WHOLE VOL. ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER I05 



opening of a meeting. Each had four Chilean coins, 20-centavo pieces. 

 Generally, 10 or more coins are used. One man shook his four coins 

 in the hollow of his joined hands, and asked his opponent, "Caro o 

 sello" (face or seal) ? (The face of Bernardo O'Higgins, the Chilean 

 hero, is on one side of the coin ; the words "veinte centavos" on the 

 other.) His opponent answered, "Caro," whereupon the man threw 

 the coins into the air. As soon as they landed on the ground, both 

 men pointed at the ones that had turned up caro, and the opponent 

 picked them up. He now shook his four coins. They did this alter- 

 nately for some time. Other men who in the meantime had arrived for 

 the meeting became nonparticipant observers. 



Two games of chance, according to Cooper's source, were the bean 

 game (llique, liiqn, liiq) played with 8 to 12 beans, each painted 

 black on one side, and kechu, played with 5-faced triangular dice of 

 wood or bone (1946, p. 940). 



TOYS, IMITATIVE PLAY, PETS 



Most Araucanian children had few toys, if any, in the early days; 

 only a few have them today. A child that is able to walk plays with 

 sticks and stones that lie around; sometimes with chicks and kittens. 

 Toddlers were seen making piles of little stones. "When I was a 

 little boy," said a 45-year-old man, "an older person carved a pair 

 of oxen and a httle oxcart out of wood for us to play with ; very few 

 children had any toys at all. I have eight children : none has had a 

 toy." In the yard of a ruka I observed a little boy and his two little 

 sisters playing with a miniature oxcart made by an older brother 

 (pi. 10, I). 



Dolls were not commonly part of the Araucanian child's life, and 

 only rarely does a little girl have one today. A 40-year-old woman had 

 had a rag doll when a little girl; her mother had made it "out of a 

 piece of cloth ; it had only a head ; the rest of the cloth hung down. 

 Some Mapuche girls today have the same kind of doll." A few school- 

 girls had a doll or had had one when small ; one had been cut out of 

 cardboard, two had been rag dolls, and four had been bought in a 

 store. One girl had molded clay into a figurine, "like a little doll" ; 

 her sister had molded a flower. "Mama had clay left after making 

 ollas." 



Schoolboys had made their own playthings. They molded marbles 

 of clay, wove balls of cochayuyo, and whittled tops out of wood. A 

 15-year-old boy made himself a bull roarer (runrun) of a pop-bottle 

 cap. He flattened the edge over the cork part by hammering it on a 



