Oral Communication by Dr. Reg Crowshoe

"One time there was a story I heard from the Old Timers. One man got sick, and when he got sick his spirit traveled to the Spirit World but they wouldn't let him in. So the Spirit World challenged him to a game. A guessing game where they would hold something in the hands and guess which hand it was and if he won then he goes back. If he loses he was going into the Spirit World. So we believe that because he won the game he got sick. I mean his sickness got better so he didn't die from his sickness and he survived and those are the kind of challenges we believe in.

Now that challenge that I just talked about was called the feather game. Now, the feather game is almost the same as the hand game or the stick game. The stick game was a challenge between two teams. Two groups of people and they had four bones... two that were marked and two that were plain and they had two people to hide those bones and each person would get one marked and one unmarked bone and the same with the other person and the other team would have a chance to guess. So if he's facing the two and he points straight down the middle then he's saying that then he's saying the bones that you guess on are both on the inside so on this persons left and on this persons right that's where when you point this way (to the center between) but if you point that way (to the left) then you're saying you're guessing both to be on the left side and if you point that way (to the right) then they're both hiding on the right side and depending on how many. If they show their bone and you win one and the other one was hiding on the other side then they get a chance to keep going and playing in the game but if you win both of them, then you're given two sticks for winning that chance. If you only win one then you only get one stick. So they play with about ten sticks on each side and whoever wins all the twenty sticks the first ten from the other side plus their own ten those are the winners of the hand game"

Teacher "She's got the sticks so thats what you're looking for. So when you're ready, show your bones like this [hands out] but your hands really small. "
"So remember, you have outside, middle and right."
Student 1 "Middle!"
Teacher "Middle, you like middle, show it, you got her!"
Student 2 "I'll show the bone"
Teacher "You got both of them - I guess schools over! Good try!"