Ritual magic games of the Dogrib

Abstract

The article deals with the two ancient games of Native American people, which have come out of the tradition by the middle of the 20^th century. The game-reality of these is, in fact, a representation of mythological conceptualization. Acquisition of knowledge about the future from the game-leader by the community was the main goal of both games. The article is based on the field materials by Canadian ethnologists J. Helm and N. Lurie collected in 1962. The author performs a brief structural data analysis of the games, dwells upon the question of their social role, reveals a hypothetical relation between the games and hunting cult.