Note 6 — Front matter

Mr. Gardiner writes in a letter to Dr. G. Brown Goode under date of May 2, 1895: “The game of Wa-wee was bought in St. Lucia, but I found it in use also in Barbados and Martinique among the negroes. As far as I could ascertain, they supposed it very old—came from their fathers. I supposed it came from Africa; but no one seemed to know anything about it. It is a regular gambling game.” In regard to the method of play, he says: “As near as I can remember, each of the small side holes has a given number of beans put in, each man taking one side and one large hole as a goal. The beans are taken up from one hole in the hand and dropped in a certain order in the other holes, going round the whole circle. If the last one drops in a hole which has a certain number of beans in it (I don’t remember the number), he picks that lot up and goes on. The object is to land the most beans of your own and taken from your adversary in the end holes.”