INDIAN GAMES. 175 



and white beans, one of which had small spots and was 

 called the king. The beans, he says, "are put into a shal- 

 low, wooden bowl, and shaken alternately by each party, 

 who sit on the ground opposite to one another ; whoever 

 is dexterous enough to make the spotted bean jump out of 

 the bowl, receives of the adverse party as many beans as 

 there are spots. The beans do not count for any thing." 



J. G. Kohl 13 describes a form of plutter or dice, which 

 he encountered in his travels about Lake Superior, in which 

 figures resembling chess-men were used. These were 

 carved neatly out of bone, wood or plum-stones, and rep- 

 resented different objects, such as a fish, a hand, a door, a 

 man, a canoe, a half-moon, etc. The figured pieces could 

 stand upright. Associated with them were the ordinary 

 plum-stones, plain one side and red the other. The figures 

 and plum-stones were placed in a bowl which was then 

 twirled, the bowl itself having first been placed in a hole 

 in the ground prepared for the purpose. The position of 

 the figures and the sides exposed by the dice after the 

 twirl determined the count. 



Among the Sioux the game of dice was made use of to 

 effect a distribution of the property of deceased Indians. 

 Some person was selected to represent the ghost, and 

 the srames were conducted in the lodge of the deceased. 



O O 



The stakes apparently were only put up by the ghost. The 

 players participated in the game with the ghost, one at a 

 time. If they won, they took their winnings. If they 

 lost, they went away. This curious custom is fully de- 

 scribed in a paper on the Mortuary Customs of the North 

 American Indians by H. C. Yarrow. 1 * The author treats 

 of games as "an adjunct part of funeral rites, which con- 



18 Kitchi-Gami, Wanderings Round Lake Superior, by J. G. Kohl. London, 

 1800, p. 82. 



14 First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian, 1881, p. 195. 



