s arranged
themselves in two parallel lines facing each other, inside the area and
about ten rods apart. Every man was armed with a strong stick three and
a half to four feet in length, and curving toward the end. Upon
this curved end was tightly fastened a network of thongs of untanned
deerskin, drawn until they were rigid and taut. The ball with which they
were to play was made of closely wrapped elastic skins, and was about
the size of an ordinary apple.

At the end of the lines, but about midway between them, sat the chiefs,
who, besides being judges and stakeholders, were also score keepers.
They kept tally of the game by cutting notches upon sticks. Every time
one side put the ball through the other's goal it counted one, but there
was an unusual power exercised by the chiefs, practically unknown to
the games of white men. If one side got too far ahead, its score was
cut down at the discretion of the chiefs in order to keep the game more
even, and also to protract it sometimes over three or four days. The
warriors of the leading side might grumble among one another at the
amount of cutting the chiefs did, but they would not dare to make any
protest. However, the chiefs would never cut the leading side down to an
absolute parity with the other. It was always allowed to retain a margin
of the superiority it had won.

The game was now about to begin, and the excitement became intense. Even
the old judges leaned forward in their eagerness, while the brown bodies
of the warriors shone in the sun, and the taut muscles leaped up under
the skin. Fifty players on each side, sticks in hand, advanced to the
center of the ground, and arranged themselves somewhat after the fashion
of football players, to intercept the passage of the ball toward their
goals. Now they awaited the coming of the ball.

There were several young girls, the daughters of chiefs. The most
beautiful of these appeared. She was not more than sixteen or seventeen
years of age, as slender and graceful as a young deer, and she was
dressed in the finest and most richly embroidered deerskin. Her head was
crowned with a red coronet, crested with plumes, made of the feathers of
the eagle and heron. She wore silver bracelets and a silver necklace.

The girl, bearing in her hand the ball, sprang into the very center of
the arena, where, amid shouts from all the warriors, she placed it upon
the ground. Then she sprang back and joined the throng of spectators.
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