INDIAN GAMES. 115 



can be. The victory belonged to the side which counted 

 amongst its numbers those players who were the fleetest 

 runners, the most skilful throwers and the most adroit dodg- 

 ers. The second was purely a game of chance. If hon- 

 estly played no other element entered into its composition. 

 The third which we are now about to consider was much 

 more complicated in its rules than either of the others. It 

 closely resembled in some respects several of our modern 

 gambling games. The French found it very difficult to 

 comprehend and hence the accounts of it which they have 

 given are often confused and perplexing. Boucher 67 says, 

 "Our French people have not yet been able to learn to 

 play it well ; it is full of spirit and these straws are to 

 the Indians what cards are to us." Lafitau 68 after quoting 

 from Boucher says, "Baron de la Hontan also made out of 

 it a game purely of the mind and of calculation, in which 

 he who best knows how to add and subtract, to multiply 

 and divide with these straws will surely win. To do this, 

 use and practice are necessary, for these savages are noth- 

 ing less than good calculators." 



" Sieur Perrot, who was a celebrated traveller, and that 

 European whom the savages of New France have most 

 honored, left a description of this game in his manuscript 

 Memorial. I would gladly have inserted it here but it is 

 so obscure that it is nearly unintelligible." Charlevoix ad- 

 mits that he could understand nothing of the game, ex- 

 cept as played by two persons in its simplest form and 

 adds that he was told that " there was as much of art as 

 of chance in the game and that the Indians are great cheats 

 at it." 69 



7 p. 57. Vol. II, p. 351. 



9 Charlevoix, Vol. in, p. 319; Father Tailhan who edited Perrot Bays he has 

 not been any more successful than his predecessors and the game of straws re- 

 mains to him an unsolved enigma. Perrot, Notes to Ch. x, p. 188. 



