INDIAN GAMES. 103 



who participated in the strife were stimuUited by local 

 pride. The reputation of their tribe or their village 

 rested upon the result. Ardent as the spirit of the contest 

 must necessarily have been under such circumstances, 

 among a people where courage and physique counted for 

 so much, their intense passion for gambling intervened to 

 fan into fiercer flames the spirits ot the contesting players 

 and to inspire them to more earnest etlorts. Stakes, often 

 of the utmost consequence to the players and their back- 

 ers, were wagered upon the games. A reputation for 

 courage, for skill and for endurance, was the most valua- 

 ble possession ot the Indian. The maintenance of this 

 was to a certain extent involved in each game that he 

 played. Oftentimes in addition to this, all of his own pos- 

 sessions and the property of his friends and neighbors in 

 the form of skins and beads were staked upon the result 

 of the contest. In games where so much was involved,. 

 we need not be surprised to learn from Perrot that limbs 

 were occasionally broken and that sometimes players were 

 even killed. In the notes to Perrot's Memoir it is stated 

 that some anonymous annotator has written across the 

 n)argin of Perrot's manuscript at this point :^ " False, nei- 

 ther arms nor legs are broken, nor are players ever killed." 

 AVc scarcely need the corroboratory statements of La Po- 

 therie"^ that " these games are ordinarily followed by bro- 

 ken heads, arms and legs, and often people are killed at 

 them ;" and also of Lallontan,*^ that "they tear their skins 

 and break their legs" at them, to satisfy us that Perrot 

 rather than his critic is to be believed. If no such state- 

 ments had been made, we should infer that so violent a 

 game, on which stakes of such vital importance were placed, 

 could not be played by a people like the Indians, except 

 with such results. 



>o Perrot, Note I, Ch. X, p. 187. »» Vol. ii, pp. 12U-127. "Vol. u, p. ns. 



