94 INDIAN GAMES. 



of cross which is very similar to our tennis. Their cus- 

 tom in playing it is to match tribe against tribe, and if 

 the numbers are not equal they render them so by with- 

 drawing some of the men from the stronger side. You 

 see them all armed with a cross, that is to say a stick 

 which has a large portion at the bottom, laced like a 

 racket. The ball with which they play is of wood and of 

 nearly the shape of a turkey's egg. The goals of the 

 game are fixed in an open field. These goals face to the 

 east and to the west, to the north and to the south." 

 Then follows a somewhat confused description of the 

 method and the rules of the contest from which we can 

 infer that after a side had won two goals they changed 

 sides of the field with their opponents, and that two out 

 of throe, or three out of five goals decided the game. 



Reading Perrot's description in connection with that 

 given by de la Potherie of the game played before Perrot 

 by the Miamis, helps us to remove the confusion of the 

 account. Abbe Ferland 6 describes the game. He was 

 a diligent student of all sources of authority upon these 

 subjects and was probably familiar with the modern 

 game. His account of the Indian game follows that of 

 Perrot so closely as to show that it was his model. It is, 

 however, clear and distinct in its details, free from the 

 confusion which attends Perrot's account and might al- 

 most serve for a description of the game as played by the 

 Indians to-day. Perrot was a frontier-man and failed when 

 he undertook to describe anything that required careful 

 and exact use of language. We can only interpret him 

 intelligently by combining his descriptions with those of 

 other writers and applying our own knowledge of the game 

 as we see it to : day. He is, however, more intelligible 



Cours d' Uistoire du Cauada, par J. B. A. Ferland, Quebec, 1861, Vol. I, p. 

 134. 



