Indian Games | Page 7

where courage and physique counted for so much, their
intense passion for gambling intervened to fan into fiercer flames the
spirits of the contesting players and to inspire them to more earnest
efforts. Stakes, often of the utmost consequence to the players and their
backers, were wagered upon the games. A reputation for courage, for
skill and for endurance, was the most valuable possession of the Indian.
The maintenance of this was to a certain extent involved in each game
that he played. Oftentimes in addition to this, all of his own possessions
and the property of his friends and neighbors in the form of skins and
beads were staked upon the result of the contest. In games where so
much was involved, we need not be surprised to learn from Perrot that
limbs were occasionally broken and that sometimes players were even
killed. In the notes to Perrot's Memoir it is stated that some anonymous
annotator has written across the margin of Perrot's manuscript at this
point: [Footnote: Perrot. Note 1, Ch. x. p. 187.] "False, neither arms nor
legs are broken, nor are players ever killed." We scarcely need the
corroboratory statements of La Potherie [Footnote: Vol. II, pp.

126-137.] that "these games are ordinarily followed by broken heads,
arms and legs, and often people are killed at them;" and also of
LaHontan, [Footnote: Vol. II, p. 113.] that "they tear their skins and
break their legs" at them, to satisfy us that Perrot rather than his critic is
to be believed. If no such statements had been made, we should infer
that so violent a game, on which stakes of such vital importance were
placed, could not be played by a people like the Indians, except with
such results. Notwithstanding the violence of the game and the deep
interest which the players and spectators took in it, the testimony of
historians is uniform to the effect that accidental injuries received
during its progress produced no ill will. We have seen that Perrot states
that if anyone attempted to hold the ball with _his feet_, he took his
chance of injury, and that those who were injured retired quietly from
the field. Adair says, "It is a very unusual thing to see them act
spitefully, not even in this severe and tempting exercise." Bossu bears
testimony to the same effect, in the following words: "The players are
never displeased; some old men, who assist at the play, become
mediators, and determine that the play is only intended as a recreation,
and not as an opportunity of quarrelling."
Where the game was played by appointment in response to a challenge,
the men and women assembled in their best ornaments, and danced and
sang during the day and night previous to that of the appointed day.
The players supplicated the Great Spirit for success. Female relations
chanted to him all the previous night and the men fasted from the
previous night till the game was over. [Footnote: Adair, p. 401, Bossu,
Vol. I, p. 306, and Willet's Narrative, p. 109.] The players wore but
little in the way of covering. Romans speaks of them as being "almost
naked, painted and ornamented with feathers;" and Bossu says they
were "naked, painted with various colours, having a tyger tail fastened
behind, and feathers on their heads and arms."
It is not astonishing that a game which called for such vigorous
exorcise [Footnote: Ferdinand Vol. I, p. 134, and Major C. Swan in a
Report concerning the Creeks in 1791. Schoolcraft, Vol. v, p. 277, that
the Whites exceed the Indians at this game.] and which taxed the
strength, agility and endurance of the players to such a degree, should

be described by writers in terms which showed that they looked upon it
rather in the light of a manly contest than as an amusement.
Nevertheless the young people and the women often took part in it.
Perrot tells us so, and both Romans and Bossu say that after the men
were through, the women usually played a game, the bets on which
were generally high. Powers [Footnote: Contributions to North
American Ethnology, Vol. in, p. 151.] represents the squaws among the
Californian Indians as joining the game.
Dexterity in the game lay in the skilful use of the racket; in rapid
running; in waylaying an adversary when he was in possession of the
ball; in avoiding members of the opposing side when the player himself
was running with the ball for the goal, and in adroitly passing the ball
to one of the same side when surrounded by opponents. To give full
scope to skill in the use of the racket, great stress was laid upon the rule
that the ball was not to be touched by the hand. Perrot says, "if it falls