1008 THE GHOST-DANCE RELIGION [etii.ann.14 



is a very simple game, the contestants merely throwing or sliding the 

 sticks along the ground to see who can send them farthest. Two per- 

 sons or two parties play against each other, boys sometimes playing 

 against girls or men against women. It is, however, more especially a 

 girl's game. The game sticks (batiqta'wa) arc slender willow rods about 

 4 feet long, peeled and painted and tipped with a point of buffalo horn 

 to enable them to slide more easily along the ground. In throwing, the 

 player holds the stick at the upper end with the thumb and fingers, 

 and, swinging it like a pendulum, throws itout with a sweeping motion. 

 Young men throw arrows about in the same way, and small boys some- 

 times throw ordinary reeds or weed stalks. Among the Omaha, accord- 

 ing to Dorsey, bows, unstrung, are made to slide along the ground or 

 ice in the same maimer. 



(ill. Yi Ha a a III'HI 



Yi hii'a . : i hi hi , Yi ha ii :i hi hi, 



Hi nana hi gutha -u ga <jaii -hu hn , 



Hii'nana'hi'gutha'-u ga'qaii -hu hu . 



Translation 



Yi liii <i ii hi hi', Yi ltd ii a hi In , 

 I throw the "button," 

 I throw the "button.'' 



In his trance vision the author of this song entered a tipi and found 

 it filled with a circle of his old friends playing the ga'qutit, or '-1111111 the 

 button'' game. This is a favorite winter game with the prairie tribes, 

 and was probably more or less general throughout the country. It is 

 played both by men and women, but never by the two sexes together. 

 It is the regular game in the long winter nights after the scattered 

 families have abandoned their exposed summer positions on the open 

 prairie, and moved down near one another in the shelter of the tim- 

 ber along the streams. When hundreds of Indians are thus camped 

 together, the sound of the drum, the rattle, and the gaming song resound 

 nightly through the air. To the stranger there is a fascination about 

 such a camp at night, with the conical tipis scattered about under 

 the trees, the firelight from within shining through the white canvas and 

 distinctly outlining upon the cloth the figures of the occupants making- 

 merry inside with jest and story, while from half a dozen different direc 

 tions comes the measured tap of the Indian drum or the weird chorus 

 of the gaming songs. Frequently there will be a party of twenty to 

 thirty men gaming in one tipi, and singing so that their voices can be 

 heard far out from the camp, while from another tipi a \'e\v rods awaj 

 conies a shrill chorus from a group of women engaged in another game 

 of the same kind. 



The players sit in a circle around the tipi (ire, those on one side of the 

 tire playing against those on the oilier. The only requisites are the 

 ''button*' or ga <i<n'i. usually a small liit of wood, around which is 

 tied a piece of string or otter skin, with a pile of tally sticks, as has 



