2 3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ordinary French name, jew de la crosse. In Spanish, the game has 

 long been known as chueca. The Spaniards taught it to the natives 

 of South America, who took kindly to it, not as mere boys' play, but 

 as a manly sport. It is curious to read accounts by modern European 

 travelers, who seem not to recognize their own playground game when 

 transplanted among the Araucanians of Chili, even though it shows 

 its Spanish origin by the name of chueca. Seeing this, one asks 

 whence did the North American Indians get their famous ball-play, 

 known from California right across the Indian country ? It is to all 

 intents the European chueca, crosse, or hockey, the deerskin ball being 

 thrown up in the middle, each of the two contending parties striving 

 to throw or drive it through the adversaries' goal. The Iroquois say 

 that in old times their forefathers played with curved clubs and a 

 wooden ball, before the racket was introduced, with which to strike, 

 carry, or throw the leather ball. Of all the describers of this fine 

 game, Catlin has best depicted its scenes with pen and pencil, from its 

 beginning with the night ball-play dance, where the players crowded 

 round their goals, held up and clashed their rackets, and the women 

 danced in lines between, and the old men smoked to the Great Spirit 

 and led the chant for his favor in the contest. The painter would 

 never miss a ball-play, but sit from morning till sundown on his pony, 

 studying the forms of the young athletes in their " almost superhu- 

 man " struggles for the ball, till at last one side made the agreed num- 

 ber of goals, and divided with yells of triumph the fur robes and tin 

 kettles and miscellaneous property staked on the match. Now, as to 

 the introduction of the game into North America, the Jesuit mission- 

 aries in New France, as early as 1636, mention it by their own French 

 name of Jew de crosse, at which Indian villages contended " a qui cros- 

 sera le mieux." The Spaniards, however, had been above a century in 

 America, and might have brought it in, which is a readier explanation 

 than the other possible alternative that it made its way across from 

 southeast Asia. 



When the middle ages set in, the European mind at last became 

 awake to the varied pleasure to be got out of hitting a ball with a bat. 

 The games now developed need not be here spoken of at length pro- 

 portioned to their great place in modern life, as the changes which 

 gave rise to them are so comparatively modern and well known. The 

 Persian apparatus kept close to its original form in the game of pall- 

 mall, that is, " ball-mallet," into which game was introduced the arch 

 or ring to drive the ball through, whereby enough incident was given 

 to knocking it about to make the sport fit for a few players, or even a 

 single pair. An account of pall-mall and its modern revival in croquet 

 will be found in Dr. Prior's little book. Playing the ball into holes 

 serves much the same purpose as sending it through rings, and thus 

 came in the particular kind of bandy called golf, from the clubs used 

 to drive the ball. The stool-ball, so popular in mediaeval merrymak- 



