e professional
gambler for his $5.00, and it was not five minutes before the white
gambler had the saddle and $5.00 both. Then, when they had nothing else
left to bet, so intense was their love for gambling, they began to put
themselves in pawn, piecemeal, saying: 'I'll bet you my whole body.'
That means 'I'll put myself in pawn to you as your slave to serve you as
you will for a specified time.'

"So it was that this Indian mother stood leaning back wearily against
the wall, half drunk and dazed with smoke and heat, when all at once the
Indian who lived with her said to her in Indian: 'Put in the baby for a
week. Then pay-day will come.' It was done. The baby was handed over.
That is what civilization has done for the Indian. Its virtues escapes
him; its vices inoculate him."

One of these vices is gambling. The Indian is kept poor all the year
round and plucked of every pinfeather. That is the principal reason why
he steals, not only to reimburse himself for loss, but also to avenge
himself upon the white man, who he knows well enough has constantly
robbed him.

Gambling, as witnessed in the Indian camp at night, is a very different
affair from the cache. The tom-tom notifies all that the bouts with
fortune are about to begin. During the game the music is steadily kept
up. In the intervals between the games the players all sing. Crowds
surround the camp. When a man loses heavily the whole camp knows it in a
few minutes, and not infrequently the wife rushes in and puts a stop to
the stake by driving her chief away. Gambling is the great winter game.
It is often played from morning till night, and right along all night
long. Cheating and trickery of every sort are practiced.

"Lizwin" or "mescal" are the two drinks made by the Indians themselves,
one from corn and the other from the "maguay" plant. The plains Indians
drink whisky. To gamble is to drink, and to drink is to lose. Gambling
is the hardest work that you can persuade an Indian to do, unless
threatened by starvation. Different tribes gamble differently.

The Comanches, undoubtedly, have by far the most exciting and
fascinating gambling games. The Comanche puzzles, tricks and problems
are also decidedly superior to those of any other nation. The gambling
bone is used by the Comanches. The leader of the game holds it up before
the eyes of all, so that all can see it; he then closes his two hands
over it, and manipulates it so dexterously in his fingers that