376 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS  [xru. ann. 24 
returning dates and are obligatory, as the seasons seem to be, but may be a 
little earlier or a little later, as the seasons seem to be, exact dates being 
determined by the priests as keepers and diviners of the calendar of rites. 
Another sacred name is i’-yan-ko-lo-we te’sh-kwi-ne, from te’, space, sh’ 
direction of or throughout, and k’wi’-na, dark, black, made void by darkness— 
that is, secret, mysterious. The word is applied not only to secret and sacred 
observances, but also to taboos, forbidden persons or things, places, altars, or 
precincts. 
A semisacred, semimythic name is ku-lu-lu-na-k’ya-al i’-yan-ko-lo-we (thunder 
stone hide-seek game), from ku-lu-lu, to rumble, thunder, k’ya, that which is for 
or which does, and a’ale, stone. 
There are other names more or less allegorical, chiefly interesting as indica- 
tive of the importance of the game and the wealth of lore connected with it. 
The name of the tubes is i’-yan-ko-lo-we-kya to’-ma-we, tom’-ma, meaning 
tube or hollowed wooden billet, and we being the plural ending. Of these 
tubes there are four, usually plain, though sometimes differentiated by band- 
ings, precisely as are the arrows or cane cards of war, to assign them sepa- 
rately to the four quarters, or “mountains,” and sometimes carved to make 
them rudely and very conventionally representative of the rain or dance gods 
(A-ka-kA) of the four quarters, or rather of their masks or face personalities. 
The banded tubes are generally made of oak, one of the ‘* weapon woods,” and 
generally pertain to the game as played by the warriors. The carved tubes 
are, however, made almost invariably of cottonwood, the “ wood of water”’ or 
of life substance, and pertain to the game as played by the clans at the appointed 
time in spring or very early summer, just before planting. The war play of 
this game is not played annually, but only when “called,” and it is scarcely 
ever called at any other season than during the “ crescents,” or months of the 
greater and lesser sand storms (April and May). It then immediately follows 
the great annuai war race of the kicked stick or running billet, which is per- 
formed in April by the entire priesthood of the Bow, totemically painted; and 
it thus immediately precedes the annual play of the game by the Seed-and- 
Water, or Wind-and-Soil, clan leaderships. Usually the mere fact that a tribal 
set of the tubes is made of “ weapon wood” (oak or mountain mahogany) suf- 
fices to relegate it without further indication (as, by binding) to war plays, while 
if made of cottonwood or willow the set is as effectually identified with the peace 
plays of the game. Both kinds of tubes are said to have been used, one (hard 
wood) by the war party, the other (soft wood) by the peace party, when ques- 
tions of war or peace were submitted to divination by means of the game. In 
all other plays, to be described in due course, only a single set of the tubes 
was used. 
The individual tubes in a set are with one exception, I believe, named pre- 
cisely as are the canes of sho’-li-we—ko’-ha-kwa, k’wi’-na, pathl-to-a, and not 
a’-thlu-a, but al’-u-la, the all-container or the container of the stone par excel- 
lence. But the tubes also take their names from their “ mountains,” as desig- 
nated by color rather than by region or place names; that is, the yellow, the 
blue, the red, the white. Again, if the game is a strictly sacred or ceremonial 
peace game, the tubes become the four Ka-ka gods of the four regions; or rather, 
as occasion requires or as the priestly membership of the clans participating in 
the game determines, four of the many K4a-ka gods of the four regions. 
The tubes are more often plain than marked, though sometimes they are 
distinguished by bandings of marks incised and burnt, or simply scorched around 
them, precisely as are the bands across the four sho’-li-we canes or slips. 
Then I have seen one set on which the four principal medicine-animal men 
or gods were represented, with their appropriate cosmical elements, or rather, 
* 
