Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/285

 KROEBER] GAMES OF THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS 273

the other tribes of the south, the Salinan and Costanoan groups, the Maidu; the Pomo, the Shasta, and the Modoc, followed substan- tially the same game. Among the Yokuts, Mono, and Miwok of the Sierra Nevada, youths and boys played a simpler and typically Californian variety. A small block was thrown or slid, and then poles darted after it.

The ring and pin or hand variety of the same game, in which several rings or loops are strung to the butt end of a peg on which they are to be caught, is widespread in California, but varies characteristically according to habits of life and, ultimately, environment. The salmon-fishing tribes of the northwest, as far south as the middle course of Eel river, including the Tolowa, Yurok, Hupa, Chimariko, Shasta, and Sinkyone, employed salmon vertebrae as "rings." On the headwaters of Eel river, where the streams run smaller and hunting largely replaces fishing, the Wailaki used deer bones. In the south, the Luiseno favored acorn cups ; while the agricultural Mohave made their rings of pumpkin rind. The Klamath and Modoc employed a single-looped ball, made of the same tule rush that is the material of most of their industries. The Maidu and Yokuts did without this game, so far as known.

Of the many possible varieties of ball games, each group usually specialized on one. The Pomo played a kind of lacrosse, with a rude, small net. Still simpler rackets are found among the Southern Maidu. With the Miwok and Yokuts the net has degenerated into a mere loop at the end of a stick, serving to pick up or pocket the ball rather than bat it. Among both these groups this rudimentary form of the racket is perhaps due to the shinny stick being the standard form of ball-propelling implement. The Miwok women, but not the men, also batted a soft hair-stuffed ball with baskets resembling the utilitarian seed-beater.

The Mohave knew nothing of lacrosse, but clung to simple shinny, played with a small block or ball and plain curved sticks. With these they played as our boys play shinny or hockey on the ice.

It would have been difficult to find many suitable fields for such

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