All of us Anitsalagi like to have tobacco with us wherever we go. It is such a sacred plant, such a gift from the Creator. When we gather medicine or hunt, we offer tobacco as a sign of our gratitude. That way the balance is made right. You should never just take from the world without giving something back. I think back on the day when I gathered the clay for my marbles. I made a little indentation in the clay bank and put some tobacco there.

My marbles.

I have them with me in my pocket. All of my friends and I carry our marbles with us whenever we leave our homes. That way if we meet a friend or two along the way we can sit down together, scratch a circle into the earth, and have a game. And although I may not be as good a player as my best friend Yugi, I always come away with at least as many marbles as I started with.

I reach in my pocket and feel their comforting solid shapes with my fingertips. I pull several of them out and roll them around in the palm of my right hand, letting them click against one another.

All of the marbles I make are quite round. None of them have any cracks in them. But they do not look alike. They are different sizes and colors. The small ones are quicker to make. The clay doesn’t have to be completely dry when you put them into the fire to harden them. And the various colors come from both the different clays that are used and the type of wood with which you make your fire. If you choose yellow locust, the same tree from whose saplings we make bows, you will get a fire that gets very hot very fast. If you use tsiyu, the tulip poplar from whose logs we make our houses and which was used in the past for our canoes, the fire will not be so hot and the color of the marble will be lighter.

Whenever you make marbles, you should not hurry. You should place the balls of clay that will become your marbles carefully so they are not touching one another. You should pile the split pieces of wood just right and make sure that the fire is burning evenly. Then you should wait until it has all cooled down before trying to take your marbles from the fire. Do not be impatient. Otherwise you may end up with burns on your hands from those still hot marbles, burns that may turn into scars—like the ones on the thumb and index finger of my impatient friend Ugama.

“You made all of those?”

I hadn’t noticed, as I rolled those marbles about in my hand, that my father had leaned over to look at them.