INDIAN GAMES. 179 



pole which was six feet in length. In the second form the 

 ring was four inches in diameter. The pole was a small 

 stick with hooks on it. The ring was to be picked up 

 with the stick, and the points now depended on the position 

 of the hook in which the ring stopped. 



H. M. Brackenridge 24 describes hoop and pole as played 

 at the Arikara village on "a level piece of ground appro- 

 priated for the purpose and beaten by frequent use. " He 

 also mentions the second form of the game which Pike 

 described. "Instead of poles they have short pieces of 

 wood, with barbs at one end and a cross piece at the 

 other, held in the middle with one hand ; but instead of 

 the hoop before mentioned, they throw a small ring, and 

 endeavor to put the point of the barb through it." 25 



The seventh volume of the Report upon United States 

 Geographical Surveys contains a paper on perforated 

 stones, by Mr. F. W. Putnam, Curator of the Peabody 

 Museum. A great many stones of this kind have been 

 found in southern California, on the mainland and islands. 

 Mr. Putnam shows that similar stones have been used else- 

 where as hammer-stones, weights for digging-sticks, club- 

 heads, net-sinkers and as spindle-whorls, and he infers the 

 probable use in that region, of the better class of these 

 perforated stones, as club-heads. Since the publication 

 of that paper he has secured and now has, at the Peabody 

 Museum, specimens of such club heads mounted on wooden 

 handles, which came from a cave in southern California. 



"Journal of a Voyage up the.river Missouri, etc., by^H. M. Brackenridge, Bal- 

 timore, 1816. pp. 158, 159. 



46 John T. Irving describes the principal game of the Pawnees as one in which 

 a barbed javelin was hurled at a ring four inches in diameter, while the ring was 

 in rapid motion along the surface of the ground. "The javelin is filled with barbs 

 nearly the whole length, so that when it has once passed partly through the ring it 

 cannot slip back. This is done to ascertain how far it went before it struck the 

 edges of the ring, and the farther the cast the more it counts in favor of the one 

 who hurled it." Indian Sketches, Philadelphia, 1835, Vol. II, p. 142, note. 



ESSEX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XVIII. 23 



