98 INDIAN GAMES. 



gamesters are eqiuil in iiiiml)er and speaks of "the crowd of 

 players" preventing the one who "catches the ball from 

 throwing it off with a long direction." Bossu^* says, "they 

 are forty on each side," while Bartram^^ says, "the inhab- 

 itants of one town play against another in consequence of 

 a challenge." From this it would seem that among those 

 Indians, as at the North, the number of players was gov- 

 erned only by the circumstances under which the game 

 was played. 



The ball, originally of wood,''' w^as replaced by one made 

 of deer skin. Adair gives the following description of its 

 manufacture : "The ball is made of a piece of scraped deer- 

 skin, moistened, and stuffed hard with deer's hair, and 

 strongly sewed with deer's sinews."'^ 



According to Morgan the racket has undergone a similar 

 change, from a curved wooden head to the curved stick 

 with open network, but we have seen in the earliest de- 

 scription at our command, that in the days of Perrot the 

 cross was "laced like a racket."'^ 



The game was played not only by the Indians of our 

 Coast, but Powers'^ found it also among the Californian In- 

 dians. He describes a game of tennis played by the Pomo 

 Indians in Russian River Vallc}^ of which he had heard 

 nothing among the northern tribes. "A ball is rounded 

 out of an oak knot as large as those used by school boys, 

 and it is propelled by a racket which is constructed of a 



"Travels through that Part of North America formerly called Louisiana, by ]SIr. 

 BosBu, Captain in the Fiench Marines. Translated Irom the French by John Rein- 

 hold Forster, London, 1771, Vol. I, p. 304. 



15 Travels through North and South Carolina, etc., by William Bartram, Philadel- 

 phia, 1791, p. 508. 



i»La Potherie, Vol. ii, p. 126; Perrot, p. 44. 



" p. 400. 



»8Lea}j;ue of the Iroquois, p. 298; Perrot p. 44. 



"Contributions to Nortli American Etlinology, Vol. ni, p. 151. Tribes of Cali- 

 fornia by Steplien Powers; The same game is described among the Meewocs in 

 The Native Races of the Pacific States by H. H. Bancroft, Vol. i, p. 393. 



