704 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



counting- sticks consisting of forty-eight plain sticks and four larger 

 sticks. The latter comprise one stick with five serrations on one side 

 near one end, two, each with four serrations, and one resembling 

 feathered arrow shaftment with serrations on each side. The counting 

 sticks in this and the preceding game are in part of bamboo. 



It will be subsenuently shown that the greater part of the objects 

 used as dice, canes, blocks, bones and beaver teeth, in the games of this 

 series can be directly traced to cane arrows and the atlatl or throwing 

 stick. While such a connection can not be establisheil for the engraved 



Fig. 26. 



COUNTING STICKS FOR ALTES TAGEN. 



Length, about 8 inches. 

 Micmac Indians, New Brunswick. 



Cat. No. 20125, Museum Archeology, University of Pennsylvania. 



bone disks of the Micmac, the three arrows and atlail appear in the 

 counting slicks (fig. 2L). In some sets (as fig. 3i) the atlatl appears 

 replaced by a bow or serpent-like object. 



Narragansett. Rhode Island. 



Roger Williams, in his "Key into the Language of America," > 

 describes the games of the Narragansett as of two sorts — private and 

 public. "They have a kinde of dice which are Plumb stones painted, 

 which they cast in a Tray with a mighty noyse and sweating." He gives 

 the following words referring to this game: Wunnarigonhommm, "to 



1 London, 1643 ; Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, I, Providence, 

 1827; also, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, for the year 1794, III, 

 p. 321. Cited by Andrew McFarland Davis, Indian Games, Bulletin of the Essex 

 Institute, XVIII, p. 173, to wliom 1 am indebted lor the reference. 



