t their books and uttered
predictions as of yore, although their power to control their fulfilment
had vanished forever. Ancient Mexico thus furnishes us with an interesting
and instructive explanation of the origin of divinatory practices,
prognostication at birth, etc. It shows us that, under the ancient form of
established government, the sign of the date of a child's birth actually
did control his future destiny, while it was unquestionably in the power
of the priesthood, not only to predict his future, but also to exert a
favorable or unfavorable influence upon it.

The above facts help us to understand the origin not only of divination,
propitiation and the belief in the influence of day-signs, but also of the
native games which became popular after the Conquest, when their original
use and meaning had become obsolete.

Deferring further discussion of this interesting matter I will but draw
attention to Mr. Stewart Culin's important study of "American Indian
Games,"(43) which clearly establishes their "interrelation" and at the
same time proves that they were based, as first distinctly insisted upon
by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, on the central idea and that of the four
quarters of the world. Mr. Culin has gone so far as to fix the place of
origin of the "platter or dice class of games which he has found recorded
as existing among some 61 American tribes, in the arid region of the
southwestern United States and Northern or Central Mexico," and to
conceive that "in ancient Mexico we find traces of its highest
development."

I place the utmost value upon Mr. Culin's painstaking and conscientious
researches and regard them as strongly corroborating my views exposed in
the preceding pages. His identification of the pictured diagram in the
Fejervary Codex, as the counting circuit of the Four Quarters, with a
presiding god in the middle, as in Zuni, does credit to his perspicacity.
I agree with him in considering that this chart could have been employed
after the Conquest for a game or for divination, but trust that, upon
perusal of this paper, he will admit that primarily the Fejervary diagram
expressed the native scheme of government and the calendar, which was no
other than a means of ruling the classes by binding each of these to a
special day and totemic sign. Each of the twenty classes or clans had its
day, known by a particular sign which was also its totemic mark. As the
day-signs recurred periodically, the chief o