THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 301 



429. Ball-play; same as 428, excepting that the ball is down; which changes the 

 scene. Painted in — . 



(Plate No. 226, page 126, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years.) 



From Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, 1832. — These people-seem, even in their 

 troubles, to be happy, and have, like all the other remnants of tribes, preserved with 

 great tenacity their different games, which, it would seem, they are everlastingly prac- 

 ticing for want of other occupations or amusements in life. 



While I was staying at the Choctaw Agency, in the midst of their nation, it seemed 

 to bo a sort of season of amusements — a kind of holiday — when the whole tribe almost 

 were assembled around the establishment, and from day to day we were entertained 

 with some games or feats that were exceedingly amusing : horse-racing, dancing, 

 wrestling, foot-racing, and ball- playing were amongst the most exciting, and of all 

 the catalogue the most beautiful was decidedly that of ball-playing. This wonder- 

 ful game, which is the favorite one amongst all the tribes, and with these southern 

 tribes played exactly the same, can never be appreciated by those who are not happy 

 enough to see it. 



It is no uncommon occurrence for six or eight hundred or a thousand of these young 

 men to engage in a game of ball, with five or six times that number of spectators, of 

 men, women, and children, surrounding the ground and looking on. And I pro- 

 nounce such a scene, with its hundreds of nature's most beautiful models, denuded, 

 and painted of various colors, running and leaping into the air, in all the most ex- 

 travagant and varied forms, in the desperate struggles for the ball, a school for the 

 painter or sculptor equal to any of those that ever inspired the hand of the artist in 

 the Olympian games or the Roman forum. 



It is impossible for pen and ink alone, or brushes, or even with their combined 

 efforts, to give more than a caricature of such a scene, but such as I have been able 

 to do I have put upon the canvas, and in the slight outlines which I have here at- 

 tached in Plates 224, 225, 226 (pages 427, 428, and 429), taken from those paintings 

 (for the coloring to which the reader must look to my pen), I will convey as correct 

 an account as I can, and leave the reader to imagine the rost, or look to other books 

 for what I may have omitted. 



While at the Choctaw Agency it was announced that there was to be a great play 

 on a certain day within a few miles, on which occasion 1 attended and made the three 

 sketches which are hereto annexed; and also the following entry in my note-book, 

 which I literally copy out: 



"Monday afternoon, at 3 o'clock, I rode out with Lieutenant* S. and M., to a very 

 pretty prairie about 6 miles distant, to the ball-play ground of the Choctaws, where 

 we found several thousand Indians encamped. There were two points of timber about 

 half a mile apart, in which the two parties for the play, with their respective families 

 and friends, were encamped; and lying between them the prairie on which the game 

 was to be played. My companions and myself, although we had been apprised that 

 to see the whole of a ball-play we must remain on the ground all the night previous, 

 had brought nothing to sleep upon, resolving to keep our eyes open and see what 

 transpired through the night. During the afternoon we loitered about amongst the 

 different tents and shanties of the two encampments, and afterwards, at sundown, 

 witnessed the ceremony of measuring out the ground and erecting the byes or goals 

 which were to guide the play. Each party had their goal made with two upright 

 posts, about twenty-iive feet high and six feet apart, set firm in the ground, with a 

 pole across at the top. These goals were about forty o» fifty rods apart ; and at a 

 point just halfway between was another small stake driven down, where the ball was 

 to be thrown up, at the firing of a gun, to be struggled for by the players. All this 

 preparation was made by some old men wlio were, it seems, selected to be the judges 

 of the play, who drew a line from one bye to the other ; to which directly came from 



