WINELAND THE GOOD 



strength on each side were paired as opponents and stood near to each 

 other, and the two teams were thus spread in pairs over the whole ground. 

 Each player had a club with which he either struck or caught and " carried " 

 the ball. The club had a hollow or a net in which the ball could be caught 

 and lie. When the ball was set going, the game was for the one who was 

 nearest to seize or catch it, preferably with his club, and to run off with it and 

 try to "carry it out," i.e., past a goal or mark; but in this his particular op- 

 ponent tried to hinder him with all his strength and agility. The other players 

 might not interfere directly in the struggle of the two opponents for the ball. 

 If the one who had the ball was so hard pressed by his opponent that he had to 

 give it up, he tried to throw it to one of his own side, who then again had to 

 reckon with his own opponent in his attempt to " carry it out." This game was 



The game of Lacrosse among the Menominee Indians [after W. J. Hoffman, 

 1896]. On the left, a " crosse," about a yard long 



much played by the Icelanders; it was apt to be rough, and men were often 

 disabled, or even killed by their opponents. 



Hertzberg shows how the Canadian Indians' game of lacrosse, which has 

 become the national game of Canada, completely resembles in all essentials 

 this peculiar Norse ball-game from Iceland. The game of lacrosse is, as Prof. 

 Y. Nielsen has pointed out (1905), more widely diffused among the Indian 

 tribes of North America than Hertzberg was aware. Dr. Walter James Hoff- 

 man 1 has described it among the Menominee Indians in Wisconsin, the Ojibwa 

 tribe in northern Minnesota, the Dakota Indians on the upper Missouri, and 

 among the Choctaws, Chickasaws and kindred tribes farther south. Hoffman 



1 The Menominee Indians, Fourteenth Ann. Rep. of the Bureau of Ethnol- 

 ogy, 1892-1893. Washington, 1896, Vol. I, pp. 127, f.; cf. also "American An- 

 thropologist," Vol. III. pp. 134 f, Washington, i8go. 



39 



