INDIAN GAMES. 97 



petitors. According to the Relation of 1636, " Village 

 was pitted against village." " Tribe was matched against 

 tribe," says Perrot. The number engaged in the game 

 described by La Potherie 8 was estimated by him at two 

 thousand. LaHontan 9 says that "the savages commonly 

 played it in large companies of three or four hundred at 

 a time," while Charlevoix 10 says the number of players 

 was variable and adds " for instance if they are eighty," 

 thus showing about the number he would expect to find 

 in a game. When Morgan 11 speaks of six or eight on a 

 side, he must allude to a later period, probably after the 

 game was modified by the whites who had adopted it 

 among their amusements. 12 



Our earliest accounts of the game as played by the In- 

 dians in the south are about one hundred years later than 

 the corresponding records in the north. Adair 13 says the 



Vol. n, p. 126. 



Memoires de L'Amerique Septentrionale, ou la Suite des Voyages de Mr. Le 

 Baron de LaHontan, Amsterdam, 1705, Vol. II, p. 118. 



10 Histoire de la Nouvelle France. Journal d'un Voyage, etc., par le P. de Char- 

 levoix, Paris, 1744, Vol. in, p. 319. 



11 League of the Iroquois, by Lewis H. Morgan, Rochester, 1851, p. 294. 



" The game is also mentioned in An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences 

 in the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith during his Captivity with the Indians 

 in the years 1755-1759. Cincinnati, 1870, p. 78. It is described by Col. William L. 

 Stone in his Lite of Brant, Albany, 1865, Vol. n, p. 448. In one game of which he 

 speaks, the ball was started by a young and beautiful squaw who was elaborately 

 dressed for the occasion. Notwithstanding the extent and value of Col. Stone's 

 contributions to the literature on the subject of the North American Indians, he 

 makes the erroneous statement that " The Six Nations had adopted from the 

 Whites the popular game of ball or cricket." See p. 445, same volume, c.f. The 

 Memoir upon the late War in North America, 1755-1760, by M. Pouchot, translated 

 and edited by Franklin B. Hough, Vol. H, p. 195. A game of ball is also described 

 in Historical Collections of Georgia, by the Rev. George White, 3d edition, New 

 York, 1855, p. 670, which took place in Walker County, Georgia, between Chatooga 

 and Chicamauga. The ball was thrown up at the centre. The bats were described 

 as curiously carved spoons. If the ball touched the ground the play stopped and it 

 was thrown up again. Rev. J. Owen Dorsey in a paper entitled -'Omaha Soci- 

 ology," printed in the Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, etc., 

 1881-188-2, Washington, 1884, 230, p. 336, describes the game amongst the Omahas. 



"The History of the American Indians, particularly those Nations adjoining to 

 the Mississippi, etc., by James Adair, London, 1775, p. 399. 



ESSEX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XVII 13 



