10 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 85 



rationalization, there can be no doubt that the earher ceremonial 

 grounds of the constituent members were altered in many particulars 

 in conformity with the prevailing pattern. 



All the grounds known to us originally consisted of three elements, 

 a tcokofa or community hot house used in bad weather or for secret 

 ceremonies, a " square ground," and a " chunkey yard," or ball 

 ground. The name " chunkey yard " is derived from an old pastime 

 which consisted in rolling a stone disk along a level plot of land 

 and throwing certain long poles after it, the game turning on the 

 relative nearness of the poles to the roller after all had come to 

 rest. There was a single pole in the middle of this yard surmounted 

 by a cow or horse skull or by a wooden figure, and about this men 

 and women played against each other in a kind of ball game. This 

 game was mainly confined to people of the town and was social in 

 character while the great ball game, similar to our game of lacrosse, 

 was played by men only and was highly ceremonial. The fact that 

 the " chunkey yard " was a part of the ceremonial ground may 

 indicate that the single pole game formerly had more religious 

 significance than was the case in later times. 



The tcokofa has long been out of use, though at Tukabahchee fire 

 was until recently lighted in the middle of a circular ofifset of the 

 ceremonial ground where this structure would stand if it were still in 

 existence, and one such building was put up at Pakan Tallahassee 

 after the Civil War. 



The most important part of the ceremonial area today is the 

 " square ground," so called because in the largest towns there were 

 on it four long cabins or arbors, in native parlance " beds," forming 

 four sides of a square. Partly from tribal idiosyncrasy and still 

 more on account of failing numbers, several of these grounds now 

 lack one cabin, and the Alabama ground lacks two. Today the 

 cabins consist merely of two or three rows of split logs to serve 

 as seats and an arbor of boughs to shield their occupants from the 

 direct rays of the sun, but anciently the seats consisted of mats 

 woven out of cane raised upon short posts and the cabins were 

 provided with a back and roof of wattle or split shingles plastered 

 with clay. The arbors in the largest modern towns are supported 

 on eight posts, four in front and four behind, but some have only 

 six, and most of the Seminole towns only four. On the other hand, 

 a sketch of one of these cabins made by a Frenchman early in the 

 eighteenth century shows ten posts, five in front and five at the 

 back. Today, however, the eight post arrangement seems to be 

 considered orthodox, and the three sections marked oflf by these 



