ees! DICE GAMES: OMAHA 187 
Manpan. Fort Berthold, North Dakota. (Cat. no. 8427, United 
States National Museum.) 
Set of five bone dice, with incised designs (figure 242) filled in with 
red paint, and basket of woven grass (figure 243), 74 inches in 
diameter at top and 3 inches deep; with the dice a small clay 
effigy, 1} inches in length, with legs outspread and with arms and 
head missing (figure 244). Collected by Dr Washington Mat- 
thews, U. S. Army. 
Catlin * mentions the game of the platter among the Mandan. 
Fig. 242. Fig. 243. Fig. 244. 
Fic. 242. Bone dice; lengths, 1), 1, and 1 inch; Mandan Indians, Fort Berthold, North Dakota; 
eat. no, 8427, United States National Museum. 
Fig. 243. Basket for dice; diameter, 7} inches; Mandan Indians, Fort Berthold, North Dakota: 
eat. no. 8427, United States National Museum. 
Fia. 244. Clay fetich used with dice; length, 1} inches; Mandan Indians, Fort Berthold, North 
Dakota; cat. no. 8427, United States National Museum. 
Omauna. Nebraska. 
Dr J. Owen Dorsey” gives the following account under the name 
of plum-stone shooting, ka®’-si kide: ° 
Five plum stones are provided, three of which are marked on one side only 
with a greater or smaller number of black dots or lines and two of them are 
marked on both sides; they are, however, sometimes made of bone of a rounded 
or flattened form, somewhat like an orbicular button-mold, the dots in this case 
being impressed. A wide dish and a certain number of small sticks by the 
way of counters are also provided. Any number of persons may play this 
game, and agreeably to the number engaged in it, is the quantity of sticks or 
counters. The plum stones or bones are placed in a dish, and a throw is made 
by simply jolting the vessel against the ground to make the seeds or bones 
rebound, and they are counted as they lie when they fall. The party plays 
around for the first throw. Whoever gains all the sticks in the course of the 
game wins the stake. The throws succeed each other with so much rapidity 
that we vainly endeavor to observe their laws of computation, which it was 
the sole business of an assistant to attend to. The seeds used in this game 
are called ka"-si gé. Their number varies. Among the Ponkas and Omahas. 
only five are used, while the Otos play with six. Sometimes four are marked 
alike, and the fifth is black or white (unmarked). Generally three are black 
aQetters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American 
Indians, p. 147, Philadelphia, 1860. 
>Omaha Sociology. Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 334, 1884. 
© Miss Alice C. Fletcher gives me the name of the game as gkon’-thi. Gkon is the 
first syllable of the word gkon’-de, plum; thi means seed. The game is described by 
Major S. H. Long (Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, y. 
1, p. 216, Philadelphia, 1822) under the name of kon-se-ke-da. 
