iis 
cULIN] STICK GAMES: PIEGAN 231 
small bents of a foot long which they divide to the number of their gamesters, 
shuffling them first between the palms of their hands; he that hath more than 
his fellow is so much the forwarder in his game: many other strange whim- 
sies be in this game; which would be too long to commit to paper; he that 
is a noted gambler, hath a great hole in his ear wherein he carries his puims 
in defiance of his antagonists. 
Miamr. St. Joseph river, Michigan. 
P. de Charlevoix “ says: 
That day the Pottawatomi had come to play the game of straws with the 
Miami. They played in the hut of the chief, and in a place opposite. These 
straws are small, about as thick as a wheat straw and 2 inches long. Each 
player takes a bundle of them, usually containing two hundred and one, always 
an uneven number. After having well shaken them about, making meanwhile 
a thousand contortions and invoking the spirits, they separate them, with a 
sort of thorn or pointed bone, into parcels of ten. Each one takes his own, 
haphazard, and he who has chosen the parcel containing eleven wins a certain 
number of points, as may have been agreed upon. The game is 60 or 80. 
There were other ways of playing this game which they were willing to explain 
to me, but I could understand nothing unless it was that sometimes the number 
9 wins the game. They also told me that there is as much skill as chance in 
this game, and that the savages are extremely clever at it, as at all other games ; 
that they give themselves up to it and spend whole days and nights at it; that 
sometimes they do not stop playing until they are entirely naked, having 
nothing more to lose. There is another way of playing, without stakes. ‘This 
is purely a pastime, but it has almost always bad consequences for morals. 
Narracanser. Rhode Island. 
Roger Williams, in his Key into the Language of America,” says: 
Their games (like the English) are of two sorts; private and public; a game 
like unto the English cards, yet instead of cards, they play with strong rushes. 
In his vocabulary he gives the following definitions: 
Akésuog: they are at cards, or telling of rushes; pissinnéganash: their play- 
ing rushes; ntakésemin: I am telling, or counting; for their play is a kind of 
arithmetic. 
Norripcewock. Norridgewock, Maine. 
In the dictionary of Father Sebastian Rasles,° as pointed out by 
Mr Davis, one finds corresponding with pissinnéganash, the word 
pesseniganar, defined as “ les pailles avec quoi on joue a un autre jeu.” 
Piecan. Montana. 
Mr Louis L. Meeker writes: ¢ 
A game, described as straws or Indian cards, is played with a number of 
unmarked sticks. Piegan pupils at Fort Shaw, Montana, used lead pencils for 
— 
« Journal d'un Voyage dans l’'Amérique Septentrionnale, vy. 3, p. 318, Paris, 1744. 
» London, 1648. Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, v. 1, p. 145, Provi- 
dence, 1827. 
¢ Memoirs American Academy of Arts and Sciences, n. s., vy. 1, p. 472, Cambridge, 1833. 
4 Bulletin of the Essex Institute, vy. 18, p. 176, Salem, 1886. 
¢In a letter to the author. 
