Translation
Yĭ′hä′ä′ä′hi′hĭ′, Yĭ′hä′ä′ä′hi′hĭ′,
I throw the “button,”
I throw the “button.”
In his trance vision the author of this song entered a tipi and found it filled with a circle of his old friends playing the ga′qutit, or “hunt the button” game. This is a favorite winter game with the prairie tribes, and was probably more or less general throughout the country. It is played both by men and women, but never by the two sexes together. It is the regular game in the long winter nights after the scattered families have abandoned their exposed summer positions on the open prairie, and moved down near one another in the shelter of the timber along the streams. When hundreds of Indians are thus camped together, the sound of the drum, the rattle, and the gaming song resound nightly through the air. To the stranger there is a fascination about such a camp at night, with the conical tipis scattered about under the trees, the firelight from within shining through the white canvas and distinctly outlining upon the cloth the figures of the occupants making merry inside with jest and story, while from half a dozen different directions comes the measured tap of the Indian drum or the weird chorus of the gaming songs. Frequently there will be a party of twenty to thirty men gaming in one tipi, and singing so that their voices can be heard far out from the camp, while from another tipi a few rods away comes a shrill chorus from a group of women engaged in another game of the same kind.
The players sit in a circle around the tipi fire, those on one side of the fire playing against those on the other. The only requisites are the “button” or ga′qaä, usually a small bit of wood, around which is tied a piece of string or otter skin, with a pile of tally sticks, as has been already described. Each party has a “button,” that of one side being painted black, the other being red. The leader of one party takes the button and endeavors to move it from one hand to the other, or to pass it on to a partner, while those of the opposing side keep a sharp lookout, and try to guess in which hand it is. Those having the button try to deceive their opponents as to its whereabouts by putting one hand over the other, by folding their arms, and by putting their hands behind them, so as to pass the ga′qaä, on to a partner, all the while keeping time to the rhythm of a gaming chorus sung by the whole party at the top of their voices. The song is very peculiar, and well-nigh indescribable. It is usually, but not always or entirely, unmeaning, and jumps, halts, and staggers in a most surprising fashion, but always in perfect time with the movements of the hands and arms of the singers. The greatest of good-natured excitement prevails, and every few minutes some more excitable player claps his hands over his mouth or beats the ground with his flat palms, and gives out a regular war-whoop. All this time the opposing players are watching the hands of the other, or looking straight into their faces to observe every telltale movement of their features, and when one thinks he has discovered in which hand the button is, he throws out his thumb toward that hand with a loud “that!” Should he guess aright, his side scores a certain number of tallies, and in turn takes the button and begins another song. Should the guess be wrong, the losing side must give up an equivalent number of tally sticks. So the play goes on until the small hours of the night. It is always a gambling game, and the stakes are sometimes very large.
The first line of the song here given is an imitation of one of these gambling songs. Among the prairie tribes each song has one or perhaps two words with meaning bearing on the game, the rest of the song being a succession of unmeaning syllables. Among some other tribes, particularly among the Navaho, as described by Dr Washington Matthews, the songs have meaning, being prayers to different animal or elemental gods to assist the player.
As specimens of another variety of gambling songs, we give here two heard among the Paiute of Nevada when visiting the messiah in the winter of 1891–92. They have pretty tunes, very distinct from those of the prairie tribes, and were borrowed by the Paiute from the Mohave, in whose language they may have a meaning, although unintelligible to the Paiute.
Paiute gambling song
