246 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS | [k&TH. Ann. 24 
western portion of Prince of Wales island. The Tlingit are divided into six- 
teen tribal divisions, but these are purely geographical. They are practically 
one people, all Tlingit in language, customs, and manners. Gambling sticks are 
common to all, but are more generally found among the more southern people. 
The same character of stick is found among the three contiguous peoples, 
Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, and I should say extended down the west to the 
extremity of Vancouver island. The Tlingit are the most northen people who 
use them. I believe the names, which depend upon the sticks, are somewhat 
arbitrary. 
Dr Aurel Krause * says: 
The Tlingit play with round sticks marked with red stripes, about 4 inches 
in length. These are mixed by rolling a bundle of from ten to twenty back- 
ward and forward between the palms of the hands. . . . The sticks are then 
dealt out, together with a piece of cedar bark, which serves to cover the marks. . 
It is now the point to guess these marks. Two persons or two sides only play. 
Turnerr. Norfolk sound, Alaska. 
Capt. George Dixon ” says: 
The only gambling implements I saw were fifty-two small round bits of wood, 
about the size of your middle finger, and differently marked with red paint. A 
game is played by two persons with these pieces of wood, and chiefly consists 
in placing them in a variety of positions, but I am unable to describe it minutely. 
The man whom TI before mentioned our having on board at Port Mulgrave lost 
a knife, a spear, and several toes [toys] at this game in less than an hour; 
though this loss was at least equal to an English gamester losing his estate, yet 
the poor fellow bore his ill fortune with great patience and equanimity of 
temper. 
— Port des Frangais, Alaska. 
J. F. G. de la Pérouse ¢ says: 
They have thirty wooden pieces, each having different marks like our dice; 
of these they hide seven; each of them plays in his turn, and he whose guess 
comes nearest to the number marked upon the seven pieces is the winner of the 
stake agreed upon, which is generally a piece of iron or a hatchet. This gaming 
renders them serious and melancholy. 
—— Sitka, Alaska. 
Otto von Kotzebue @ says: 
Their common game is played with little wooden sticks painted of various 
colors, and called by several names, such as crab, whale, duck, ete., which are 
mingled promiscuously together, and placed in heaps covered with moss, the 
players being then required to tell in which heap the crab, the whale, etc., lies. 
They lose at this game all their possessions, and even their wives and children, 
who then become the property of the winner. 
“Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 164, Jena, 1885. He gives the name of the game in his 
vocabulary as alehka, kat6k-kitscha; that of the stick marked with a red ring as nak’- 
alchka. 
* A Voyage round the World, p. 245, London, 1789. 
¢ A Voyage round the World, in the years 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, v. 2, p. 150, 
London, 1798. 
4A New Voyage round the World, v. 2, p. 61, London, 1830. 
