878 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS _ [nru. ann. 24 
mother, or ho’-ta, maternal grandmother. This is a play on words as well 
as a symbolic name, ho being the yucca, and Ho’-tethl-okya being the god- 
dess of yucca fiber and of the primeval bowstrings. It may therefore safely 
be inferred that these two yucca splints represent respectively the arrow and 
the bow, and that the bunch of straw splints represents the tribal bunch or 
quiver of arrows. 
In addition to the above-mentioned objects there are the staffs of direction, 
or the feeling staffs or divining wands, one of which is carried by the represent- 
ative or guesser of either side. The name of one of these staffs is te’-hiithl-na- 
kya thlam-me, from te, region, direction, hiithla, to seek understanding, or breast 
feeling, and thlam-me, slat or wand made for. These wands are now simple 
slender round rods or sticks, between 2 and 4 feet in length, very slightly flat- 
tened, and bent near the tip. Formerly, however, they were more elaborately 
formed, somewhat longer, more flattened and bent at the tips, and quite elabo- 
rately scored, or else wrapped with a continuous platting of fine rawhide, and 
were intended, it would seem, to represent ceremonially surviving forms of the 
‘atlatl The guesser, when passing to and fro between the two stations, carries 
one of them in the right hand, held obliquely over the left arm in which 
the tubes and counters are clasped in the corner of his mantle. When using 
it, he holds it extended over the tubes, moving its tip rapidly over first one 
and then another of these tubes, in time to the song of the hiding shamans, 
until he and it together decide which tube to upset with a sudden sidewise stroke 
or flip of the wand. There is still another use to which these staffs are put, 
indicating their supposedly conscious nature. While the guesser for the time 
being is feeling with his staff, his opponent, who, as aid of the official hider of 
the content, knows under which of the tubes it is hidden, similarly sways his 
staff over the tubes, thus seeking to mislead and confuse the movements of the 
other. 
Belonging properly to the movable parts of the game, for it is sometimes ear- 
ried to and fro between the two stations, is the pa’-u-nu-kya-wem’-ma, covering 
robe, the mantle of invisibility. It is a buffalo robe or a very large serape, 
which is held over the hider by four assistants, also official, of his side, when he 
places the four tubes on their respective mountains of sand and within one of 
them hides the ball or other content. 
In endeavoring to guess, the youth either makes a great variety of passes over 
the tubes with his slat or staff of direction, poising it over one or another as 
though to divine with it, or beating the air with it over the tops of the tubes, 
both in time and out of time, though regularly, to the hiding incantation, until, 
so suddenly that his motion can scarcely be seen, he switches one of the tubes 
over. If his guess prove wrong, he continues the motion uninterruptedly until 
he decides to tip another tube over. Or, again, he may simply hold his staff 
over his arm; may stand gazing intently and motionless, muffled up to his chin 
in his serape, now and then making a feint at knocking one of the tubes over 
with his foot, until he finally spurns the one he has decided on with the toe of 
his right foot; then, if wrong, he proceeds as before. 
If the first tube toppled over contains the ball, a sweeping stake is won, the 
full count of all the tubes, which is the same as the full count of all the canes 
in the sho’-li-we game, and the side of the fortunate guesser is allowed to retain 
the tubes and have another guess. 
If he fails at the first and wins the second guess, he wins the count of the par- 
ticular tube overturned, minus that of the tube he overturned without finding 
the ball, and so on; so that, unless his second guess happens to catch the ball 
in a tube of high count, he generally forfeits instead of winning; and his ease 
