cULIN] ; DICE GAMES: NAVAHO 95 
well that they would fly far away were not a blanket stretched overhead to 
throw them back to the players. A number of small stones placed in the form 
of a square are used as counters. These are not moved, but sticks, whose posi- 
tions are changed according to the fortunes of the game, are placed between 
them. The rules of the game have not been recorded. 
Doctor Matthews tells,t among the early events of the fifth or 
present world, that while they were waiting for the ground to dry 
the women erected four poles on which they stretched a deerskin, 
and under the shelter of this they played the game of three sticks, 
tsindi, one of ‘the four games which they brought from the lower 
world.” 
Navano. Arizona. (Cat. no. 62540, Field Columbian Museum.) 
Three flat blocks, 6 inches in length, one face painted with equal 
bands of green, blue, and red, and the other face half blue .and 
half red. 
They were collected by Dr George A. Dorsey, who describes the 
game under the name of sitih. 
The circle is senesti. The game is 40 and the counts are as follows: All with 
three bands up count 5; all with two bands up, 10; one with three bands and 
two with two bands, 2; two with three bands and one with two bands, 3; one 
with two bands and two with three bands, 3. 
Arizona. (Cat. no. 74735, United States National Museum.) 
Set of seven blocks of cedar wood, three-fourths of an inch in length, 
seven-sixteenths of an inch wide, and one-fourth of an inch 
thick (figure 97); section hemispherical. Six have flat sides 
blackened and one painted red; opposite unpainted. 
These were collected by Dr Washington Matthews, U. S. Army. 
The game was “* played with count- 
ers by women.” 
Doctor Matthews°® describes an- 
other game similar to the above 
under the name of taka-thad-sata @ 
or the thirteen chips: Fic. 97. Wooden dice; length, } inch; 
Navaho Indians, Arizona; cat. no. 74735, 
United States National Museum. 
It is played with thirteen thin flat 
pieces of wood which are colored red on 
one side and left white or uncolored on the other. Success depends on the num- 
ber of chips which, being thrown upward, fall with their white sides up. 
In the gambling contest between Hastsehogan and Nohoilpi the 
animals came to the relief of the former, and in the game of taka- 
* Navajo Legends, p. 77, Boston, 1897. 
Ibid. The other games were dilkén, played with two sticks, each the length of an 
arm; ats, played with forked sticks and a ring; and aspi’n. 
© Ibid, p. 83. 
4Také-thad-sita was the first of four games played by the young Hastséhogan with 
the gambling god Nohoflpi. These four games are not the same as the four described 
as brought from the under world. They comprise, in addition, nfnzoz, hoop and pole; 
tsi’nbetsil, push on the wood, in which the contestants push on a tree until it is torn 
from its roots and falls, and tsol, ball, the object in which was to hit the ball so that 
it would fall beyond a certain line. 
