56 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS _ [ern. any. 24 
Cat. no. 165765a. Set of five wooden dice, marked on one side with 
burned designs (figure 25), representing on three a swallow or 
swallow hawk and on two a dragon fly. Both collected by Rey. 
H. R. Voth. 
Arapano. Oklahoma. (Cat. no. 5%, American Museum of Natural 
History. ) 
Wooden stick, 15} inches in length, knobbed at the upper end and 
pointed at the lower, the upper half painted red and the lower 
black, with four feathers and a small brass bell tied at the top 
(figure 26). : 
It was collected by Dr A. L. Kroeber, who describes it as repre- 
senting a man: 
When women gamble with dice they use this stick as a charm to prevent 
cheating in the game. 
Buackreet. Alberta. 
Rev. Edward F. Wilson ¢ says: 
Their chief amusements are horse racing and gambling. For the latter of 
these they employ dice of their own construction—little cubes of wood with 
signs instead of numbers marked upon them. These they shake together in a 
wooden dish. 
Rey. J. W. Tims” gives katsasinni as a general term for gambling. 
Dr George Bird Grinnell has furnished me the following account 
of the stave game among the Blackfeet, which he describes under the 
name of onesteh, the stick, or travois,° game: 
This is a woman’s gambling game, in vogue among the tribes of the Blackfoot 
nation, who know nothing of the basket or seed game so generally played by the 
more southern plains tribes. 
Four straight bones, made from buffalo ribs—6 or 8 inches long, one-fourth of 
an inch thick, and about three-fourths of an inch wide, tapering gradually to a 
blunt point at either end—are used in playing it. Three of these bones are un- 
marked on one side, and the fourth on this side has three or five transverse 
grooves running about it at its middle, or sometimes no grooves are cut and the 
bone is marked by having a buckskin string tied around it. On their other 
sides the bones are marked, two of them by zigzag lines running from one end 
to the other; another, called the chief, has thirteen equally distant holes 
drilled in, but not through, it from one end to the other. The fourth, called 
“four.” from its four depressions or holes, has four transverse grooves close 
to each end, and within these is divided into four equal spaces by three sets 
of transverse grooves of three each. In the middle of each of these spaces a 
circular depression or hole is cut. All the lines, grooves, and marks are painted 
in red, blue, or black [figure 27]. 
These bones are played with either by two women who gamble against each 
* Report on the Blackfoot Tribes. Report of the Fifty-seventh Meeting of British Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, p. 192, London, 1888. 
*> Grammar and Dictionary of the Blackfoot Language, London, 1889. 
¢ The word travois has been variously explained as coming from travail and from trai- 
neau. I believe, however, as stated in The Story of the Indian, p. 156, it is a corruption 
from travers or 4 travers, meaning across, and referring to the crossing of the poles over 
the horse's or over the dog's withers (G. B. G.). 
