Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/35

 18 to the Great Spirit. Each party danced for a quarter of an hour at a time around their respective goals or bonfires, and repeated it every half hour during the night, which compelled the players to lie awake until sunrise. The squaws of each side kept the goods which were invariably staked upon the result of the match; and at this dance they formed themselves in two straight rows between the two parties of players, and joined in the dance and song. Four of the most antediluvian medicine men who were to act as umpires on the following day, were seated at the joint where the game was to be started, solemnly smoking and praying to the Great Spirit for impartiality in judgment. Catlin gives a few excellent sketches of the original game as played by the Choctaws, and among them a very suggestive one of this preparatory dance.

In Capt. Basil Hall's "Travels in the United States in 1827-28," we find a new feature of this preparatory ceremony, introduced after the dance, among the Creeks of Alabama. The players met in a hut, round which ran a seat close to the wall; in the middle a fire was burning, at which the players squatted, nearly naked, tying cords tightly