- Artist:George Catlin
- Medium:Color lithograph
- Size:12.5" X 18"
- Year:1844
- Price:$3,800.00
- Description:Plate #22 of Catlin's "North American Indian Portfolio: Hunting Scenes and Amusements of the Rocky Mountains and Prairies of America" 1844. "As I have mentioned in former pages that for nearly all their hunts, wars, or games, the events of which the Indians superstitiously believe to be controlled by the agency of some supernatural influence, they must needs give a dance and a song; so for a guarantee of success in this important and desperate game, each party must invoke the countenance and aid of the spirit of genius supposed to preside over it, by preluding the play with the singular and picturesque mode represented in this plate, called by them the “Ball-play Dance.” This curious scene was one which I witnessed in the tribe of Choctaws, seven hundred miles west of the Mississippi, in 1836, and I introduce it here as absolutely necessary in enabling the reader to form a just notion of the Ball-play. This famous play took place within a few miles of the Choctaw Agency’s Establishment, and on a beautiful prairie where engaged some five or six hundred youths selected for the play, and surrounded by a multitude of five or six thousand spectators, of all colours, amongst whom several officers of the garrison and myself had mingled to witness the day’s sport. For this purpose we rode out to the ball-play ground in the afternoon previous to the day of the play, in order to witness this important preliminary ceremony, and took our position in the midst of their numerous encampment. The betting was chiefly left to the women, who seemed to have marshalled out a little of everything that their wigwams and fields contained. Of these goods and chattels were knives, dresses, blankets, pots and kettles, drums, guns, bows and quivers, kegs of whisky, war-clubs, tomahawks, shields and spears, horses, dogs, and saddles, and yet a catalogue of less Indian “valuables;” and all were placed in the possession of stakeholders who sat by them on the ground. For this dance the entire number of players on each side, in full dress and ornaments for the play, with their waving tails of white horse-hair attached to their girdles, and their ball-sticks in their hands, assembled and danced for a quarter of an hour in several concentric circles around their respective byes, their faces all looking to the center, and both hands raised as high as they could reach them, brandishing and rattling their ball-sticks together, whilst they all united their voices in the most deafening chorus as the encircling mass moved rapidly around its center. At the same time the women of each party, who had put their goods at stake, formed into two rows on the line between the two parties of players; and facing each other, danced with an uniform step, and in exact time to music, uniting their voices to the Great Spirit – soliciting his favor in deciding the game to their respective advantage; and also encouraging the players to exert every power they possessed, in the struggle that was to ensure, for the protection of their property. In the mean time for old Medicine Men (who were to have the starting ball on the next morning, and who were to be the judges of the play, two of them with their bodies painted red and the other two white, and were seated at the half-way point where the ball was to be started) faithfully and respectively claimed, for their own sides, the favor of the Great Spirit; and his assistance in enabling them to judge rightly between the contending parties: all of which they were humbly imploring for in fumes which they were passing through the sacred stem of the calumet, during the whole night, whilst they sat or reclined around a little fire which they kept burning precisely upon the diving line or point between the two byes, and from which the ball was to be raised to commence the struggle."
1 in stock
Category: Prints