170 INDIAN GAMES. 



gan to attack the winners with their kohoes, 1 the spectators, 

 sympathizing with the winners, fired rifles at the losers. 



Gambling was one of the features of the contest, just 

 as with the games you describe, and the participants and 

 lookers-on often wagered every stitch of clothing they had 

 on. So far as costume for the game is concerned, I could 

 not learn that any special preparation was made." 



In the description of lacrosse as played on the Pacific 

 coast, which was quoted in the former article, the bat was 

 described as " constructed of a long, slender stick, bent 

 double and bound together, leaving a circular hoop at the 

 extremity, across which is woven a coarse meshvvork of 

 strings." In the game of koho, it will be noticed that 

 this form of bat is changed, and the consequent modifica- 

 tions of the game, from inability to strike sharply with 

 the cross, do not appear. We have a game which closely 

 approximates lacrosse as described in early times in the 

 east. The koho stick resembles the "curved wooden 

 head" of which Morgan gives an account, but which, so 

 far as my observations go, is mentioned by no other 

 writer. The method of opening the game seems to be 



1 The mention of this word in the English plural naturally brings to mind the 

 fact that the town of Cohoes in New York bears an Indian name, apparently pro- 

 nounced like the name given the bats in the Oregon game. Morgan, in his ''League 

 of the Iroquois," p. 474, gives the Mohawk name for Cohoes as Ga-ha-oose, and de- 

 fines its meaning to be ''shipwrecked canoe." In "A General History of Connecti- 

 cut," etc., by a gentleman of the province, London, 1731, reprinted with supplement, 

 New Haven, 1829, the author (said to be Rev. Samuel Peters) says, p. 110, '-In the 

 Connecticut river there are three great bondings, called Cohosses, about 100 miles 

 asunder." This is evidently the same word applied through its descriptive force, 

 to places dangerous for navigation on each of the rivers. A coincidence of the 

 use of the same word in dialects used by tribes so widely separated as those liv- 

 ing in the valleys of the Mohawk and Connecticut, and those living in the valley of 

 the Columbia, is not impossible but is not probable. 



In a dictionary of the Niskwalli, by George Gibbs, Contributions to North Amer- 

 ican Ethnology, Vol. I, p. 293, "ka-hos, ka-ho sin, a club," is given. Dr. TruiaUull, 

 whom I consulted, culled my attention to the word '-ko-ko, to knock," given in 

 Gibbs' dictionary of Chinook Jargon. See Dr. Shea's Library of American Lin- 

 guistics, No. XII. 



