Another game, called Pagessan, or the bowl game, is very popular, though it is a sedentary one, and lacks the graceful action that gives so great a charm to the preceding game. It is played with a wooden bowl, containing a number of pieces of wood carved into various forms; some, which we may call the pieces, having round pedestals on which to stand, and others, which we will term the pawns, being round, and painted on one side and plain on the other. The players take the bowl alternately, give it a shake, and set it in a hole in the ground. The contents are then examined, and the points are scored according to the number of pieces which stand on their pedestals. If the pawn has its colored side upward, the player scores one point; if it has the plain side uppermost, he deducts a point from his score. The position of the pawns is entirely a question of chance, but considerable skill is exerted in getting the pieces to stand on their pedestals.
The game which is most characteristic of the American Indians is the celebrated ball game, a modification of which has been introduced into England under the name of La Crosse. The principle on which it is played is exactly that of foot-ball and hockey, namely, the driving of a ball through a goal defended by the opposite party. We will first take the game as it is played by the Choctaws. The reader will find it [illustrated] on page 1311.
A ball is carefully made of white willow wood, and ornamented with curious designs drawn upon it with a hot iron. The ball-sticks, or racquets, are much like our own racquets, but with larger and more slender handles, and with a very much smaller hoop. Each player carries two of these sticks, one in each hand. The dress of the players is very simple, being reduced to the waist-cloth, a tail made of white horsehair or quills, and a mane of dyed horsehair round the neck. The belt by which the tail is sustained may be as highly ornamented as possible, and the player may paint himself as brilliantly as he likes, but no other article of clothing is allowed, not even moccasins on the feet.
On the evening of the appointed day, the two parties repair to the ground where the goals have been already set up, some two hundred yards apart, and there perform the ball-play dance by torchlight. Exactly in the middle between the goals, where the ball is to be started, sit four old medicine men, singing and beating their drums, while the players are clustered round their respective goals, singing at the top of their voices, and rattling their ball-sticks together. This dance goes on during the whole of the night, so that the players are totally deprived of rest—a very bad preparation, as one would think, for the severe exertion of the ensuing day. All the bets are made on this night, the article staked, such as knives, blankets, guns, cooking utensils, tobacco, and even horses and dogs, being placed in the custody of the stakeholders, who sit by them and watch them all night.
About nine o’clock on the next morning the play begins. The four medicine men, with the ball in their custody, seat themselves as before, midway between the goals, while the players arrange themselves for the attack and defence. At a given signal, the ball is flung high in the air, and as it falls, the two opposing sets of players converge upon it. As there are often several hundred players on each side, it may be imagined that the scene is a most animated one.
“In these desperate struggles for the ball,” writes Mr. Catlin “where hundreds are running together, and leaping actually over each other’s heads, and darting between their adversaries’ legs, tripping, and throwing, and foiling each other in every possible manner, and every voice raised to its highest key, in shrill yelps and barks, there are rapid successions of feats and incidents that astonish and amuse far beyond the conception of any one who has not had the singular good luck to witness them.
“In these struggles, every mode is used that can be devised to oppose the progress of the foremost, who is likely to get the ball; and these obstructions often meet desperate individual resistance, which terminates in a violent scuffle, and sometimes in fisticuffs. Then their sticks are dropped, and the parties are unmolested, whilst they are settling it between themselves, except by a general stampedo, to which those are subject who are down, if the ball happen to pass in their direction. Every weapon, by a rule of all ball players, is laid by in the respective encampments, and no man is allowed to go for one; so that the sudden broils that take place on the ground are presumed to be as suddenly settled without any probability of much personal injury, and no one is allowed to interfere in any way with the contentious individuals.
“There are times when the ball gets to the ground, and such a confused mass is rushing together around it, and knocking their sticks together, without a possibility of any one getting or seeing it for the dust that they raise, that the spectator loses his strength, and everything but his senses; when the condensed mass of ball sticks and shins and bloody noses is carried around the different parts of the ground, for a quarter of an hour at a time, without any one of the masses being able to see the ball, which they are often scuffling for several minutes after it has been thrown off and played over another part of the ground.
“For each time that the ball was passed between the goals of either party, one was counted for their game, and they halted for about one minute; when the ball was again started by the judges of the play, and a similar struggle ensued; and so on until the successful party arrived at 100, which was the limit of the play, and accomplished at an hour’s sun, when they took the stakes.”
In this game the players are not allowed to strike the ball with their sticks, or catch it in their hands; though to do so between the netted ends of the sticks, and then to run away with it, is a feat which each player tries his best to accomplish. Ball-play among the Sioux is exactly the same in principle as that of the Choctaws, but the players only carry one stick, which is wielded with both hands.