Voices in Time

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While I was staying at the Choctaw agency in the midst of their nation, it seemed to be a sort of season of amusements, a kind of holiday, when the whole tribe almost was assembled around the establishment, and from day to day we were entertained with some games or feats that were exceedingly amusing: horse racing, dancing, wrestling, foot racing, and ball playing were among the most exciting. And of all the catalog, the most beautiful was decidedly that of ball playing. This wonderful game, which is the favorite one among all the tribes, and with these southern tribes played exactly the same, can never be appreciated by those who are not happy enough to see it.

It is no uncommon occurrence for six or eight hundred or a thousand of these young men to engage in a game of ball, with five or six times that number of spectators, of men, women, and children surrounding the ground and looking on. And I pronounce such a scene, with its hundreds of nature’s most beautiful models, denuded, and painted of various colors, running and leaping into the air, in all the most extravagant and varied forms, in the desperate struggles for the ball, a school for the painter or sculptor equal to any of those which ever inspired the hand of the artist in the Olympian games or the Roman forum.

I have made it a uniform rule while in the Indian country to attend every ball play I could hear of—if I could do it by riding a distance of twenty or thirty miles—and my usual custom has been on such occasions to straddle the back of my horse and look on to the best advantage. In this way I have sat, and oftentimes reclined, and almost dropped from my horse’s back, with irresistible laughter at the succession of droll tricks, kicks, and scuffles which ensue, in the almost superhuman struggles for the ball. These plays generally commence at nine o’clock—or near it—in the morning, and I have more than once balanced myself on my pony, from that time till near sundown, without more than one minute of intermission at a time, before the game has been decided.

It is impossible for pen and ink alone, or brushes, or even with their combined efforts to give more than a caricature of such a scene—but such as I have been able to do, I have put upon the canvas.

While at the Choctaw agency, it was announced that there was to be a great play on a certain day within a few miles, on which occasion I attended and made three sketches and also the following entry in my notebook, which I literally copy out:

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