746 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



Fig. 09. 



GAME COUNTEliS. RADIAL BONES OF BIRD. 



Lengtl). about ? inche.s. 

 Snohomish (?) Indiiins, Tulalip Agency, Washington. 



C.it. No. Ki(»!l(l, U.S.N. M. 



about 3 inches in length (tig. Gt>), used as counters. Collected by 

 Mr. E. 0. Cheiouse. Designated by the collector as a woman's game. 



Lku'iNGEN (Songish). Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 



_ Dr. Franz Boas' 



gives the following 

 account: 



Smtiale', a game of 

 dice, i.s played witli 

 four beaver teeth, two 

 being marked on one 

 of their tiat sides with 

 two rows of small cir- 

 cles. They are called 

 "women" {std'vaC-smc- 

 tali'). The two others 

 are marked on one of 

 the flat sides with 

 cross lines. They are 

 called "men" {.siiwe' 

 k-'a smftalC'). One of 

 them is tied with a 



small string in the middle. It is called iHJc-' aA*" ("' sen. The game is played by two 



persons. According to the value of tiie stakes, thirty or forty sticks are placed 



between the players. One begins to throw; When all the marked laces are either 



up or down he wins two sticks. 



If the faces of the two "men" 



are up, of the two "women" 



down, or rice veraa, he wins one 



stick. When the face of the iHk-' 



ak-" e' sen is up, all others down, 



or iiee versa, he wins four sticks. 



Whoever wins a stick goes on 



playing. When one of the play- 

 ers has obtained all the sticks 



he wins the game. 



NiSQUALLi. Washington. 

 Mr. George Gibbs'^ states : 



The women have a game be- 

 longing properly to themselves. 

 It is played with four beaver 

 teeth, me'h-ta-Ja, having particu- 

 lar marks on each side. They 

 are thrown as dice, success de- 

 pending on the arrangement in 



Fig. 70. 



SET OF BE AVER TEETH DICE. 



Length, li inclie.s. 

 Thompson River Indiana, interior of Britisli Columbia. 



Cat. No. j'g^ij, American Museum of Natural Hi'tory. 



which they fall. 



In his Dictionary of the Xisqualli, the name of the game is given as 

 nietala, s'tne-tala; the highest or four point of the dice, lils. 



' Second General Report on the Indians of British Columbia, Report of the Sixtieth 

 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Leeds, 1890, 

 London, 1891, p. 571. 



-Contributions to North American Ethnology, I, p. 206. 



