Primitive Games* 



By Everard F. im Thurn, M.A. 



{►^ ¥ i£g|HE natural history of games, in spite of a ve 



I&8 gCT ^ ew brilliant essays which have been product 



frrir'yH on the subject, chief of which is Dr. E. ] 



Tylor's Royal Institution Lecture of the 14th of Marc 



1879, published in the Fortnightly Review for May of th; 



year, to which essay I shall have frequent need to refe 



is still very obscure. The subje6l as a whole has not, t 



the best of my belief, been put even into rough orde 



When some two years ago, in connection with the game 



of the Indians of Guiana, I began to turn my attentio 



to the subject, and when I applied to various friends an 



correspondents, Dr. TyloR in England, Dr. GATSCHEl 



Mr. Henry Phillips, Jun., and Mr. MacFarlan; 



Davis in America, for information, all of these gav 



me more or less help, some very important help ; but 



found that the term " games," in its modern and usua 



intention, does not express with sufficient extension an< 



definition all that should be included under it whei 



used, as here, to express a subject for study. Yet it i; 



difficult to find, I have failed to find, a better term. One 



correspondent, in answer to my complaint of this difficulty 



* Some of the descriptions of Guiana games here given I have 

 already printed at various times in the Demerara Argosy ; but I think 

 they may well take their place in this collection of more permanent 

 form and I have even thought it well to republish them much in the 

 same words as those in which they were told before— for these narra- 

 tives were written down by me either as the games proceeded or within 

 an hour or two after, and therefore doubtless have some additional 

 vividness. 



