This game is provocative of fun and merriment as well as dexterity of hand and quickness of vision.  It also presents a very pretty spectacle.  It is greatly enjoyed by Indian men, women and children.  It has also found favor with merrymakers of our own race.

Ball Games

INTRODUCTION

Indian ball games have one feature not found in the ball games as played by us; that is, with the Indian the ball is never pitched and tossed by hand during the play.  At the opening of an Indian game the ball must be tossed by hand, but after that the ball is struck by a racket, stick or club and in that way sent from player to player and on to the goal.  An exception to this general rule is found in an Omaha ball game given in the following pages.

The opening ceremony requires the ball to be handled and moved in a peculiar and ceremonial manner by the hand of the Umpire before he tosses it up for the beginning of the actual play.

The balls used by the Indians are of different materials—­buckskin stuffed with hair; formed from roots, such as the wild-grape vine; wood; bladder netted with sinew; and in a few instances, of bone or stone.

Three ball games are here given.

I

BALL AND RACKET

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.—­The game in which the ball is struck with a racket is almost exclusively played by men, but there are tribes where it is played by women, and one tribe, cited by Dr. Culin, where it is played by men and women together.  The form of ball game where the racket is used was less widely distributed over the country than some others.  It was most frequently found among tribes living near the Atlantic Coast and in the region of the Great Lakes.  It had a limited range on the Pacific.  There are two forms of the Racket Ball Game, one where a single racket is used and the other where two rackets are employed to catch the ball.  The latter form is peculiar to the tribes formerly living in the Southern States.  The game here given is presented as it is played among the Chippewa tribes dwelling in Minnesota.

Properties.—­A ball, not too hard and the size usually employed for cricket.  As many rackets as there are players.  Red and yellow head-bands equally divided as to number and enough for all the players.

Directions.—­The field should be as large as the camp ground will permit.  At the extreme East of the field a tall pole should be set as a goal and a like pole at the West for the other goal.  To the pole at the East a red streamer should be tied and a yellow streamer to the pole at the West.  These poles should be practically in line and as distant from each other as it is conveniently possible to set them.  The rackets should be made in camp.  A racket can be made from a sapling cut at such length that when the racket is completed