576 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS  [EtTH. ann. 24 
ball stick on the eve of a game, it is thereby rendered unfit for use. As the 
white man’s law is how paramount, extreme measures are seldom resorted to, 
but in former days the punishment for an infraction of this regulation was 
severe, and in some tribes the penalty was death. Should a player's wife be 
with child, he is not allowed to take part in the game under any circumstances, 
as he is then believed to be heavy and sluggish in his movements, having lost 
just so much of his strength as has gone into the child. 
At frequent intervals during the training period the shaman takes the players 
to water and performs his mystic rites, as will be explained further on. They 
are also scratched on their naked bodies, as at the final game, but now the 
scratching is done in a haphazard fashion with a piece of bamboo brier having 
stout thorns, which leave broad gashes on the backs of the victims. 
When a player fears a particular contestant on the other side, as is fre- 
quently the case, his own shaman performs a special incantation, intended to 
compass the defeat and even the disabling or death of his rival. As the con- 
tending sides always belong to different settlements, each party mates all these 
preliminary arrangements without the knowledge of the other, and under the 
guidance of its own shamans, several of whom are employed on a side in every 
hotly contested game. 3 
On the night preceding the game each party holds the ball-play dance in its 
own settlement. On the reservation the dance is always held on Friday night, 
so that the game may take place on Saturday afternoon, in order to give the 
players and spectators an opportunity to sleep off the effects on Sunday. 
The dance must be held close to the river, to enable the players to “ go to water ” 
during the night, but the exact spot selected is always a matter of uncertainty 
up to the last moment, excepting with a chosen few. If this were not the case, a 
spy from the other settlement might endeavor to insure the defeat of the party 
by strewing along their trail a soup made of the hamstrings of rabbits, which 
would have the effect of rendering the players timorous and easily confused. 
The dance begins soon after dark on the night preceding the game, and lasts 
until daybreak, and from the time they eat supper before the dance until after 
the game, on the following afternoon, no food passes the lips of the players. 
Mr Mooney selected for illustration the last game which he wit- 
nessed on the reservation, in September, 1889. On the occasion in 
question the young men of Yellow Hill were to contend against those 
of Raven Town, about 10 miles farther up the river, and as the latter 
place was a large settlement noted for its adherence to the old tradi- 
tions, a spirited game was expected. 
Bach party holds a dance [plate xt] in its own settlement, the game tak- 
ing place about midway between. The Yellow Hill men were to have their 
dance up the river, about half a mile from my house. . . . The spot selected 
for the dance was a narrow strip of gravely bottom, where the mountain came 
close down to the water’s edge. . . . Several fires were burning. . 
Around the larger fire were the dancers, the men stripped as for the game, 
with their ball-sticks in their hands and the firelight playing upon their naked 
bodies. : 
The ball-play dance is participated in by both sexes, but differs considerably 
from any other of the dances of the tribe, being a dual affair throughout. The 
dancers are the players of the morrow, with seven women, representing the 
seven Cherokee clans. The men dance in a cirele around the fire, chanting 
responses to the sound of a rattle carried by another performer, who circles 
