Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/40

 Rh and every man took his own position. The old chiefs seated themselves on the ground with ten small sticks, with which they kept the score of games; pulling all out when they got to "eleven," and replacing one to count ten. Matches consisted sometimes of ten, twenty and one hundred games, and often lasted two or three days.

The game generally began at nine o'clock in the morning. The Indians had different ways of inaugurating it, and never seemed to have "faced" as at present. Sometimes the ball was laid on the ground in the centre of the field, and at a signal from the game director, a general rush was made towards it, amid a glorious clatter and scramble,—the best man at a hundred yards generally picking it up, and making off with it like a deer followed by the hounds. The most common way, however, was to throw it high into the air in the centre of the field, which altered the appearance of this part of the game, as the players reached the centre before the ball fell, and leaped at it en masse to catch or strike it away. Sometimes it was caught by one player between his