GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS 
By Srewarr CuLin 
PREFACE 
In the-spring of 1891 the writer was invited by Prof. F. W. Putnam 
to prepare and take charge of an exhibit illustrative of the games 
of the world, at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago. During the 
course of the exposition his attention was directed by Mr Frank 
Hamilton Cushing to the remarkable analogies existing between the 
oriental and modern European games in the collection and those of 
the American Indians. A joint work in which Mr Cushing should 
discuss the American games and the writer those of the Old World 
was then projected. Mr Cushing’s ill health delayed and finally 
prevented his proposed collaboration. Deeply impressed with the 
importance of the subject, the present author took up the systematic 
study of American games, constantly aided by Mr Cushing’s advice 
and suggestions. In 1895, at the request of Dr G. Brown Goode, 
Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in charge of the 
United States National Museum, he prepared a collection of games 
for the exhibit of the National Museum at the International and 
Cotton States Exposition at Atlanta, Ga. A catalogue of this col- 
lection, including a comparative study of the Indian stick-dice 
games, which is incorporated in the present volume, was published 
in the report of the United States National Museum for 1896. Stimu- 
lated by this work, increased attention was paid to Indian games 
by collectors and students in the field. Dr George A. Dorsey, curator 
of anthropology in the Field Columbian Museum, undertook the 
systematic collection of specimens of gaming implements of all the 
existing tribes. To his efforts and those of his assistants, Rey. 
H. R. Voth, Dr J. W. Hudson, Dr C. F. Newcombe, Mr S. C. Simms, 
and Mr Charles L. Owen, is chiefly due the great wealth of material 
on which the writer has been enabled to draw in the preparation of 
his work. Doctor Dorsey not only encouraged the widest use of the 
collections in the Field Columbian Museum, but made many special 
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