580 GAMES OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS  [pru. ayy. 24 
being bitten by a rattlesnake. This rule is now disregarded, and it is doubtful 
if any but the older men are aware that it ever existed. 
On coming up from the water after the fourth halt, the principal shaman 
assembles the players around him and delivers an animated harangue, exhort- 
ing them to do their utmost in the coming contest, telling them that they will 
undoubtedly be victorious, as the omens are all favorable, picturing to their 
delighted vision the stakes to be won and the ovation awaiting them from their 
friends after the game, and finally assuring them in the mystic terms of the 
formulas that their adversaries will be driven through the four gaps into the 
gloomy shadows of the Darkening Land, where they will perish forever from 
remembrance. The address, delivered in rapid, jerky tones like the speech of 
an auctioneer, has a very inspiriting effect upon the hearers and is frequently 
interrupted by a burst of exultant yells from the players. At the end, with 
another chorus of yells, they again take up the march. 
On arriving in sight of the ball ground, the talala again comes to the front 
and announces their approach with four loud yells, ending with a long quaver, 
as on the previous night at the dance. The players respond with another yell, 
und then turn off to a convenient sheltered place by the river to make the final 
preparations. 
The shaman then marks off a small space upon the ground to represent the 
ball field, and, taking in his hand a small bundle of sharpened stakes about a 
foot in length, addresses each man in turn, telling him the position which he is 
to occupy in the field at the tossing up of the ball after the first inning, and 
driving down a stake to represent each player until he has a diagram of the 
whole field spread out upon the ground. 
The players then strip for the ordeal of scratching [plate xIv]. This pain- 
ful operation is performed by an assistant, in this case by an old man named 
Standing Water. The instrument of torture is called a kanuga and resembles 
a short comb with seven teeth, seven being also a sacred number with the 
Cherokees. The teeth are made of sharpened splinters from the leg bone of 
a turkey and are fixed in a frame made from the shaft of a turkey quill, in such 
2a manner that by a slight pressure of the thumb they can be pushed out to the 
length of a small tack. Why the bone and feather of the turkey should be 
selected I have not yet learned, but there is undoubtedly an Indian reason for 
the choice. 
The players having stripped, the operator begins by seizing the arm of a 
player with one hand while holding the kanuga in the other, and plunges the 
teeth into the flesh at the shoulder, bringing the instrument down with a steady 
pressure to the elbow, leaving seven white lines which become red a moment 
later as the blood starts to the surface. He now plunges the kanuga in again at 
another place near the shoulder, and again brings it down to the elbow. Again 
and again the operation is repeated until the victim’s arm is scratched in 
twenty-eight lines above the elbow. It will be noticed that twenty-eight is a 
combination of four and seven, the two sacred numbers of the Cherokee. 
The operator then makes the same number of scratches in the same manner 
on the arm below the elbow. Next the other arm is treated in the same way; 
then each leg, both above and below the knee, and finally an X is scratched 
across the breast of the sufferer, the upper ends are joined by another stroke from 
shoulder to shoulder, and a similar pattern is scratched upon his back. By this 
time the blood is trickling in little streams from nearly three hundred gashes. 
None of the scratches are deep, but they are unquestionably very painful, as 
all agree who have undergone the operation. Nevertheless the young men 
endure the ordeal willingly and almost cheerfully, regarding it as a neces- 
sary part of the ritual to secure success in the game. In order to secure a 
