INDIAN GAMES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1579, 4 March 1887, Page 3

INDIAN GAMES.

In a very interesting paper contributed to the Bulletin, of the Essex Institute of Salem, Mr A M'Farland Davis writes on some of the games of the Indian tribes of North America. Several of these are deecribed at considerable length, mostly from the early Jesuit records. Lacrosse is the first and most important of theße; it was, as it is now, purely a game of skill, but it was a contest of grave importance, not a mere pastime, and was domesticated over a wide ext9nt of territory. Another very widely-spread game was "platter," which was played with dice, and was wholly a game of chance; the third was a game of chance and skill combined, and in some of its forms was exceedingly complicated. It was called "straws," because a bundle of straws was divided, the game turning on the odd or even numbers in the heaps. It resembles the celebrated Chinese game of fantan, which forms one of the principal sources of revenue of one Europsan colony in the East Sundry other games not so widely spread as these are also described by Mr Davis. The extraordinary importance attached to these games, the strange and solemn ceremonies with which they were frequently initiated, give them an interest in the eyes of anthropologists beyond that of mere curiosity.