Battle Creek Meadows petroglyph about nine inches long. The eye-shaped area A is a smooth flat one eighth of an inch below the level of the rest of the rock surface. The grooves bounding it are more than one quarter inch deep and of V-shaped cross-section while the other markings are much shallower troughs with rounded bottoms some being quite vague. B, C, D, and E indicate deeper rounded depressions. F is a smooth and very uniform slightly concave area.
Chapter XXI
GAMES AND SOCIAL GATHERINGS
Heavy betting on games was the rule. Games were commonly played between neighboring villages or even on occasion with neighboring tribes. Gambling was an important element in these contests and large sums were bet. Sometimes nearly all of a person’s or even of a group’s possessions were at stake. Evaluation of the stakes in white man’s terms is difficult, but they are said frequently to have been of the order of several hundred dollars or even as much as a thousand dollars. Important games lasted more than one day—perhaps three or four days. The players caught brief rests only and were completely exhausted by the time the playing was over. Singing was the usual accompaniment and high quality rendition at games was much admired. Cheating was rare, maybe because it was supposed to bring subsequent bad luck.
Most games were guessing games. There was considerable variety in the character and number of gambling stones or wooden sticks used, the manner of shuffling and other details. The sticks were shuffled and then concealed in the hands of one or several players on one side. The opposition had to determine the location of the marked stick or the arrangement of several. There were many spectators and excitement ran high. Women occasionally participated along with the men who were the main contestants. Counting sticks might be supplied to each side in equal number at the beginning. More often, however, the sticks were all placed in a common pile at the outset, the successful side taking a counting stick with each win. These scoring sticks were taken and surrendered as the tide of the game changed until one side had all. The game was won at this point.
Ball games were played too. The ball was of buckskin stuffed with hair. The object was to kick the ball between the other team’s goal posts. Kicking ball races over given courses and back, or around a lake shore, were also indulged in. In some contests the men and youths on opposing sides would engage in restraining each other so that a number of individual or group wrestling bouts developed on the playing field.
Yana gambling bone, four inches long
There were foot races of distances either short or up to fifteen miles or so in length. Also archery contests and wrestling matches were held. In wrestling the object was to throw the opponent to the ground; tripping was not allowed. Contests in which heavy rocks were tossed, somewhat in the manner of today’s shot-put, and heavier rocks carried in competition over a designated line were other games in which the Atsugewi engaged.
Shinny was played by women and children as well as by men, but adult sexes played separately in all of our tribes except Yana. Among them only men participated in this game. Mountain Maidu had three players on a side; Atsugewi had five players. Straight shinny sticks curved at the striking end were used and the puck was a hide affair. Mountain Maidu used a double ball puck. An attempt was made to keep the puck in the air in play. The object, of course, was to get the puck to go between the opponents’ goal posts. The Yana used a puck of two bones linked by a string several inches long. Running with the puck on the stick as well as hitting, and throwing it down the field were permitted.
Children improvised a number of games in the same manner as our own children do today in copying their parents. They played house with limbless but dressed dolls, made and used toy bows and arrows, and made sling shots, too. They commonly tried juggling two stones in one hand, spun acorn tops by hand, and in some instances noise makers such as wooden buzzers and bull roarers were used. In play, loud noise was not condoned, however.