CULIN] SHINNY: ARAPAHO 
617 
The ball is either of wood, commonly a knot, or of buckskin. The 
wooden ball occurs chiefly on the Pacific coast and in the Southwest. 
The buckskin ball is generally used by the Eastern 
and Plains tribes, and is commonly flattened, with 
a median seam, the opposite sides being painted 
sometimes with different colors. The Navaho use a 
bag-shaped ball. The goals consist of two posts or 
stakes at the ends of the field, or two blankets spread 
side by side on the ground (Crows) ; again a single 
post is used (Menominee, Shuswap, Omaha) or 
lines drawn at the ends of the field over which the 
ball must be forced (Navaho, Eskimo, Omaha, 
Makah). The distance of the goals is not recorded, 
except among the Miwok (200 yards), the Omaha 
(300 yards), Mono (1,400 yards and return), and 
the Makah (200 yards). 
In a California form of the game the players 
were lined up along the course and struck their ball 
along the line, the game corresponding with one in 
which the ball was kicked, struck, or tossed, played 
by the same tribe. 
The game of shinny is frequently referred to in 
the myths. It was commonly played without any 
particular ceremony. Among the Makah it was 
played at the time of the capture of a whale, the 
ball being made from a soft bone of that animal. 
The shinny stick may be regarded as analogous to 
the club of the War Gods. 
ALGONQUIAN STOCK 
Arapano. Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation, 
Oklahoma. 
Mr James Mooney ®@ describes the woman’s game 
of gugahawat, or shinny, played with curved sticks 
and a ball like a baseball (figure 788), called gaa- 
wa’ha, made of buffalo hair and covered with buck- 
skin. 
Two stakes are set up as goals at either end of the 
ground, and the object of each party is to drive the ball 
through the goals of the other. Pach inning is a game. 
Mr Mooney gives the Cheyenne name of this game 
as ohonistuts. 
Fig. 788. Shinny ball 
and stick; Arapaho 
Indians, Oklahoma; 
from Mooney. 
«The Ghost-dance Religion. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
pt. 2, p. 964, 1896. 
