366 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS [rru. ann. 24 
with three or four moccasins lying on the ground; when one lifts each moceasin 
in turn, and suddenly darts his right hand under each, dropping a little stone, 
the size of a hazelnut, under one of the moccasins, leaving his adversary to hit 
on one or the other, and to take the counter and the chance if he chooses the 
one under which the stone is dropped. This is, perhaps, one of the silliest- 
looking games to the spectator, but it all goes to music, and in perfect time, and 
often for hours together without intermission, and forms one of the principal 
gampling games of these gambling people. 
Omana. Nebraska. 
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey “ describes the following game: 
I’-uti"’, Hitting the stone, is a game played at night. Sometimes there are 
twenty, thirty, or forty players on each side. Four moccasins are placed in a 
row, and a member of one party covers them, putting in one of them some small 
object that can be easily concealed. Then he says, “Come! hit the moccasin in 
which you think it is.” Then one of the opposite side is chosen to hit the moc- 
casin. He arises, examines all, and hits one. Should it be empty, they say, 
“(@ingéé ha,” it is wanting. He throws it far aside and forfeits his stakes. 
Three moccasins remain for the rest of his friends to try. Should one of them 
hit the right one (uska”ska® uti” or uka™ska uti®’), he wins the stakes, and 
his side has the privilege of hiding the object in the moccasin. He who hits the 
right moccasin can hit again and again until he misses. Sometimes it is deter- 
mined to change the rule for winning, and then the guesser aims to avoid the 
right moceasin the first time, but to hit it when he makes the second trial. 
Should he hit the right one the first time he loses his stakes. If he hits the 
right one when he hits the second moccasin, he wins, and his side has the right 
to hide the object. They play till one side or the other has won all the sticks 
or stakes. Sometimes there are players who win back what they have lost. 
He who takes the right moccasin wins four sticks, or any other number which 
may be fixed upon by previous agreement. . 
Bight sticks win a blanket; four win leggings; one hundred sticks, a full- 
grown horse; sixty sticks, a colt; ten sticks, a gun; one, an arrow; four, a 
knife or a pound of tobacco ; two, half a pound of tobacco. Buffalo robes (meha), 
otter skins, and beaver skins are each equal to eight sticks. Sometimes they 
stake moccasins. 
When one player wins all his party yell. The men of each party sit in a row, 
facing their opponents, and the moccasins are placed between them. 
Mr Francis La Flesche described the same game to the writer under 
the name of 1-u-teh, strike the stone: 
Four men play, two against two, sitting on the ground vis-a-vis, and using 
four moccasins and two balls of buffalo hair about half an inch in diameter. 
One side hides and the opponents guess, the hiders singing songs, of which there 
are several. The game is also played with the hands by four players, one of 
whom tosses the ball from one hand to the other. 
Winnepaco. Wisconsin. 
Mr Reuben G. Thwaites” gives the following account, from an 
interview with Moses Paquette: f 
The moccasin game is the chief one. It somewhat resembles three-card 
monte, except that I do not think there is any cheating about it. The players 
*Omaha Sociology. Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 339, 1884. 
*’The Wisconsin Winnebagoes. Collections of the State Historical Society of Wiscon- 
sin, v. 12, p. 425, Madison, 1892. 
