104 INDIAN GAMES. 



Notwithstanding the violence of the game and the deep 

 interest which the players and spectators took in it, the 

 testimony of historians is uniform to the effect that ac- 

 cidental injuries received during its progress produced 

 no ill will. We have seen that Perrot states that if any- 

 one attempted to hold the ball with his feet, he took his 

 chance of injury, and that those who were injured retired 

 quietly from the field. Adair says, "It is a very unusual 

 thing to see them act spitefully, not even in this severe 

 and tempting exercise." Bossu bears testimony to the 

 same effect, in the following words : "The players are 

 never displeased ; some old men, who assist at the play, 

 become mediators, and determine that the play is only 

 intended as a recreation, and not as an opportunity of 

 quarrelling." 



Where the game was played by appointment in response 

 to a challenge, the men and women assembled in their 

 best ornaments, and danced and sang during the day 

 and night previous to that of the appointed day. The 

 players supplicated the Great Spirit for success. Female 

 relations chanted to him all the previous night and the 

 men fasted from the previous night till the game was over. 33 

 The players wore but little in the way of covering. Ro- 

 mans speaks of them as being "almost naked, painted and 

 ornamented with feathers ;" and Bossu says they were "na- 

 ked, painted with various colours, having a tyger tail fast- 

 ened behind, and feathers on their heads and arms." 



It is not astonishing that a game which called for such 

 vigorous exercise 34 and which taxed the strength, agility 

 and endurance of the players to such a degree, should be 

 described by writers in terms which showed that they 



Adair, p. 401; Bossu, Vol. I, p. 304; and Willett's Narrative p. 109. 



* Ferland, Vol. i, p. 134, and Major C. Swan in a Report concerning the Creeks in 

 1791, Schoolcraft, Vol. v, p. 277, assert that the Whites excel the Indians at this 

 game. 



