460 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS _[ETH. ann. 24 
Speaking of the Navaho, Maj. E. Backus, U. S. Army, wrote as 
follows, in Schooleraft: 4 
Their favorite game consists in throwing a lance or pole at a rolling hoop, 
in which they are said to exhibit much skill. I have never seen the game 
played and can not describe its details. 
Sarsit. British Columbia. 
Rey. E. F. Wilson ” gives the following account: 
The Sarcees, like most other wild Indians, are inveterate gamblers. They will 
gamble everything -away—ponies, teepees, blankets, leggings, moccasins—till 
they have nothing left but their breech-clout. In my report of the Blackfoot 
last year I mentioned the use of a little hoop or wheel for gambling purposes. 
I find that the Sarcees also use this, and two of them showed me how they play 
the game. A little piece of board, if procurable, or two or three flattened 
sticks, laid one on the other, are put for a target, at a distance of 18 or 20 
feet from the starting-point, and the two players then take their places beside 
each other; one has the little wheel in his left hand, an arrow in his right; 
the other one has only an arrow. The play is to roll the wheel and to deliver 
the two arrows simultaneously, all aiming at the mark which has been set up. 
If the wheel falls over on one of the arrows, it counts so many points, according 
to the number of beads on the wire spoke of the wheel that touch the arrow. 
Nothing is counted unless the little wheel falls on one of the arrows. The 
articles for which they play are valued at so many points each. A blanket is 
worth, perhaps, 10 points, a pony, 50, and so on. 
Taku. Stuart lake, British Colum- 
bia. 
The Reverend Father A. G. Morice °¢ 
describes the game of keilapes, encir- 
cling willow, or arrow target-shoot- 
ing, named from the implement re- 
quired for its performance: 
This is a sort of open work disk or wheel 
[figure 600], principally made of willow-bark 
strings, though the frame of the hoop is 
composed of three or four switches very 
closely fitting each other and kept in posi- 
HG. 600.) Hoop for ame, Ualallietn: tion by a strong lacing of strips of bark. 
dians, Stuart lake, British Columbia; Radiating from the axis, or heart, as it is 
from Morice. ealled, are four cords of similar material, 
stretched so as to form a cross. As this 
was formerly the great national game of the Carriers, I may be pardoned for 
giving its rules in full. 
A team of five or six men was matched against another of presumed equal 
force, and after each player had been provided with a given number of pointed 
arrows, the disk was set wheeling away by one team to the cry of tlép! flép! 
«Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes 
of the United States, pt. 4, p. 214, Philadelphia, 1856. 
> Fourth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada. Report of the Fifty-eighth 
Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, p. 246, London, 188%. 
¢ Notes on the Western Dénés. Transactions of the Canadian Institute, y. 4, p. 113, 
Toronto, 1895, 
