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Evidence in Mende
1 pieces of evidence found.
Id DLP.Evidence.1895
Type Ethnography
Game Ti
Date 1924-12-01 - 1925-03-31
Rules 2x6 board with two stores. Four counters per hole. Sowing occurs in an anti-0clockwise direction. In the first and second moves, players may choose to drop as many counters as they wish into the holes they are sowing into. From the third turn on, the players must sow one counter at a time. The hole from which a sowing began is skipped if the sowing goes all the way around the board. When the final counter lands in a hole containing one or two people, thus causing it to contain two or three, these are captured. Any previous holes, in an unbroken sequence, also containing two or three counters, are captured. A move of a single counter cannot capture. When a player's row is empty, the opponent must sow into their row if it is possible to do so. Play ends when one player's row is empty, and the opponent claims all of the remaining counters. If there are no more legal moves and neither player's rows are empty, the players split the remaining counters. The player with the most counters wins.
Content "For adults there is the game called " Ti *' in Monde, or " Warri ”
in Creole -English, which with variations is spread all through
Africa, though where it originated, or to trace its possible lines of
migration, in my present state of knowledge I hesitate to do.
Tl.
There are two players, and the game is played on a board
with twelve holes, six on a side. The boards are commonly on
pedestals nine inches or a foot high, and are often ornamented.
Usually but not invariably there is an additional bole at each end
for captured pieces.
In default of a board the game may be played in holes dug in
the ground, and in one Temne town I saw the holes had been made
in a smooth rock. Evidently in that town there were some
ardent devotees of the game.
1 Each hole represents a " town,” and in each four seeds or
pebbles are placed.
2 Moves are from left to right on the player’s side.
3 The player begins on his own side taking all the men from
one town and dropping them into his own and his opponent’s
towns in strict succession.
4 In his first and second move the player has a certain liberty
of action. He can drop the men into successive town singly or
more as he pleases.
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MENDE GAMES
5 In subsequent moves all the men must be taken from the
town he elects to play from, which must be his side, and must
be dropped one by one into successive towns without missing
any. If he is moving more than eleven men he misses his starting
town on coming round to it,
6 When the move ends and there are two or three men in the
last town men were deposited at, or in each of the last towns
occupied in the move, the player looks back to see what men he
can take. The player captures all men in each of the last towns
moved into back to but not induding the nearest town in which
there are not either two or three men. Such town acts as a stop
if it contains more than three men, only one, or, none at all.
He cannot take out a man lidng by himself because he has himself
just played it into an empty town which he found empty on the
way. This acts as a stop.
7 It is not permitted to take out the men and count them
before beginning to play (so as to be sure how far they will
reach).
8 A single man moving cannot capture.
9 Captured men are removed from the board.
10 The game ends when the player has cleared his opponent’s
side of the board. He wins all the men remaining on his side of
the board.
11 If the player moves in such a way as to leave no men on
his side of ^e board his opponent is compelled if possible to
play so as to put a man across. If the opponent is in such a
position that he cannot do this that opponent clears the
board. " Migeod 1926: 281-283.
Confidence 100
Ages Adult
Source Migeod, F. 1926. A View of Sierra Leone. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., Ltd.
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