The Sioux who have been long in the south do not speak like their northern relatives. For example, they say Lakota instead of Dakota. The northern bands laugh at their southern brothers, and think they have been trying to become different. Many Sioux boys and girls are in the schools at the agencies learning to write and to read in English. They are very quick to learn and can draw very well. The Sioux women make such beautiful beadwork that a white woman thought it wise to teach them to make lace of the choicest kind. The young squaws and some of the Indian boys have learned to make this rare point lace with care and wonderful neatness. They cannot use it; but the money they get for it buys food and clothes for them and their relatives. INDIAN GAMES The Dakotas play their ball games in the hot moons of the summer and in the cold moons of the winter. The prairies give wide room for the games in summer, and the ice on the many lakes serves as winter ball grounds for them. Large spaces are needed, for there are many players. There is only one ball, but there are as many bats as players. The bats are about thirty inches long, with a loop at the lower end; this is laced across with deer sinew, to make a pocket in which the ball is caught and thrown. The center of the ball ground is chosen. Stakes are set many feet away from the center, on opposite sides, as the bounds for the game. Two parties of equal numbers are chosen. Each party chooses its own leader or chief. The chief of one side drops his ball into the pocket of his bat and tosses it toward the center ground between the stakes. Both sides rush toward the place where the ball may fall, each brave hoping he may be the lucky one to catch it; whoever gets the ball tosses it with his bat into the air toward his side of the grounds. Then the screaming, howling mob of players tears across the field to the place where the ball may fall again. The ball is thrown and contended for until one side succeeds in throwing it beyond the bounds of the opposite party. The prizes for the winning side have hung all this time on the prize pole; and dangling in the air, waiting the finish of the game, are the knives, tomahawks, blankets, moccasins, fine buffalo and deerskin robes which the winners will divide among themselves. Indian girls play the same game and with nearly as much vigor and skill as their brothers. Always, at these games, the old men and squaws sit or stand at the outside of the ball ground, a mass of interested spectators. The ball game in some form, it seems, has been the national game on American soil since before American history began. The plum-stone game was and is yet played by the northern Indian tribes. The Dakotas call it kansookootaype, which simply means “shooting plum-stones.” Each plum-stone is painted black on one side and red on the other side. The stones are also cut on one side to make them of different value according to the meaning of the marks cut.