two will gain the two games that they need to win. In this game you
would say to see them run that they looked like two parties who wanted
to fight. This exercise contributes much to render the savages alert
and prepared to avoid blows from the tomahawk of an enemy, when they
find themselves in a combat. Without being told in advance that it was
a game, one might truly believe that they fought in open country.
Whatever accident the game may cause, they attribute it to the chance
of the game and have no ill will towards each other. The suffering is
for the wounded, who bear it contentedly as if nothing had happened,
thus making it appear that they have a great deal of courage and are
men."

"The side that wins takes whatever has been put up on the game and
whatever there is of profit, and that without any dispute on the part
of the others when it is a question of paying, no matter what the kind
of game. Nevertheless, if some person who is not in the game, or who
has not bet anything, should throw the ball to the advantage of one
side or the other, one of those whom the throw would not help would
attack him, demanding if this is his affair and why he has mixed
himself with it. They often come to quarrel about this and if some of
the chiefs did not reconcile them, there would be blood shed and
perhaps some killed."

Originally, the game was open to any number of competitors. According
to the Relation of 1636, "Village was pitted against village." "Tribe
was matched against tribe," says Perrot. The number engaged in the game
described by La Potherie [Footnote: Vol. II, p. 126.] was estimated by
him at two thousand. LaHontan [Footnote: Memoires de L'Amerique
Septentrionale, ou la Suite des Voyages de Mr. Le Baron de LaHontan,
Amsterdam, 1705, Vol. II, p. 113.] says that "the savages commonly