001: Games of the North American Indians, Vol. 1: Games of Chance

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Description

Games figured prominently in the myths of North American Indian tribes, and also in their ceremonies for bringing rain and fertility and combating misfortune. In his classic study, at first published in 1907 as a report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Stewart Culin divided the games played by Indian women and men into two general types.

Volume 1 of this Bison Books edition takes up games of chance, involving guessing and throwing dice. Culin used to be in a position to show that the games of North American tribes were remarkably similar in method and purpose. He found that games the use of dice of quite a lot of materials—wood, cane, bone, animal teeth, fruit stones—existed among 130 tribes belonging to 30 linguistic groups. The games are described in detail in this volume, and so are the preferred guessing games drawing on sticks and wooden disks and involving hidden objects.

Volume 2 is just as absorbing in its elaboration of skills like archery and games like snow-snake, in which darts or javelins were hurled over snow or ice. Played all through the continent north of Mexico were the hoop and pole game and its miniature, solitaire form referred to as ring and pin, here illustrated. With equal authority Culin discusses ball games: racket, shinny, football, and hot ball. He includes accounts of “minor amusements”: shuttlecock, tipcat, quoits, popgun, bean shooter, and cat’s cradle.

Originally published in 1907, Stewart Culin’s comprehensive work reveals a side of American Indian culture still only rarely shown. An experienced observer, Culin used to be curator of ethnology at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and the writer of books about games in other cultures.

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