Games of the North American Indians, Volume 1: Games of Chance

Description

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. Any reader who enters into the letter and spirit of them will be instructed and enthralled. Volume 2 is equally absorbing in its elaboration of skills like archery, games like snow-snake and hoop and pole, and amusements like bean shooter and cat’s cradle. Originally published in 1907, Stewart Culin’s comprehensive work reveals a side of American Indian culture that is still 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. Dennis Tedlock, in an eloquent introduction, discusses his own experience of Indian games, showing that those described by Culin are still played today. A professor of English at State University of New York at Buffalo, Tedlock is the translator of Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry of the Zuni Indians, also available in a Bison Books edition.