with raw-hide webbing, and of a deer-skin ball, stuffed with hair, so as
to be very solid, and about the size of a base ball. Sometimes the game
was played by fixed numbers, sometimes by all the young men of a
village; and there were often tournaments between different towns and
even different tribes. The contests excited the most intense interest,
were waged with desperate resolution, and were preceded by solemn dances
and religious ceremonies; they were tests of tremendous physical
endurance, and were often very rough, legs and arms being occasionally
broken. The Choctaws were considered to be the best ball players.[11]

The Cherokees were likewise fond of dances. Sometimes these were comic
or lascivious, sometimes they were religious in their nature, or were
undertaken prior to starting on the war-trail. Often the dances of the
young men and maidens were very picturesque. The girls, dressed in
white, with silver bracelets and gorgets, and a profusion of gay
ribbons, danced in a circle in two ranks; the young warriors, clad in
their battle finery, danced in a ring around them; all moving in
rhythmic step, as they kept time to the antiphonal chanting[12] and
singing, the young men and girls responding alternately to each other.

The great confederacy of the Muscogees or Creeks, consisting of numerous
tribes, speaking at least five distinct languages, lay in a well-watered
land of small timber.[13] The rapid streams were bordered by narrow
flats of rich soil, and were margined by canebrakes and reed beds. There
were fine open pastures, varied by sandy pine barrens, by groves of
palmetto and magnolia, and by great swamps and cypress ponds. The game
had been largely killed out, the elk and buffalo having been
exterminated and even the deer much thinned, and in consequence the
hunting parties were obliged to travel far into the uninhabited region
to the northward in order to kill their winter supply of meat. But