Page:String Figures and How to Make Them.djvu/280

Rh string, and straighten the index fingers. This movement puts a loop around the tip of each index (Fig. 547).

You now have three "storm clouds "—three triangles between the upper and lower strings—and two strings on each side running to the index.

Twelfth: By repeating the 'Sixth and Seventh movements, releasing the top loops on each index, and then repeating the Eighth movement, four "clouds" can be formed.

Thirteenth: By repeating the Ninth and Tenth movements, releasing the top loop on each index, and then repeating the eleventh movement, five "clouds" can be formed.

Fourteenth: By repeating the Twelth movement, six "clouds" can be formed.

Fifteenth: By repeating the Thirteenth movement, seven "clouds" can be formed.

I regard this figure as the most difficult of all, because of the complication, introduced at the outset, by the two thumbs picking up different strings and because of the subsequent difficulty of finding the proper strings to pick up owing to the tight twists which grow around the index fingers.

The Indian notion of "storm clouds" can be seen in the small drawing .placed at the beginning of the game; this is copied from a Moki pictograph of "clouds

with rain descending" (see Garrick Mallery, p. 238, Fig. 164). The same design occurs on the Navaho blankets of the present day.

I obtained this figure from Dr. Haddon, who has published a description of it (5, p. 220). He learned it in Chicago in 1901, from the old Navaho men who taught him the other Navaho figures. Hogan is the native name for a tent.

First: Hold the left hand with the fingers pointing upward and the palm slightly toward you. With the right hand arrange a part of the loop upon the left hand so that it crosses the backs of both index and middle fingers, and passes to the palmar side between the middle and ring finger, and between the index and thumb; let the rest of the loop hang down on the palm (Fig. 548. In this and some of the following drawings the hanging loop is represented as quite short, to save space).