One gambling game is much played by big boys and young men among the Sacs and Foxes. It is called moccasin. It is a very stupid game, but the Indians are fond of it. Some moccasins are turned upside down, and one player conceals under one of them a small ball or other object. Another tries then to guess where the ball lies.
Group of Ball Sticks.
Many of the Indian tribes had some form of ball game. Sometimes all the young men of a town would take part. The game consisted in driving the ball over a goal. The players on both sides were much in earnest, and the games were very exciting. In the play a racket was used consisting of a stick frame and a netting of thongs. The shape of this racket or ball stick differed among different tribes. Sometimes one racket was used by one player, sometimes two. Among the Iroquois the game is called by the French name of lacrosse. The young men of one village often played against those of another. They used a curious long racket consisting of a curved stick with netting across the bend. The [pg 030] Choctaws, Cherokees, and other tribes near them have two rackets for each player.
Catlin tells us that in their games there would sometimes be six to eight hundred or a thousand young men engaged. He says: “I have made it an uniform rule, whilst in the Indian country, to attend every ball-play I could hear of, if I could do it by riding a distance of twenty or thirty miles; and my usual custom has been on such occasions to straddle the back of my horse and look on to the best advantage. In this way I have sat, and oftentimes reclined and almost dropped from my horse's back, with irresistible laughter at the succession of droll tricks and kicks and scuffles which ensue, in the almost superhuman struggles for the ball. Their plays generally commence at about nine o'clock, or near it, in the morning; and I have more than once balanced myself on my pony from that time till nearly sundown, without more than one minute of intermission at a time, before the game has been decided.”
But these great games of ball with hundreds of players are quite past, and the sport, where still kept up, grows less and less each year.
Otis T. Mason.—Ethnologist. In charge of the department of Ethnology in the U. S. National Museum, Washington. Has written some books and many articles. Among the last is Cradles of the American Aborigines.
George Catlin.—Artist and traveler. See [XXII].