CHESS AND PLAYING CARDS. 



783 



precautions to be taken in defensive or offensive operations or preparations. Astlins 

 jilayed, there must be foui- participants. Each possesses his own canes. In the 

 uppermost room of the Pueblo (now fallen), there was formerly a shrine of the game. 

 Here during terrific sand storms or at night the players gathered to divine. To 

 the middle of the ceiling was suspended a jical or large round bowl-basket, over 

 which a deerskin was stretched like a drumhead. Immediately below this, spread 

 over a sacred diagram of prayer meal representing the terrace or cloud bed of the 

 Four Quarters, on the floor, was a Imiit'alo robe, pelt side up, head to the east, left side 

 to the north, etc. (fig. 104). Upon this pelt a broken circle was traced either in 

 ))lack lines or dots, and with or without grains of corn (forty for each line, the colors 

 corresponding to the (jnarters as above described), and the openings (canyons or 

 passngeways) occurring at the fonr i)oiiits opposite the four directions. (It should 

 be observed that a cross (+) was sometimes painted both on the center of the skin 

 on the basket drum and on the hidi; beneath, the upper symbolic of Ahaiyuta, and 

 the lower of M^itsailema, the Twin War Gods.) 



The fovir players chose their places according to the clan groups and directions 

 or quarters they represented : the player of the North between the eastern and 

 northern passageway; the player of the West between the northern and western 

 passageway, and so on. The players of the East and North represented war, and (in 

 other modes of the game) masculinity; those of the West and South, peace and 

 femininity. 



Fig. 111. 



MANNER OF HOLDING CANES IN TOSSING IN GAME OF ,SHO'-U-WE. 



Zuui Indians, New Mexico. 



From a drawing by Frank Hamilton Gushing. 



Before taking their places they muttered prayers, or rather rituals, clasping the 

 playing canes lengthwise between the x>alms, breathing deeply, and from the close 

 of the prayers, repeatedly upon them, rubbing and shuffling them vigorously, from 

 which comes the title of a skilled player or a gambler: shos-li, "cane rubber" or 

 "cane shufHer." As they took their seats, each ])laced under the edge of the buti'alo 

 hide in front of his place the pool, consisting of sacre.I white shell beads, or of little 

 tablets representative of various properties and thus forming a kind of currency, since 

 these little symbols were redeemable in the properties they represented or in commod- 

 ities of e(iual value by agreement. Each also laid down at his right side (m the edges 

 of the robe over the pool two kinds of counfers, usually a set of counting straws of 

 broom grass, about six or seven inches long, worn by much use, and varying in num- 

 ber according to the proposed game. From ten to forty or forty-two, or from one 

 hundred to one hundred and two (this latter divided at random into fonr Imndles), 

 was selected by each player. The additional counters were supplied by beans or 

 corn grains, each set, or the set of each player, being of his ajjpropriate color. Four 

 splints, the moving pieces of the game, were laid in their places by the left sides 

 of the passageways. 



