collection of all, and put them into little bags, which they
carry about with them; and, if any one has the reputation of being
lucky, _that is_, in the opinion of these people, of having a familiar
spirit more powerful, or more inclined to do good, they never fail to
make him keep near him who holds the dish, they even go a great way to
fetch him; and, if through age or any infirmity he cannot walk, they
will carry him on their shoulders.

There is a game played by the Miamis, which is called the _game of
straws_. These straws are small reeds, about the size of wheat straws,
and about six inches long. They take a parcel, which are commonly two
hundred and one, and always an odd number. After having shuffled them
in well together, making a thousand contortions, and invoking the
genii, they separate them with a kind of awl, or a pointed bone, into
parcels of ten each: every one takes his own at a venture, and he that
happens to get the parcel with eleven, gains a certain number of
points that are agreed on. The whole game is sixty or eighty **** They
have two games more, the first of which is called the _game of the
bat_. They play at it with a ball, and sticks bent, and ending with a
kind of racket. They set up two posts, which serve for bounds, and
which are distant from each other according to the number of players.
For instance, if they are eighty, there is half a league distance
between the two posts. The players are divided into two bands, which
have each their post. Their business is to strike the ball to the post
of the adverse party without letting it fall to the ground, and
without touching it with the hand; for, in either of these cases, they
lose the game, unless he who makes the fault repairs it by striking
the ball at one blow to the post, which is often impossible. These
savages are so dexterous at catching the ball with their bats, that
sometimes one game will last many days together.

The game described by Mackenzie, and called the _game of the platter_,
is the same game, I think, that Charlevoix calls the "Game of the
Bones." Of the passion for gaming of the Beaver Indians, see his
Journal, 149. The same author (page 311), describes another game
played by the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. It was played by two
persons, each of whom had a "bundle of about fifty small sticks,
neatly polished, of the size of a quill, and five inches long; a
certain number of these sticks had red lines round them; and as