String game

A string figure (Inuktitut: Ajaraarutit) is a design formed by manipulating string on, around, and using one's fingers or sometimes between the fingers of multiple people. String figures may also involve the use of the mouth, wrist, and feet. They may consist of singular images or be created and altered as a game, known as a string game, or as part of a story involving various figures made in sequence (string story). String figures have also been used for divination, such as to predict the sex of an unborn child.

The most popular and well-known string game appears to be cat's cradle. According to Jayne, a trick known as "The Mouse" is, "probably the most widely distributed of all the string figures," known to Murray Island, Germany, Inuit, N. & S. America, Japan, Philippines, Australia, Batwa, Negrito, Linao Moros, Chippewa, Osage, Navajo, Apache, Omaha, Japanese, Torres Straits, Irish, Wajiji, and Alaskan Inuit people. String figures, which are well distributed throughout the world, include "Jacob's Ladder" ("Osage Diamonds", "Fishnet"), "Cup and Saucer" ("Sake Glass", "Coffee Cup"), and "Tree Hole" ("The Moon Gone Dark", "Sun", "Moon").

According to Camilla Gryski, a Canadian librarian and author of numerous string figure books, "We don't know when people first started playing with string, or which primitive people invented this ancient art. We do know that all primitive societies had and used string—for hunting, fishing, and weaving—and that string figures have been collected from native peoples all over the world."

"Of the games people play, string figures enjoy the reputation of being the most widespread form of amusement in the world: more cultures are familiar with string figures than with any other game. Over 2,000 individual patterns have been recorded worldwide since 1888, when anthropologist Franz Boas first described a pair of Eskimo string figures (Boas 1888a, 1888b, Abraham 1988:12)." String figures are probably one of humanity's oldest games, and is spread among an astonishing variety of cultures, even ones as unrelated as Europeans and the Dayaks of Indonesia; Alfred Wallace who, while traveling in Borneo in the 1800s, thought of amusing the Dayak youths with a novel game with string, was in turn very surprised when they proved to be familiar with it, and showed him some figures and transitions that he hadn't previously seen. The anthropologist Louis Leakey has also attributed string figure knowledge with saving his life and described his use of this game in the early 1900s to obtain the cooperation of Sub-Saharan African tribes otherwise unfamiliar with, and suspicious of, Europeans, having been told by his teacher A.C. Haddon, "You can travel anywhere with a smile and a piece of string."

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