CULIN] HOOP AND POLE: APACHE 449 
on. The side that hits all the rings first has the right to roll the rings 
at the arrows. The arrows that have been shot are stuck up in a row, 
and the winning side rolls the rings at them. Each time that the 
ring hits an arrow it wins that arrow. 
The little bundle of bark is held with the guiding forefinger on the 
bow, tossed into the air, and shot at in lieu of the ring. In another 
form of the game the bundle of elm bark or the rings are buried in 
the sand and shot at with arrows. The game is to hit the concealed 
bundle or ring so that the arrow shall be held by it. The game is 
called topagahagi, rings; the little bundle of bark, otawahi; the bow, 
metaha, and the arrows, owipanoni. 
The game is played about the house. People believe there is a 
spirit of sickness, Apenaweni, always hovering about to get into the 
lodges, and this game is encouraged in order to keep it away. 
ATHAPASCAN STOCK 
Apacur (Cuiricanua). Arizona. , 
Mr E. W. Davis gave the writer the following account of a game 
played by Geronimo’s band at St Augustine, Florida, in 1889: 
Another game which interested me was played with hoops and poles, and, as 
I remember, always by two men. The hoops were ordinary pieces of flexible 
wood, tied into a circle of about 12 inches with leather thongs, and the poles 
were reeds 10 or 12 feet long. A little heap of hay was placed on the ground 
and parted in the center. The players stood about 15 feet away, and each in 
his turn would roll his hoop into the little valley in the hay mound. Waiting 
until the hoop had nearly reached the hay he would toss the staff through the 
hay, the object being to pass the hoop so that it might encircle the end of the 
pole when the hoop reached the hay. This game was very difficult, and misses 
were more frequent than scores. 
Apacue (Jtcarmia). Northern New Mexico. 
Mr James Mooney,’ in The Jicarilla Genesis, describes the wheel- 
and-stick game as having been made by Yolkatistsun, the White-bead 
woman, for her two sons, children by her of the Sun and the Moon. 
She told them not to roll the wheel toward the north. They played 
for three days, when the Sun’s son rolled the wheel toward the east, 
south, and west. His brother then persuaded him to roll it toward 
the north. An adventure with an owl follows, and the two boys were 
set to perform a succession of dangerous feats, which accomplished, 
they went to live in the western ocean. 
Apacue (Mescautero). Fort Sumner, New Mexico. 
Col. John C. Cremony ® says: 
There are some games to which women are never allowed access. Among 
these is one played with the poles and a hoop. The former are generally about 
«The American Anthropologist, v. 11, p. 201, 1898. 
° Life Among the Apaches, p. 302, San Francisco, 1868. 
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