CULIN] RACKET: CHEROKEE _ 579 
When all was ready, the game began, but at the very outset the flying squirrel 
caught the ball and carried it up a tree, then threw it to the birds, who kept it 
in the air for some time, when it dropped; but just before it reached the 
ground the bat seized it, and by his dodging and doubling kept it out of the way 
of even the swiftest of the animals until he finally threw it in at the goal, and 
thus won the victory for the birds. Because of their assistance on this occasion, 
the ball player invokes the aid of the bat and the flying squirrel and ties a small 
piece of the bat’s wing to his ball stick or fastens it to the frame on which the 
sticks are hung during the dance.t . . . 
At a certain stage of the dance a man, specially selected for the purpose, 
leaves the groups of spectators around the fire and retires a short distance into 
the darkness in the direction of the rival settlement. Then, standing with his: 
face still turned in the same direction, he raises his hand to his mouth and 
utters four yells, the last prolonged into a peculiar quaver. He is answered by 
the players with a chorus of yells—or rather yelps, for the Indian yell resem- 
bles nothing else so much as the bark of a puppy. Then he comes running back 
until he passes the circle of dancers, when he halts and shouts out a single 
word, which may be translated, ** They are already beaten!” Another chorus. 
of yells greets this announcement. This man is called the talala, or woodpecker, 
on account of his peculiar yell, which is considered to resemble the sound made 
by a woodpecker tapping on a dead tree trunk. According to the orthodox 
Cherokee belief, this yell is heard by the rival players in the other settlement— 
who, it will be remembered, are having a ball dance of their own at the same 
time—and so terrifies them that they lose all heart for the game. The fact that 
both sides alike have a talala in no way interferes with the theory. 
At frequent intervals during the night all the players, accompanied by the 
shaman and his assistant, leave the dance and go down to a retired spot at the 
river’s bank, where they perform the mystic rite known as “ going to water,” 
hereafter to be described. While the players are performing this ceremony, 
the women, with the drummer, continue the dance and chorus. The dance is 
kept up without intermission, and almost without change, until daybreak. At 
the final dance green pine tops are thrown upon the fire, so as to produce a thick 
smoke, which envelopes the dancers. Some mystic properties are ascribed to this 
pine smoke, but what they are I have not yet learned, although the ceremony 
seems to be intended as an exorcism, the same thing being done at other dances 
when there has recently been a death in the settlement. 
At sunrise the players, dressed now in their ordinary clothes, but carrying 
their ball sticks in their hands, start for the ball ground, accompanied by the 
shamans and their assistants. The place selected for the game, being always 
about midway between the two rival settlements, was in this case several miles 
above the dance ground and on the opposite side of the river. On the march 
each party makes four several halts, when each player again “ goes to water” 
separately with the shaman. This occupies considerable time, so that it is 
usually afternoon before the two parties meet on the ball ground. While the 
shaman is busy with his mysteries in the laurel bushes down by the water’s 
edge, the other players, sitting by the side of the trail, spend the time twisting 
extra strings for their ball sticks, adjusting their feather ornaments, and dis- 
cussing the coming game. In former times the player during these halts was 
not allowed to sit upon a log, a stone, or anything but the ground itself; 
neither was it permissible to lean against anything excepting the back of 
another player, on penalty of defeat in the game, with the additional risk of 
«A somewhat different account of this myth is given by Mr Mooney in Myths of the 
Cherokee. Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 286, 1900, 
