ETHNOLOGICAL MATERIAL jgj 



EcagOO. There are two of these in the collection, both 

 obtained of Dog Ribs at Rae. I saw the same apparatus in use 

 among the Stoney Indians of Morley, and among the Slaveys 1 

 at Providence. No. 10,844 consists of three small pieces of 

 bone rudely fashioned in hollow cones through which passes 

 a slender thread of twisted sinew. Each cone is 1.5 inches long 

 and 0.8 inch in diameter at the larger end. They are hollowed 

 at the base so that they fit into each other. The thread is six 

 inches in length and is attached to a strip of caribouskin at one 

 end. This leather is 4.5 inches long and has nine slits reaching 

 within half an inch of the ends and in which the point may catch 

 in throwing. The needle is of bone 2 inches long and 0.1 inch 

 in diameter. It is attached to the end of the thread which is 

 towards the base of the cones. In using the ecagoo the thumb 

 and forefinger grasp the end of the needle where it is enlarged 

 by the sinew seizing, and the whole is swung outward and up- 

 ward. The thread is just long enough to admit the point of 

 the needle into the base of the first cone, when they are crowded 

 into each other. The object to be attained is to pass the needle 

 through the center of the cones or a slit in the leather at the 

 top as the ecagoo falls. In gambling, a score is kept of the 

 points made. Johnnie Cohoyla, from whom I obtained this, 

 in the use of which he was an adept, said that the catching the 

 point in the slits scored one, on the first cone, five, in first and 

 second, ten, in all three, fifteen, and in second and third, twenty. 

 I saw it used in his camp as a gambling device, but elsewhere 

 merely as a child's toy. 



No. 10,847, differs from this only in having a wooden needle. 



Snow-Shoe Needle. These are made of bone or wood and are 

 used in lacing snow-shoes. A specimen in the collection from 



1 The Montagnais of Labrador have a similar apparatus which Hind de- 

 scribes as made of wood and resembling the nah-ba-wah-gun-nuk of the Ojib- 

 ways, which is constructed in the following manner : "The bones are made 

 from the hoof of the deer or caribou, and made to fit one within the other to 

 the number of 12, the one nearest the hand when the instrument is held for 

 play being the largest. The players agree upon the stakes which are 

 placed before them in the lodge, and one of them takes the bones and be- 

 gins to play. His object is to catch as many as he can on the needle or 

 skewer in a certain number of trials. The last bone, if caught singly in 

 one of the holes drilled through it, counts highest; if the tail is caught it 

 also counts next to the last bone." The Labrador Peninsula, Vol. I, p. 277. 



