The great national game then, as now, was a ball game, and they had their tribal and country-wide champions, on which the Indians were willing to stake all their possessions. Black Hawk speaks of their local ball play, in his autobiography (p. 68), as follows:
"We next have our great ball play. From three to five hundred on a side play this game. We play for guns, lead, horses and blankets, or any other kind of property we may have. The successful party takes the stakes, and all return to our lodges with peace and friendship. We next commence horse racing, and continue our sport and feasting until the corn is secured. We then prepare to leave our village for our hunting grounds."
These pictures of the great game are copies of those at the National Museum, painted by George Catlin, and because of the general interest in the subject of sports, we include Mr. Catlin's description of the scenes accompanying the game, as follows:
"From day to day we were entertained with some games or feats that were exceedingly amusing: Horse racing, dancing, wrestling, foot-racing and ball playing were amongst the most exciting; and of all the catalog the most beautiful was decidedly that of ball playing. This wonderful game, which is the favorite one amongst all the tribes * * * and played exactly the same, can never be appreciated by those who are not happy enough to see it.
"It is no uncommon occurrence for six or eight hundred or a thousand of these young men to engage in a game of ball, with five or six times that number of spectators, of men, women and children, surrounding the ground and looking on. And I pronounce such a scene, with its hundreds of nature's most beautiful models, denuded and painted of various colors, running and leaping into the air in all the most extravagant and varied forms in the desperate struggles for the ball, a school for the painter or sculptor equal to any of those which ever inspired the hand of the artist in the Olympian games or the Roman forum.
"Monday afternoon, at three o'clock, I rode out with Lieutenants S. and M. to a very pretty prairie, about six miles distant, to the ball playground of the Choctaws, where we found several thousand Indians encamped. There were two points of timber about half a mile apart in which the two parties for the play, with their respective families and friends, were encamped, and, lying between them, the prairie on which the game was to be played. My companions and myself, although we had been apprised that to see the whole of a ball play we must remain on the ground all the night previous, had brought nothing to sleep on, re- solving to keep our eyes open and see what transpired through the night. During the afternoon we loitered about amongst the different tents and shanties of the two encampments, and afterwards at sundown, witnessed the ceremony of measuring out the ground and erecting the "byes" or goals which were to guide the play. Each party had their goal made with two upright posts (about 25 feet high and six feet apart) set firm in the ground, with a pole across at the top. These goals were about forty or fifty rods apart, and at a point just halfway between was another small stake driven down, where the ball was to be thrown up at the firing of a gun, to be struggled for by the players. All this preparation was made by some old men who were, it seems, selected to be the judges of the play, who drew a line from one bye to the other; to which, directly, came from the woods on both sides a great concourse of women and old men, boys and girls, and dogs and horses, where bets were to he made on the play. The betting was all done across this line, and seemed to he chiefly left to the women, who seemed to have martialed out a little of everything that their houses and their fields possessed. Goods and chattels, knives, dresses, blankets, pots and kettles, dogs and horses and guns; and all were placed in the possession of the stakeholders, who sat by them and watched them on the ground all night preparatory to the play.
"This game had been arranged and 'made up' three or four months before the parties met to play it, and in the following manner: The two champions who led the two parties, and had the alternate choosing of the players through the whole tribe, sent runners with the ball- sticks, most fantastically ornamented with ribbons and red paint, to be touched by each one of the chosen players, who thereby agreed to be on the spot at the appointed time and ready for the play. The ground having been all prepared and preliminaries of the game all settled, and the bettings all made and goods all I staked,' night came on without the appearance of any players on the ground. But soon after dark a procession of lighted flambeaux was seen coming from each encampment to the ground, where the players assembled around their respective byes; and at the beat of the drums and chants of the women each party of players commenced the 'ball-play dance.' Each party danced for a quarter of an hour around their respective byes in their ball-play dress; rattling their ball-sticks together in the most violent manner, and all singing as loud as they could raise their voices; whilst the women of each party, who had their goods at stake, formed into two rows on the line between the two parties of players, and danced also in a uniform step; and all their voices joined in chants to the Great Spirit, in which they were soliciting his favor in deciding the game to their advantage; and also encouraging the players to exert every power they possessed in the struggle that was to ensue. In the meantime, four old medicine men who were to have the starting of the ball, and who were to be judges of the play, were seated at the point where the ball was to be started, and busily smoking to the Great Spirit for their success in judging rightly and impartially between the parties in so important an affair.
"This dance was one of the most picturesque scenes imaginable, and was repeated at intervals of every half hour during the night and exactly in the same manner; so that the players were certainly awake all the night and arrayed in their appropriate dress, prepared for the play which was to commence at nine o'clock the next morning. In the morning, at the hour, the two parties and all their friends were drawn out and over the ground, when, at length, the game commenced by the judges throwing up a ball at the firing of a gun; when an instant struggle ensued between the players, who were some six or seven hundred in numbers, and were mutually endeavoring to catch the ball in their sticks and throw it home and between their respective stakes; which, whenever successfully done, counts one for game. In this game every player was dressed alike, that is, divested of all dress except the girdle and the tail, which I have before described; and in these desperate struggles for the ball when it is up, 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 the highest key in shrill yelps and barks, there are rapid successions of feats and of incidents that astonish and amuse far beyond the conception of anyone who has not had the singular good luck to witness them."
- pp. 123-126, Vol. 2, "No. Am. Indians," by Catlin.