So the sports of
the Siouan Indians were both diversional and divinatory, and the latter
were highly organized in a manner reflecting the environment of the
tribes, their culture-status, their belief, and especially their
disposition toward bloodshed; for their most characteristic ceremonials
were connected, genetically if not immediately, with warfare and the
chase.
Among many of the Siouan tribes, games of chance were played habitually
and with great avidity, both men and women becoming so absorbed as to
forget avocations and food, mothers even neglecting their children; for,
as among other primitive peoples, the charm of hazard was greater than
among the enlightened. The games were not specially distinctive, and were
less widely differentiated than in certain other Indian stocks. The sport
or game of chungke stood high in favor among the young men in many of the
tribes, and was played as a game partly of chance, partly of skill; but
dice games (played with plum stones among the southwestern prairie tribes)
were generally preferred, especially by the women, children, and older
men. The games were partly, sometimes wholly, diversional, but generally
they were in large part divinatory, and thus reflected the hazardous
occupations and low culture-status of the people. One of the evils
resulting from the advent of the whites was the introduction of new games
of chance which tended further to pervert the simple Siouan mind; but in
time the evil brought its own remedy, for association with white gamblers
taught the ingenuous sortilegers that there is nothing divine or sacred
about the gaming table or the conduct of its votaries.
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