SOME ABORIGINAL SITES ON MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 453 
Lying together, with this burial, was an interesting set of three astragali (Fig. 
63) identified by Prof. F. A. Lucas as belonging to bison, elk, and deer, respectively. 
These astragali had been carefully smoothed in places and are of the kind found 
by us on the river from the Rhodes Place northward. The reader is doubtless 
aware that unworked astragali, or knuckle-bones, are very commonly found in 
aboriginal sites, and that such bones were used in games, but the finding of astragali 
in aboriginal sites in the United States, carefully smoothed as to certain parts to 
facilitate their use, presumably as dice, is unusual and possibly has not been 
reported before. 
We are indebted to Mr. Charles C. Willoughby for the information that the 
only worked astragalus (with sides ground) that he recalls in the Peabody Museum, 
Cambridge, Mass., belongs to an ox and recently was obtained from Indians of 
Patagonia. 
Mr. Culin ' figures the astragalus of a bison which was used as a die by Papago 
Indians of Arizona. This astragalus, however, shows no workmanship. 
Mr. Culin, who was on the point of starting on a protracted journey, kindly 
furnished, at our request, the following note as to worked astragali. Subsequently, 
after his departure, he sent a second note on the subject, which also we include. 
Presumably, had it been possible for us to reach Mr. Culin, the two notes, perhaps, 
with modification, would have appeared as one. 
Mr. Culin in his first note says: 
* [ have carefully examined the worked astragalus from Pecan Point, Arkan- 
sas. I have never seen or heard of worked astragali being employed for any pur- 
pose among the North American Indians. Unworked knuckle-bones, either small 
ones of sheep or deer, or large bones of the ox were used recently as dice by a 
number of tribes in widely separated localities. I have described the astragalus of 
a bison collected by Dr. W. J. McGee, from the Papago who employed it in a game. 
I have collected knuckle-bones used as dice from several tribes, notably the Pomo 
and Maidu in California, who both have two games, one played with the knuckle- 
bones of sheep, goats or deer, and the other with a single large bone from an ox. 
These games are counted with sticks and are played like the stick dice game, but 
it is not unlikely that they were borrowed from the Spaniards. 
“Тһе Indians used small unworked knuckle-bones, as well as other small 
heavy bones, as weights on whirling toys, being tied in the middle of a sinew cord. 
It may be that the objects you found were used as dice. It is possible, but the 
evidence is inconclusive.” 
Mr. Culin's second note is as follows : 
“The only worked knuckle-bone [astragalus] in the Field Museum of Natural 
History [Chicago, Ш.Д is a single perforated specimen of medium size (llama 7) from 
the necropolis of Caldera, in Chile. It is associated with many other bone objects, 
flat strips of bone, all similarly perforated, as if for suspension, and pretty certainly 
' Stewart Culin. “Games of the North American Indians," p. 148. Twenty-fourth An. Rep. 
Bur. Am. Ethn. 
