes of things and how effects may be controlled. In savagery men play for effects and control the causes, as they suppose, by necromantic figures which they carve or paint upon the pieces of the game; thus they try to win by sorcery. In later stages of culture the sorcery to a greater or less extent is abandoned, and skill is recognized as the true cause; but there yet remains an element of chance. With primal man chance and sorcery are the elements of all games, while with civilized man chance and skill are its elements.

There is a secondary though potent motive in games which inheres in the desire to take advantage for individual profit. For this reason gaming is universal among tribal men as gambling, and it is common among civilized men.

I have witnessed these games of sorcery among the aboriginal tribes of North America and have seen groups of men or women wager their ornaments and all their personal goods, even to their articles of clothing until their bodies were nude. As the game proceeds the villagers gather about and comment on the incidents of the game and recommend a variety of necromantic feats which they suppose will bring luck to their friends. Sometimes