CULIN] HIDDEN-BALL GAME: MENOMINEE 343 
skin was spread upon the ground and a half dozen upturned moccasins arranged 
in a semicircle within easy reach of the player. The latter, holding to view a 
good-sized bullet, then quickly thrust his hand under each moccasin in turn, 
leaving the bullet under one of them. This was done so skillfully as to leave 
the onlooker in doubt, and the gambling consisted in betting where the bullet 
was. This was called moccasin. Subsequently the whites modified the game 
slightly by placing caps on the table, and the game became changed to bullet. 
It was played so extensively among the pioneers as to become a recognized evil, 
and on the early statutes stands a law making gambling at bullet a finable 
offense. 
Mr Cottman writes: 
On page 104 of the Laws of Indiana Territory, as revised by John Rice Jones 
and John Johnson, published in 1807, I find a statute forbidding various gam- 
bling games, among them that of bullet, the penalty fixed for practising them 
being five dollars and costs. 
Mr Cottman states also that in the diary of John Tipton, one of the 
commissioners to locate the Indiana capital, is the following entry: 
After dinner we went to the Indian huts, found the men playing a favorite 
game which they call mockuson, which is played with a bullet and four mocku- 
sons. 
The locality was near Conner’s station, some 16 miles north of the site of 
Indianapolis, and there can hardly be any doubt that they were Delaware 
Indians, as this was the Delaware country. The Miami occupied the Wabash 
region, and the Potawatomi were yet farther north. 
Menominer. Wisconsin. 
Dr Walter J. Hoffman describes the moccasin or bullet game, as 
follows: 
Another game that was formerly much played by the Menomini [plate vir] 
was the moccasin, or bullet, game, which was probably learned from their 
Ojibwa neighbors. Five persons participate in this game, four being active play- 
ers, while the fifth acts as musician, by using the tambourine-drum and singing, 
the players usually joining in the latter. . . . The articles necessary to 
play this game consist of four bullets, or balls of any hard substance, one of 
which is colored, or indented, to readily distinguish it from its fellows; four 
moccasins also are required, as well as thirty or forty stick counters, similar 
to those used in the preceding [bowl] game, though uncolored. A blanket also 
is used, and in addition a stick, about 3 feet long, with which to strike the moc- 
casin under which the bullet is believed to be hidden. When the game is com- 
menced, the players are paired off by two’s, who take their places on each of the 
four sides of the outspread blanket [plate vor]. The winner of the toss takes 
the moccasins before him and lays them upside down and about 6 inches apart 
with the toes pointing forward. The object now is for the player to lift, with his 
left hand, each moccasin, in succession, and put a bullet under it, making many 
pretenses of hiding and removing the bullets, in order to confuse the opponents, 
who are eagerly watching for some slip of the performer whereby they may 
ebtain a clue of the moccasin under which the marked bullet may be placed. 
While this is going on, the drummer is doing his duty by singing and drumming, 
«The MenominilIndians. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 242, 
1896. 
