500 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



while the luckless thrower of two gets for his reward two cuts with the 

 palm-stick on the soles of his feet. 



Yet another fifteen hundred miles or more up into the continent the 

 game is still to be traced. Among the hunting tribes known under the 

 common name of the North American Indians, there is a favorite sport 

 described by a score of writers under the name of " game of the bowl," 

 or "game of plum-stones." The lots used are a number of plum-stones 

 burned on one side to blacken them, or any similar double-convex pieces 

 of wood, horn, etc. They are either thrown by hand or shaken in a 

 bowl or dish, whence they can be neatly jerked up and let fall on the 

 blanket spread to play on. The counting depends upon how many 

 come up of either color, white or black, as is seen in the .precise rules 

 given by Mr. Morgan in his " League of the Iroquois." Where six 

 " peach-stones " were thrown, if all six came up, white or black, they 

 counted five, and five up, white or black, counted one, these high throws 

 also giving the player a new turn, but all lower throws counted nothing 

 and passed the lead. It is so curious to find the principle of lot-scoring, 

 which we have tracked all across from Egypt, cropping up so perfectly 

 among the Iroquois, that at the risk of being tedious it is worth while 

 to give in full the mode of counting in the game as played with eight 

 "deer-buttons." The following top line shows how many black or 

 white sides up, with their count below : 



Eight Seven Six Five Four Tliree Two One None 



20 42 000 24 20 



go on stop go on 



In these games there is no board to play on. The Iroquois use 

 beans as counters, the game being won by one player getting all the 

 beans, but perhaps the white men taught them how to do this. So 

 with the game which will occur to English readers who remember it in 

 " Hiawatha," where it is described at full length in prose-poetry as 

 " the game of bowl and counters, pugasaing with thirteen pieces." 

 This game is real enough ; indeed, the description of it is taken from 

 Schoolcraft's " Indian Tribes." But there seem to be no early men- 

 tions of this Algonquin game with its ducks and war-clubs and elabo- 

 rate counting, nor of the Dakota game with tortoises and war-eagle son 

 the plum-stones. Thus both may have been lately devised by Indians 

 under European teaching, as improvements on the original pugasaing 

 or "play," which was the simple game wnth black- and white-sided 

 plum-stones, or the like. This, no doubt, is old, for it is described by 

 the Jesuit missionaries in 1636 under the name of jeu de plat, as a 

 regular sport among the Hurons ; and as they clearly did not learn the 

 game from Europe, we are left to argue that it reached them from 

 Asia, very likely through Mexico. 



It remains to glance at what may be learned as to the history of the 

 North American Indians from the fact of their gambling with the bowl 



