Hubbub

A traditional game played the Pequot Indians of North America. Each player starts with 5 scoring sticks and tosses five sticks or rocks in a bowl. If all five land with a colored side up a player wins 2 points. If three pieces land with colored side up, a player wins 1 point. Any other combination yields no points. If you win any points, you get to go again. If you don't win points, play passes to the other player. For every point lost, you must give the other player 1 scoring stick. The game ends when one player has no sticks left. During play it is traditional to shout "Hubbub" out-loud. This is where the name of the game derives from. This game is similar to All-tes-teg-enuk The American Heritage Dictionary possibly attributes the origin of the word hubbub to this game. Quote: It has often been remarked that the early Celtic inhabitants of Britain contributed very little to the stock of English words. Perhaps this should not surprise us, given the difficult relations over the centuries between the people of Germanic stock and the people of Celtic stock in England and Ireland. It seems likely that a certain English contempt resides in the adoption of the word hubbub from a Celtic source, which is probably related to ub ub ubub, a Scots Gaelic interjection expressing contempt, or to abu, an ancient Irish war cry. In any case, hubbub was first recorded (1555) in the phrase Irish hubbub and meant "the confused shouting of a crowd." In addition to the senses it has developed, hubbub was again used, possibly in an unflattering way, by the New England colonists as a term for a rambunctious game played by Native Americans.