CULIN] RACKET: MENOMINEE 567 
a network of leather bands. The balls are made of white willow, and cut 
perfectly round with the hand: crosses, stars and circles are carved upon 
them. The care devoted to the balls is sufficient to show how highly they esti- 
mate the game. The French call it “jeu de crosse.” Great ball players, who 
ean send the ball so high that it is out of sight, attain the same renown among 
the Indians as celebrated runners, hunters, or warriors. 
The name of the ball play is immortalized both in the geography and history 
of the country. There is a prairie, and now a town, on the Mississippi known 
as the “ Prairie de la Crosse.” 
Cuippewa. Wisconsin. 
Prof I. I. Ducatel * described boys playing at ball * by throwing it 
out and catching it with a stick, the end of which is curled up and 
makes the opening a pocket of network. This is the pahgato- 
wahnak.” 
Fort William, Ontario. (Cat. no. ;2%,;, American Museum 
of Natural History.) 
A wooden ball (figure 751), painted red, 3 inches in. diameter, per- 
forated with a hole, which emits a whistling noise in the air: and 
a wooden racket, 36 inches long, curved at the striking end to 
form a hoop, which is netted with buckskin thongs. 
Collected in 1903 by Dr William Jones, who gives the name of the 
ball as pigwakwatwi and that of the racket and the game as paga- 
towan. 
Fig. 751. Balland racket; Chippewa Indians, Fort William, Ontario; diameter of ball, 3 inches; 
length of racket, 36 inches; cat. no. 7535, American Museum of Natural History. 
Detawares. Pennsylvania. 
In Zeisberger’s Indian Dictionary ” we find the definition: 
Ball (kugel), gendsitat. 
Menominer. Wisconsin. 
Dr Walter J. Hoffman ° describes the following game: 
When anyone prepares to have a game of ball, he selects the captains or 
leaders of the two sides who are to compete. Each leader then appoints his own 
players, and the ball sticks to be used are deposited at the ball ground on the 
day before the game is to occur. Then each of the leaders selects a powerful 
and influential mitii’’, whose services are solicited for taking charge of the 
safety of the ball sticks, and to prevent their being charmed or conjured by 
*A Fortnight Among the Chippewas. The Indian Miscellany, p. 368, Albany, 1877. 
» Cambridge, 1887. 
° The Menomini Indians. Iourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. p. 127, 
1896. 
