CULIN] DICE GAMES: ZUNI 9138 
The name sho’-li-we is derived from sho’-o-li, arrow, and we, plural ending, 
signifying “parts of,” sho’-we being the plural of simple arrows. Sho’-o-li, 
arrow, is derived in turn from sho’-o-le, cane, the termination li in the derived 
word being a contraction of li-a, and signifying out of, from, or made of. Thus, 
the name of the game may be translated cane arrows, or cane arrow pieces or 
parts. 
These parts consist of four slips of cane. From the fact that these slips 
are so split and cut from the canes as to include at their lower ends portions of 
the joints or septa of the canes, and from the further fact that they are 
variously banded with black or red paint, or otherwise, it may be seen that they 
Fra. 289. Cane dice; length, 6 inches; Zuni Indians, Zuni, New Mexico; cat. no. 4984, Brooklyn 
Institute Museum. 
represent the footings or shaftments of cane arrows in which the septa at the 
lower ends serve as stops for the footing or nocking-plugs.¢ 
A study of the bandings by which these cane slips are distinguished from one 
another reveals the very significant fact that they are representative of the rib- 
bandings of cane-arrow shaftments. 
I have found that sets of Zuni, as well as the ancestral cliff-dweller arrows, 
were thus ribbanded with black or red paint to symbolize, in the arrows so 
marked, the numerical and successional values of the four quarters, each set, 
especially of war arrows, consisting of four subsets, the shaftments of each 
marked differently, The reasons for this, and for processes of divination by 
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Fic. 200. Cane dice, showing method of tying in bundle; Zuni ere Zuni, New Mexico; cat 
no. 4984, Brooklyn Institute Museum, 
which the members of the different sets among the arrows were determined dur- 
ing their manufacture, I have set forth in a paper on “The Arrow,” published 
in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 
1895, and also in the American Anthropologist for October of the same year. 
«The canes are ent with reference to the notion that one aide is masculine or north, 
and the other feminine or south. This is determined by the direction or character of 
the natural growth, as well as by the presence or absence of the leaf pocket in the joint on 
the one side or the other of that particular section which forms the shaftment of the 
arrow (Cushing). In ancient China, according to the Chow Le (LXII, 37), the arrow 
maker floated the arrow longitudinally upon water to determine the side which cor- 
responded to the principle of inertia and the side which corresponded to the principle 
of activity. The former sank, while the latter rose. He cut the notch with reference 
thereto. 
