SwANTON] INDIANS OP THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 675 



Football was more in evidence in the Powhatan country. Ac- 

 cording to Strachey, 



they have the exercise of football, in which they only forceable encounter with 

 the foot to carry the ball the one from the other, and spurned yt to the goale 

 with a kind of dexterity and swift footmanship, which is the honor of yt; but 

 they never strike up one another's heeles, as we doe, not accompting that 

 praiseworthie to purchase a goale by such an advantage. (Strachey, 1849, p. 78.) 



From Spelman it seems that there was a men's and a women's 

 football game: 



They vse beside football play which wemen and young boyes doe much 

 play at. The men neuer. They make ther Gooles as ours only they neuer 

 fight nor pull one another doune. 



The men play with a litel balle lettinge it fall out of ther hand and striketh 

 it with the tope of his foot, and he that can strike the ball furthest winns 

 that they play for. (Smith, John, Arber ed., 1884, p. cxiv.) 



The common type of ball game was well known to Cherokee, 

 Creeks, Chickasaw, and Choctaw, and, of course, to the Seminole. It 

 had an important place in the social and ceremonial life of each of 

 these tribes. The Cherokee sticks were somewhat less than 2 feet 

 in length and the netting was of twisted squirrel skin or Indian 

 hemp. The ball was made of deerhide and covered with the skin 

 of the same animal. As known to Mooney's informants, each of the 

 goals was made by driving a pair of sticks into the ground, but an 

 early writer, Rev. George White, describes the goals as 100 yards 

 long and marked out by 2 parallel lines of poles, the lines being 

 also separated by a distance of 100 feet. A goal was counted when 

 the ball was driven between the 2 posts in the former case or car- 

 ried across either line in the latter. Mooney says that the common 

 number of players on a side was 9 to 12 and that 22 was the most 

 anyone had ever heard of, but White affirms there were 50 on a side. 

 Mooney says that they pla^-ed for 12 points. 



There was a vast amount of ceremonial preceding and accompany- 

 ing a Cherokee game. For at least 7 days preceding and usually for 

 28 (4X7) no player must touch a woman, and a man whose wife was 

 pregnant was not allowed to play. Several doctors were employed by 

 each side. Before the game the players were taken to running water, 

 where certain rites were performed over them including scratching. 

 The ball dance was held the night before, but the place kept a pro- 

 found secret lest the magic of the opposite side be exerted against 

 the participants. There was a harangue after which seven women, 

 representing the seven Cherokee clans, danced. According to 

 Cherokee myth, a game between the birds and animals was won by 

 the latter through the help of the bat and the flying squirrel. For 

 that reason pieces of a bat were tied to the poles on which the 

 rackets were hung before the game and to the rattle. Symbolic ob- 



