Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/284

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��GAMES OF THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS BY A. L. KROEBER

HE endless games of the North American Indians have been reduced by Stewart Culin to a few fundamental types:

f Outdoor Hoop and pole

[With a dart {

Games of Dexterity I [ Hand Ring and pin

[ With a ball Shinny, lacrosse, etc.

f Pure chance Dice Games of Chance I

[ Guessing Hand or stick

Among amateurs, the guessing games come out entirely ac- cording to luck ; among skillful players they depend on concealment and reading of facial and bodily expression, and are therefore in reality games of mental ability, or rather of will and character.

As a rule, all of these games were known to all the California Indians, and in many cases each game existed in only one form or variety in the same locality. The exceptions are so few that it would not be a very great distortion of the truth to say that every group played only five and substantially the same five games.

The hoop and dart game was perhaps the only one which was entirely unknown in some districts. The Yurok and Hupa did not possess it, and it seems to have been lacking also through the remainder of the northwestern part of the state. It is an interesting circumstance, illustrating again that the northwestern corner of California is ethnographically the last frontier of the North Pacific coast, that this hoop-and-pole game, favorite over a large portion of the continent, also holds but small part in the amusements of most of the coast tribes from Oregon to Alaska.

The dignity of this game is upheld at the opposite end of the state, where the Mohave deem it the means of gambling best be- fitting a man. They play it with a small string-wound hoop, and long poles that are slid so as to fall, if possible, on or under the rolling hoop when this finally comes to rest. The Luiseno and Diegueiio,

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