THE INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST. 345 



Cut bark tow. The workings and significances of these sticks is per- 

 fectly understood, and the game is either odd or even, or to guess iu 

 which of two piles a certain stick is hidden. Poole thus describes the 

 game among the Haida : 



One of the players, selecting a number of these pins, covers them up in a heap of 

 bark cut into fibre-like tow. Under cover of the bark he then divides the pins into 

 two parcels and having taken them out passes them several times from his right 

 baud to his left, or the contrary. While the player shuffles he repeats the word 

 I-E-Ly-Yah to a low monotonous chant or moan. The moment he finishes the in- 

 cantation, his opponent, who has been silently watching him, chooses the parcel 

 where he thinks the luck lies for odd or even. After which the second player takes 

 his innings, with his own pins and the same ceremonies. This goes on till one or the 

 other loses all his pins. That decides the game. * 



Another form of this is for the player to shuffle together all the pins 

 and count out seven. The game is to guess in which pile a certain pin 

 is, say the one carved like a beaver, or whale, or eagle. The fortunate 

 guesser gets one or more pins according to rule, or, if he fails, pays a 

 forfeit of so many pins. The Indians stoically sit for hours conning over 

 the melancholy chant, apparently indifferent to loss, gain, time, or hun- 

 ger, often losing everything he owns in the world without the slightest 

 expression of emotion. Poole mentions the case of a Haida chief who 

 continued playing for three days without eating a mouthful of food, but 

 perpetually losing. By the fourth day he had even parted with the 

 blanket on his back, when a woman of his tribe, taking pity on him, 

 loaned him her only blanket, and he renewed the contest, this time suc- 

 cessfully, not only winning back what he had lost, but finally getting 

 all his opponent's property, consisting of powder and shot, muskets, 

 revolvers, blankets, skins, paints, tobacco, fish, etc. * 



Two sets of gambling sticks are shown in Plate LXiir, Eigs. 335 and 

 336. For convenience of illustration they are laid out on the wrapper 

 of the wallet in which they are usually kept. The carving on some of 

 the more expensive sets is of the very highest order. 



Rum. — Impure, monstrously vile liquor has been the greatest curse 

 to the Indians of this region. Having furs and other valuable products 

 sought by the traders, the latter have been only too ready to debauch 

 and despoil them. In all the criminal record of shameless commercial 

 conquest of a rich and prosperous territory, no region has suffered more 

 unless it be the Aleutian Islands in earlier days. This can not be laid 

 at the door of any of the large commercial companies, for in the main 

 such a policy is suicidal to their own interests. With the small dealers, 

 the owners of small trading craft, those whose only thought and inter- 

 est has been the business in hand, the policy has been one of unscru- 

 pulous rum selling. Poole (1863) says : 



The so-called whiskey which is shamelessly sold to the Indians by traders along 

 the coast or even by certain unprincipled merchants of Victoria, contains very little 

 of what is wholesome or genuine liquor. What it really does contain is not generally 



' Poole, Queen Charlotte Islands, p. 319. 



