“The thing that moved me most,” writes a traveler, describing a visit to an Indian gambling den, “was the spectacle in the furthest corner of the ‘shack’ of an Indian mother, with a pappoose in its baby-case peeping over her back.  There she stood behind an Indian gambler, to whom she had joined her life, painted and beaded and half intoxicated.  The Indian husband had already put his saddle in pawn to the white 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 it is simply impossible to tell which hand the bone is in.  In a moment he suddenly flings each closed hand on either side of him down into the outreaching hand of the player next to him.