CULIN] STICK GAMES: TAKULLI 237 
as many of these as one of the players might find convenient were curiously 
rolled up in dry grass, and according to the judgment of his antagonist respect- 
ing their number and marks he lost or won. Our friend was apparently the 
loser, as he parted with his bow and arrows and several articles which I had 
given him. 
Taxutir. Stuart lake, British Columbia. 
The Reverend Father A. G. Morice“ refers to a game— 
atlih, which in times past was passionately played by the Carriers, but is now 
altogether forgotten except by a few elder men. It necessitated the use of a 
quantity of finely-polished bonesticks, perhaps 4 or 5 inches long. 
Father Morice describes atlih as the original counterpart of the 
modern netsea, or hand game. In a general sense, the name of the 
game may be translated gambling. ‘The bones were called alte. 
Father Morice ” gives also the following legend of the game: 
A young man was so fond of playing atlih that, after he had lost every part of 
his wearing apparel, he went so far as to gamble away his very wife and ehil- 
dren. Disgusted with his conduct, his fellow-villagers turned away from him 
and migrated to another spot of the forest, taking along all their belongings, 
and carefully extinguishing the fire of every lodge so that he might perish. 
Now, this happened in winter time. Reduced to this sad fate, and in a 
state of complete nakedness, the young man searched every fireplace in the hope 
of finding some bits of burning cinders, but to no purpose. He then took the 
dry grass on which his fellow villagers had been resting every night and roughly 
weaved it into some sort of a garment to cover his nakedness. 
Yet without fire or food he could not live. So he went off in despair without 
snowshoes, expecting death in the midst of his wanderings. 
After journeying some time, as he was half frozen and dying of hunger, he 
suddenly caught sight in the top of the tall spruces of a glimmer as of a far-off 
fire. Groping his way thither, he soon perceived sparks flying out of two col- 
umns of smoke, and cautiously approaching he came upon a large lodge covered 
with branches of conifers. He peeped through a chink and saw nebody but an 
old man sitting by one of two large fires burning in the lodge. 
Immediately the old man cried out, “Come in, my son-in-law!” The young 
man was much astonished, inasmuch as he could see nobody outside but himself. 
“Come in, my son-in-law; what are you doing out in the cold?” came again 
from the lodge. Whereupon the gambler ascertained that it was himself who 
was thus addressed. Therefore he timidly entered, and, following his host’s 
suggestion, he set to warm himself by one of the fires. 
The old man was called Ne-yor-hwolluz,¢ because, being no other than Yibta,@ 
he nightly carries his house about in the course of his travelings. “ You seem 
yery miserable, my son-in-law ; take this up,” he said to his guest while putting 
mantlewise on the young man’s shoulders a robe of sewn marmot skins. He next 
handed him a pair of tanned skin moccasins and ornamental leggings of the same 
@Notes on the Western Dénés. Transactions of the Canadian Institute, v. 4, p. TS, 
Toronto, 1895. 
>Ibid., p. 79. 
¢ Literally, ‘‘He-carries (as with a slelgh)-a-house.” The final hwolluz is proper to 
the dialect of the Lower Carriers, though the tale is narrated by an Upper Carrier, 
which circumstance would seem to indicate that the legend is not, as so many others, 
borrowed from Tsimpsian tribe. 
4Ursa Major. 
