380 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS  [erH. ann. 24 
In the two parties to the play there are but two actual players, if the ana-wa- 
kwe, guessers, may be exclusively sq called. They are chosen from their appro- 
priate clans by the clan priests of the game, but are generally experienced old 
hands or players, and whether middle-aged or young, they are always known as 
the tsa-wa-ki, youths of the game. They carry the tubes, and counters drawn, to 
and fro between the stations. When one side loses, the youth of the other side 
who has come over and made the winning guess, takes the tubes up in the 
corner of bis mantle or in his left arm, grasps the counters won and yielded 
by the accountant, in his left hand, and, bearing his staff of direction in the 
right hand, held over all, proceeds very deliberately to his own side, where, 
with the accountant, or keeper, of his side, who both keeps count and remembers 
under which tube the ball of his side is hidden, he is concealed under the robe 
of invisibility or hiding, while together they set the tubes up in the sand 
mountain or mountains and secrete under one of them the ball. The robe is 
held over them by the two drum masters, and meanwhile the priest shaman of 
the game, who is himself an old and celebrated player, makes the invocations 
and with his assistants sings the incantations of this part of the game. In 
addition to these functionaries, who are the owners or guardians of the game for 
their clans (I believe for life), there is a party, usually very large, of singers 
and dancers for each side. They are composed of all sorts of young or lusty 
middle-aged members of the clans of their respective sides. and they sing, shout, 
Sp) alo 
aes 
Fig. 497. Fig. 498. 
Fig. 497. Sand mounds with hiding tubes; Zuni Indians. Zuni, New Mexico; from sketch by 
Mr Frank Hamilton Cushing. 
Fig. 498. Sand mound with hiding tubes; Zuni Indians, Zuni, New Mexico; from sketch by 
Mr Frank Hamilton Cushing. 
dance frantically, yell defiance, and taunt and jeer their opponents while the 
guessing is going on, trying to confuse the guessers or to make the stone stay 
hidden. When one side is gaining, the dancers of that side generally succeed in 
driving those of the opposite side out of the plaza; but when the tides of the 
game vary, both sides are usually drumming, dancing, singing, shouting. and, not 
infrequently, fighting at once. The game begins at about 2 or 38 o'clock of the 
appointed day—that is, the fourth day from the final announcement, the fourth 
day of the retirement of the functionaries of the game and of their fasting 
and purging. It usually lasts all the afternoon, all night, and not infrequently 
until late in the forenoon of the day following; but these dance parties, small 
at first, are continually augmented, and keep up their activity and pandemo- 
nium until forced from sheer exhaustion to give up. Some of the strongest 
endure throughout, but at the end can searcely speak above dry whisperings 
and are cadaverous and so exhausted that their feet have to be jerked from 
the ground in dancing. The songs sung and the taunts yelled are not all 
traditional, but most of them are, and they are always allusive to the myths 
of the game and affairs that were connected with it. There are many myths 
regarding the game. Hach tribal division possessing an i’-yan-ko-lo-we has 
its own account of its own form of the game, while the general myths of its 
origin are involved in the tradition of all the four tribal games played at 
creation times by The Two, each as played in some particular manner, as the 
