cULIN] DICE GAMES: COMANCHE 159 
SHOSHONEAN STOCK 
Bannock. Fort Hall reservation, Idaho. (Cat. no. 37059, Free 
~ Museum of Science and Art, University of Pennsylvania.) 
Four willow sticks, halves, with pith removed and the groove painted 
red; length, 84 inches. Three have the flat, grooved side plain, 
and one has burnt cross marks. Two have plain reverses. The 
others, including the one with the flat side, are marked with 
burned designs, as shown in figure 186; with eight willow-twig 
counting sticks 44 inches in length. These were collected by the 
writer in 1900. 
The stick dice and the game are called to-pe-di; the counters, ti-hope. The two 
sticks marked on the rounded convex side with cross lines and triangles are 
known, respectively, as pi-au, female, and a-ku-a, male. The counts are as fol- 
lows: All heads or all tails, 1; male and female heads or tails up and the other 
two heads or tails down, 2; three heads or three tails up, 1. 
~~ 
Fig. 186. Fig. 187. 
Fic. 186. Stick dice; length, 8} inches; Bannock Indians, Idaho; cat. no. 37059, Free Museum of 
Science and Art, University of Pennsylvania. 
Fig. 187. Counting sticks for stick dice: length, 4; inches; Bannock Indians, Idaho; cat. no. 
37059, Free Museum of Science and Art, University of Pennsylvania. 
Comancnue. Texas. 
J. M. Stanley, in his Catalogue of Portraits of North American 
Indians,‘ says in connection with no. 92, a Comanche game, painted 
in 1844: 
This game is played exclusively by the women. They hold in their hands 
twelve sticks, about 6 inches in length which they drop upon a rock; the sticks 
that fall across each other are counted for the game; 100 such counts the game. 
They become very excited, and frequently bet all the dresses, deerskins, and 
buffalo robes they possess. 
Kiowa reservation, Oklahoma. (United States National Mu- 
seum. ) 
Cat. no. 15291la. Set of six bone dice, having both faces convex, and 
bearing on one face incised designs (figure 188) filled with red 
paint. 
*® Page 55, Washington, 1852. The pictures were destroyed by the fire in the Smith- 
sonian Institution, January 24, 1865. 
