254 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS _ [era. ann. 24 
ing. The casters are divided, five under the right hand and five under the left. 
While the counters are running out from the right to the left the opposite 
antagonist points out to the right or the left before they are out, naming the 
chief, and if it happens the chief comes out in accord with the guessing the 
guesser wins the game. If it comes out from a different direction, he loses the 
game. When Indians gamble they paint their faces with different colors and 
designs, representing the spirit they invoke for success, and they do their utmost 
to deceive each other. 
Soneisu. Vancouver island, British Columbia. 
Dr Franz Boas ¢ describes the following game: 
Slehi’lem, or wuqk-ats, is played with one white and nine black disks. The 
former is called “ the man.” Two players take part in the game. They sit oppo- 
site each other, and each has a mat before him, the end nearest the partner 
being raised a little. The player covers the disks with cedar bark and shakes 
them in the hollow of his hands, which are laid one on the other. Then he 
takes five into each hand and keeps them wrapped in cedar bark, moving them 
backward and forward from right to left. Now the opponent guesses in which 
hand the white disk is. Hach player has five sticks lying in one row by his side. 
If the guesser guesses right, he rolls a stick over to his opponent, who is the 
next to guess. If the guesser guesses wrong, he gets a stick from the player who 
shook the disks and who continues to shake. The game is at an end when one 
man has got all the sticks. He has lost. Sometimes one tribe will challenge 
another to a game of slehii’lem. In this case it is called Ishilpmé’latl, or 
wupk atse’latl. 
Continuing, Doctor Boas says: 
In gambling the well-known sticks of the northern tribes are often used, or a 
piece of bone is hidden in the hands of a member of one party while the other 
must guess where it is. 
It is considered indecent for the women to look on when the meu gamble. 
Only when two tribes play against each other are they allowed to be present. 
They sing during the game, waving their arms up and down rhythmically. Men 
and women of the winning party paint their faces red. 
Tuompson Inpians. British Columbia. (Cat. no. ;1%;, American 
Museum of Natural History.) 
Set of sixteen willow sticks (figure 334), 5,5; inches in length and 
three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, all marked with ribbons 
of red paint, in a small fringed buckskin pouch, stitched with an 
ornamental figure in red and green silk. Collected by Mr James 
Teit. 
The collector gives the following account : ? 
Another game, engaged in almost altogether by the men, was played with a 
number of sticks. These were from 4 to 6 inches in length and about a quarter 
of an inch in diameter, made of mountain-maple wood, rounded and smoothed 
off. There was no definite number of sticks in a set. Some sets contained only 
twelve sticks, while others had as many as thirty. Most of the sticks were 
“Second General Report on the Indians of British Columbia. Report of the Sixtieth 
Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, p. 571, London, 1891. 
*The Thompson Indians of British Columbia. Memoirs of the American Museum of 
Natural History, -v. 2, p. 272, New York, 1900. 
