Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/286

 274 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920

an active free-running game in the rocky canyons of the north- western tribes; even the bars and river benches are narrow, rough, and uneven. Here, accordingly, the game was played with a double ball of two string-tied blocks of wood, impossible to propel far by striking, and requiring to be picked up with the end of the stick and thrown. Manoeuvering thus took the place of speed, the players grappled like wrestlers, and a number of men could participate within a small area.

Elsewhere than in the northwest, the double ball game is essen- tially or wholly one for women, as over most of the continent. This is the case among the Shasta, Modoc, Achomawi, Washo, Maidu, and Miwok. Among the last three groups the "ball" has degenerated into merely the connecting string, though this is heavy and sometimes knotted at the ends.

Through most of the south, and along the coast as far north at least as Monterey, sticks or bats were dispensed with, and the game became essentially a foot-ball race. The contestants covered a long distance, each hurling, with his feet only, his little wooden ball. Speed and endurance were counted as even more valuable factors toward victory than skill in manipulation. Diegueno, Luiseno, Costanoan, and presumably the intervening groups competed in this way, which was familiar also to the Indians of Arizona. The Chumash, however, knew shinny; and in the interior the ball race had penetrated to the Maidu and Miwok. This latter people followed all the varieties of ball play: rackets for men and for women, shinny, double ball for women, and foot ball race.

Dice were everywhere preeminently if not entirely a woman's game. A set numbered four, six, or eight, each only two-sided; the count of the various combinations of pieces falling face up or face down, varied locally. The Yurok, Tolowa, Wiyot, and Hupa used four mussel-shell disks; the Porno, Wailaki, and Northern Yokuts, six split sticks; the Mohave, Diegueno, and Luiseno four painted boards; the Southern Yokuts, Chumash, and Chemehuevi, filled walnut shells. Among the Miwok, split acorns were employed, and among the Mono, acorn cups. The Modoc used either the Calif ornian sticks, or a northern type consisting of four beaver teeth. Some tribes played on a flat basket, others on a stone.

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