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,
originally published in 1907 as a report of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, Stewart Culin divided the games played by Indian men and
women into two general types.
Volume 1 of this Bison Books edition takes up games of chance,
involving guessing and throwing dice. Culin was able to show that
the games of North American tribes were remarkably similar in
method and purpose. He found that games using dice of various
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 popular 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 throughout the continent north of
Mexico were the hoop and pole game and its miniature, solitaire
form called 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 was curator of ethnology at the
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and the author of books
about games in other cultures.
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