66 
GAMES AND AMUSEMENTS 
Articles probably used in games and amusements consist of toy pot- 
tery vessels, disks of stone, earthenware and potsherds, bone units for cup 
and pin games, and flattened deer phalanges, 
children's toys and amusements 
Small pottery vessels, such as those seen in Plate II, figures 4 and 5, 
were probably made by children in imitation of their elders, and used 
as toys. The spoonlike object made of earthenware in figure 3 in the 
same plate, and the small earthenware figurine in Plate XV, figure 30, 
probably also were toys. Astragali of the deer may have been used as 
buzzers, as among Plains Indians (Culin, 2:751). Whistle-like objects, 
made by breaking a hole through the front of middle phalanges of the 
deer, may also have been used for amusement. 
GAMES 
There are a number of objects that were probably used in games. 
It is doubtful if any of the deer astragali, found here, were used as 
dice in a game; at least none of them shows any polish due to handling, 
or artificial modification. Considering their employment by other Indians 1 
it seems strange that their utilization did not occur to the people here. 
No cylinders of bone or antler, corresponding to those of wood, used 
in what is called the “stick game,” 2 or as counting sticks (Culin, 2:230) 
in certain other Indian games, were found. Four metacarpal or metatarsal 
bones of the hare, however, found together in a clam shell, and polished 
on the shaft and distal articular ends, may have been used as counters; 
Culin speaks of radial bones of birds being used for the purpose (2:156). 
Some of the longer bone tubes considered as beads may have been 
used in a game. 
Disks 
Small disks were chipped and rubbed from stone and potsherds and 
modelled from pottery clay. There is also a charred wooden disk-like 
object. 
Eighteen disks, mostly with irregular peripheries, are made of stone; 
three of them being merely chipped into shape and the rest having the 
edges more or less smoothed by grinding (See Plate XV, figures 12 and 13, 
showing degrees of finish). Twelve are made of shale, one of slate, and 
six appear to be of limestone, one of the latter being derived from a round, 
flattened, waterworn pebble. They vary in diameter from | inch to 2^ 
inches and are from ^ to ^ inch thick. None of the disks is perforated 
and none of them, also, bears markings, like some from Huron sites ( See 
Boyle, 8, Figures 25, 26). 
^ulin (2) illustrates two astragali used in games (figs. 155 and 169). Elsewhere (Boyle, 10: 22) he says: 
“The astragalus, I believe, was employed in games before white contact, but even here the evidence is not conclu- 
sive.” Moore found astragali of a deer, an elk, and a bison, rubbed to an almost cuboidal shape, probably for use as 
dice, in a grave, in Missiseipi county, Arkansas (See 5, fig. 63). 
2 See Culin, 2: 228, 229, 233-238, 240-252, 254, and 256-266. We know from Nicolas Perrot (p. 46) that a form of a 
“stick game” was in use among the Hurons. 
