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Evidence for French Wari
1 pieces of evidence found.
Id DLP.Evidence.706
Type Ethnography
Location Barbados
Date 1932-01-01 - 1932-12-31
Rules 2x6 board.
Four counters in each hole.
Moves begin from any hole in the player's row and sowing proceeds in an anti-clockwise direction. If the final counter of a sowing lands in an occupied hole, these counters are lifted and sowing continues. If the final counter lands in an empty hole, any counters in the opposite hole are taken and the turn ends.
Content "The form of wari that has been described in the preceding paragraphs is called "English wari" in Barbados and the other islands where the English tradition is predominant, but it is termed "French Wari" in the French-speaking islands. The fact that there must be a "French wari" played on the English islands, and an "English wari" on the French-speaking ones seemed a logical conclusion, and this for of lesser prestige was first encountered and learned at Barbados. It is a simpler form of the game than that which has just been described, and the rules are as follows. The cups that appertain to each player, the manner of moving the seeds, and the object of the game, are identical with the Ashanti-Djuka-Island form that has been last described. It is the manner of the play that differs. The first player, taking the four seeds from any one of his cups, plays them about the board and then, continuing to move, takes the seeds in the cup in which his last seed has dropped, and distributes these. This continues until his last seed falls into an empty cup, in which case he takes the seeds that are in the cup opposite the one in which he finishes his play, no matter how few or how numerous they may be. If there are no seeds in the cup opposite the one where he ends play, he captures nothing. ...It makes no difference if he ends on his own side or that of his opponent, he captures the seeds in the cup opposite the empty one in which he ends his play. He must begin his play, however, from some cup on his own side of the board. The winner is the player who at the end of the game has twenty-five or more seeds. I do not know whether this form of the game is played on the islands at which I touched other than Barbados and St. Lucia; Martinique and Guadeloupe were not visited" Herskovits 1932: 32.
Confidence 100
Source Herskovits, M. J. 1932. 'Wari in the New World.' The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 62: 23–37.
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