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