CULIN] DICE GAMES: ZUNI 917 
Each player then shuffled his cane cards back and forth in his palms, as before 
described, as though to smooth and heat them, addressed them, especially the 
stick of his special quarter, as (for the East) ‘Now then, white one, come 
thou uppermost! ”; then laying the all-sender or his special slip as such across 
the two middle fingers and the other three slips upon it inside of one another, 
his thumb pressing over their middle, the ends pointed outward over the index 
finger, and the bases held down to the base of the palm by the bent-over little 
finger [figure 293], he quickly breathed or puffed upon them, shouted at them, 
-and cast them skillfully against the stretched skin of the basket, so that they 
rebounded swiftly and fell almost unerringly within the circle on the pe’-wi-ne 
or bed of buffalo hide. Now it was noted which slip lay uppermost over the 
others. If the White man threw, and if the white stick lay uppermost over all 
the others, he uttered thanks and the cast counted him four and gave him the 
privilege of another cast. If, moreover, all three slips except his sender lay 
concave sides upward, they counted him ten and gave him a second additional 
throw. If all three fell convex sides up, they counted him five: if two concave 
sides and one convex side up, they counted him three, and if two convex sides 
and one concave side up, they counted him only one. The player who had the 
largest number of both kinds of counts after each had tried, led off in the game 
and was supposed to be favored by the gods at the beginning. With but a 
slight change in the system of counting, the game was continued; that is, the 
double counts were kept if the process included gambling, willingness to sacrifice, 
but only the counts according to the regions, if the game was purely an arrow 
or war divination. But it is to be noted that in either case an ingenious method 
was resorted to in order to equalize the counts. Since the North or Yellow man 
eould gain only one and a double throw if his slip came uppermost, he gained 
the count of his opponent, the South, if his slip fell uppermost on the Red 
man’s slips. The latter thus forfeited alike his double throw and his appro- 
priate number, three. The tally of these purely cosmical counts was kept with 
the bundle of splints; the tally of the cast-counts or their sums were kept 
with the grains by counting out, and that of the individual by moving the 
pointer of the passageway as many dots or grain places to the left as the cast 
ealled for. If a player of the Bast or the North overtook a player of the West or 
South, if his pointer fell in the same space, he maimed his opponent, sent him 
back to his passageway, and robbed him of his load; that is, took or made him 
forfeit his counts. 
The completion of the fourth circuit by any one of the players closed the ordi- 
nary game, providing the sum of the cosmical counts had been won by him, and 
the player who, with his partner, had the largest aggregate of both lot and 
cosmical counts was the winner. 
There were many variants of this game as to counts. Some of these were 
so complicated that it was absolutely impossible for me to gain knowledge of 
them in the short practice I had in the play. I have given here, not very pre- 
cisely or fully, the simplest form I know, except that of the lot and diagram, 
which was quite like that of ta’-sho’-li-we or wood canes, which may be seen 
by the above description to be an obvious derivative both in mode and name of 
the older game of canes. It was evidently thus divorced for purposes of 
exoteric play, as it is practiced not only by men but also by women. 
Mrs Matilda Coxe Stevenson” gives a number of additional par- 
