ABORIGINAL AMERICAN BASKETRY. 359 



mostly rude imitations of trees and g-eometrical figures. Four squaws 

 sit around it to play, and a fifth keeps tally with fifteen sticks. There 

 are eight dice and they scoop them up with their hands and dash them 

 into the basket, counting one when two or five flat surfaces turn up. 

 (See Plates 115, 116.) 



The rapidity with which the game goes forward is wonderful, and 

 the players seem totally oblivious to all things in the world beside. 

 After each throw that a player makes she exclaims yd-nl (equivalent 

 to " one-y "), or vu-a-tak^ or Jco-mai-eh., which are simply a kind of sing- 

 song or chanting. One old squaw, with scarcely a tooth in her head, 

 one eye gone, her face all withered, but Avith a lower jaw as of iron, 

 and features denoting extraordinary strength of will — a reckless old 

 gambler, and evidently a teacher of the others — after each throw 

 would grab into the basket and jerk her hand across it, as if by the 

 motion of the air to turn the dice over before they settled, and ejacu- 

 late wiatnk. It was amusing to see the savage energy with which this 

 fierce old hag carried on the game. The others were modest and spoke 

 in low tones, but she seemed to be unaware of the existence of any- 

 body around her. ^^ 



The plates show two varieties of the Yokut gambling trays, the flat 

 and the dished. The former is in the National IVluseuui, collected b}^ 

 AV. H. Holmes; the latter is in the C. P. Wilcomb collection, collected 

 on the Tule River. 



IN TRAPPING 



One of the earliest and most primitive uses of basketiy textile was 

 in connection with the capture of animals. In a paper on traps pub- 

 lished by the Smithsonian Institution, * the word tnfj) is defined as 

 ""an invention for inducing animals to commit self-incarceration, self- 

 arrest or suicide.'" The basketry traps are used principally for pen- 

 ning or impounding animals and not for killing them. In every one of 

 the areas mentioned, coarse wickerwork or twined weaving are used in 

 this function and there is little doubt that many of the very finest pro- 

 cessses of weaving by hand were derived originally from coarse work 

 of this character. 



The Pomo Indians make a trap for catching fish from Jimcm^ eifasus. 

 The interesting feature about these objects is that they are a gross 

 production in brush of the rare Mohave carrying basket, in which the 

 weft is wrapped once about each warp element in passing. 



"Contributions to North American Ethnology, III, 1877, pj). .S77, 378. 

 6 Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1901, pp. 461-473. 



