Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/860

* MAN. 766 MAN. cvcr-welling source ^i action whence the less spontaneous activities tlow. Organized plays become games. The games of lower culture are by no means random out- growths, but are suggested and controlled by fixed regulations. Tlius, various Amerind tribes are devoted to foot-racing; yet tlie races arc not tests of swiftness so much as divinatory or in- vocatory acts designed to appeal to tutelaries, and are usually set bj' seasons for planting or harvesting or hunting. In the Papago tribe of Arizona and Sonora the racer drives a ball, which is caught on the foot and thrown forward, and thus kept in constant motion; actually the game affords a severe test of swiftness, endurance, and skill, yet it is regarded as a cerenioninl contest for the favor of tutelaries. In the Tarahuniari tribe of ilexico a similar game is played as an invocation for success in hunting, and in both tribes there arc corresponding races for females, which are run as a special invination for fertility. Dances also are ceremonial observances connected with invocation or thanksgiving: the perform- ers are in ceremonial costume: they wear anklets of strung deer-hoofs designed to simulate the clicking of the hoofs of an animal walking over rocks, carry rattles (of gourds partly filled with dry seeds) to imitate the soiuids made by reptiles or other creatures, and wear head-dresses of deer- horns or fox-scalps or eagle-feathers as symbols of and invocations to the Ancients of those ani- mals recognized as tutelaries. Primitive peoples arc more given to games of chance than of skill. Among the Iroquoian tribes a dice game is played with plum-stones in a wooden dish, and the gamesters sit for hours or days, staking and perhaps losing their possessions even to the gar- ments from llieir backs, and in olden times their wives. Similar games prevailed among the Cali- fornia tribes, and native tradition has it that of old mortal enmities were wiped out on tlie chance of a die. as when the loser stood up as a voluntary victim of the winner's war-club. Although mere games of chance, yet to both Eastern and West- ern tribesmen these were tests of the favor or power of deities, and the outcome was deemed the ultimatum of the fates. Among many primi- tive peoples an elaborate game was played with a ring or hoop (with the aperture sometimes re- duced by a net) used in connection with a staff or arrow; the pl.ay consisting in attempts to thrust or throw the staff or arrow through the ring as it rolled across the gaming plaza. Among Amerind tribes this game was originally divina- tory and of esoteric meaning connected with fer- tility; it passed into higher culture through de- velopment along several lines, one leading to the ring-and-spear game of the modern tournament, and another leaillng to racquet and its variants. A still more important type, both in aboriginal form and in modern development, is the arrow game investigated by Gushing and Tylor and more recently by Cvdin. Germs of the game found among Amerind tribes are ceremonial and sortilegic, as among the Pueblo peoples, where arrows were cast toward the four quarters as in- vocations to the powers, and in the Huichol tribe, of ilexico. Avhere arrows were discharged ceremonially in groups of two or four in the search for a sacred plant used as a stimulant. In the primal ceremony the pieces are finished products of the arrow-maker's skill, and the parts are marked with appropriate emblems (e.g. the point for mandible or beak, the shaft for neck or body, the feathering for wings, and the nock for feet, of an avian tutelary) ; in the developed game billets of wood may be substituted for ar- rows, but they bear the symbolic markings. This game is of much interest as the jjarent stock whence many modern games have sprimg. In Korea it is played with billets much broadened and llattened, though retaining the emblematic markings; in China and Japan the billets are of ivory or board, while the emblems are somewhat modified; in India and Arabia further ste|)s in development are shown; and in Europe the pieces are cards with esoteric emldems directly trace- able to the archaic arrow game. In primitive life gaming is involved with music and graphic art. The Australian natives tie a thin and slightly curved billet of wood to •the end of a cord attached to a handle as a whip to the stock, and by whirling it through the air produce a lugubrious wail; this is used cere- monially as an invocation, and efficiency is im- puted to it in proportion to the volume and weirdness of the sound; it appears to represent an avian tutelary, and to form the prototype of the boomerang. Certain Amerind tribes possess a related device, though its use in America seems decadent. Several California tribes use in their divinatory ceremonies a prototype of the drum, consisting merely of an upright log beaten rhythmically with a war-club or staff; when in- stalled for the purpose, a hollow log is chosen. Practically the beating is a signal for the tribes- men to gather, though putatively it gives notice to tutelaries that a ceremony in their honor is in ])rogress; and the rhythmic sound is conceived to represent mighty footfalls. The woodland tribes use a stick rattle (i.e. a notched stick of hard wood over which a smaller dry stick is drawn to produce a rasping sound) and the plains tribes a gourd-and-seed rattle in rude harmony with the drum, to symbolize the sound of the move- ments of the tutelary whose footfalls are marked by the drum-beats, and incidentally to deepen the nai'vc illusion of the auditors that the powers are present. The stick rattle played a leading role in the development of instrumental music; traced along one line it passed into the musical bow ( which in Jlcxico and elsewhere was combined with the gourd) and then through the enlarge- ment and hollowing of the wood into various Ori- ental types, and eventually into the violin. The gourd and deer-hoof rattles also underwent suc- cessive modifications in which the original form and emblemism were lost. Another early type of instrument is the horn or trumpet; its distribu- tion in the manifestly primal form and certain analogies indicate that it was first used in Eurasia to .symbolize the voices of kine while still they were regarded as tutelaries. Among certain coastwise tribes sea-shells (especially the conch) were similarly used. The substitu- tion of metal for the bovine horn began with the Bronze Age in the Old World, though the origi- nal type persists wherever horned cattle exist; while most of the variants were developed dur- ing the historical period. The flute arose in regions of bamboo or cane, and vestiges in Euro- pean and American lore and in Egyptian and (irecian mythology connect it with plant cults. There are some indications that the human voice may have antedated the mechanical device as a source of music. The primitive vocal renditions