Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-01-01
BASEBALL'S ORIGIN.
INDIANS PLAYED BALL LONG BEFORE
COLUMBUS LANDED.
a Bloody Battle Called sport-The Tort
ures of Training-wild Scenes at
the Contest.

The Anthropological Society of Wash
ington, at late meeting, heard what may
be regarded as decidedly original lecture
on the Indian ball play and its attendant
ceremonies. The lecturer was Prof James
Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, who
has spent several seasons among the Chero-
KEGS, who are still living in their original
home in the mountains of western North
Carolina. The lecture and its illustra-
tions made a decided sensation among a
large class of scientists, who seldom have
listened to such revelation of Indian re-
ligious ceremonies. But it had another
attractive feature, and that is the interest
ing parallel between the modern and the
aboriginal game of ball.
The modern game of baseball is an
American institution and not. as some
might believe, an exotic of foreign growth
which has come to us from the older civ.
ilizatio MS of Europe and the East The
game from which our present sport is de-
rived had its origin and development
among the aborigines of the American
Continent, who played with bat and ball
ages, for aught we know, before the dream
of a new world filled the imagination Of
the Italian adventurer. 1t is thus Ameri-
can to the core, as distinctively so as the
great plains and rivers of the boundless
West, or the spirit of freedom and indie
pendence which animates us as people.
Indian tradition and folk lore show us
that centuries before the ak of the white
man broke the stiffness of our primeval
forests, the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the
Hurons, the Abnakis, the Seminoles, and
the Cherokees, and, coming down to a
later day, the Sioux, the Crows, the
Comanches and others contended with ball
and bat, tribe against tribe, in friendly
rivalry. Each tribe, no doubt, had its
Buck Ewings, its Johnny Wards, and its
Tim Keefes, who went forth to do battle
for the supremacy against the Clarksons,
the Kellys and the Ansons of the opposing
tribes. 1t is true that our national game
of ball is a modification and improvement
upon that of the savages of centuries ago,
but there is no question that it had its
origin in that source, and if more exact
and scientific now than its parent, the ex-
PLANTATION may be found in the universal
modern spirit of improvement which per-
vades every field of mental and physical
activity.
The following article describes at length
the different features of ball-playing
among the Indian tribes of the present
day. 1t is a curious fact that wherever
the Indians have played ball the national
game can be found. The savage tribes,
from New England to California and from
the great lakes of the North to the greater
gulf of the South, found in it the same de-
light that We of the present generation do.
To the Indians of Arizona and New Mex
toto continue the parallel-the game,
universal elsewhere, was unknown, and the
history of baseball, if | mistake not, fails to
record the existence of a single club de-
voted to the enjoyment of the modern
srart in either of these Territories.
1T is matter of surprise that so little
has been said of the Indian ball game by
travellers and other observers of Indian
life. Powers, in his great work upon the
California tribes, dismisses it in brief
paragraph; the notices in Schoolcraft's six
bulky volumes make altogether hardly
two pages, while even the artist Catlin,
who spent years with the wild tribes, has
but little to say of the game itself, al
though his spirited ball pictures go far to
make amends fer the deficiency. All
these writers, however, appear to have
confined their attention almost entirely to
the play itself, noticing the bail-play dance
only briefly, if at all, and seeming COM
pletely unaware of the secret ceremonies
and incantations, the fasting, bathing and
other mystic rites which precede the play
for days and weeks and attend every step
of the game, so that it may be said with
out exaggeration that full exposition of
the Indian ball play would furnish ma
terial for a f4ir-sized volume. In the
course of several field seasons spent with
the East Cherokees in North Carolina the
writer devoted considerable attention to
the study of the mythology and ceremonial
of this game, which had peculiar fascina-
ton for him, from the fact that his first
acquaintance was made, when child of
Z years, with a company of Choctaw ball
players. l shall now describe the play as
it exists to-day among the Cherokees, Sc
lecting for illustration the last game wit
uGSoGu Ol AllN lGoNl hdtlOl. III DGDAGlnbtlj
1889.
According to Cherokee myth the
birds and the four-footed animals once
played great ball game, which was won
by the birds through the assistance Of the
flying squirrel and the bat, whose help
was refused by the quadrepeds on account
of their size. For this reason the ball
player invokes the aid of the bat and the
flying squirrel, and also ties a small piece
of the bats wing to his ball stick and to
the frame upon which the sticks are hung
during the dance.
The ball season begins about the middle
of summer and lasts until the approach of
winter renders the weather too cold to ex-
pose the naked body to the keen mountain
winds, for the players are always stripped
for the game. On one occasion few years
ago game was played late in December
while light snow was falling. The favor
tie time. however, is in the fall, after the
corn has ripened, for then the Indian has
abundant leisure, and at this season a game
takes place somewhere on the reservation
at least every other week, while several
parties are always in training. The train
ing consists chiefly of the regular athletic
practice, the players on one side coming
together with their ball sticks at some con-
venicnt spot of level bottom land, where
they strip to the waist, divide into parties
and run, tumble and toss the ball until the
sun goes down.
In addition to the athletic training, which
begins two or three weeks before the regu-
lar game, each player is put under a strict
gaktunta or tabu during the same period.
He must not eat the flesh of rabbit, OF
which the Indians generally are very fond,
because the rabbit is a timid animal, easily
alarmed and liable to lose its wits when
pursued by the hunter. Hence, the ball
player must abstain from it, lest he should
become disconnected and lose courage in
the game He must also avoid eating the
meat of a frog-anOther item on the Indian
bill of fare-beeause the frogs bones are
brittle and easily broken, and the player
who should partake of one would expect to
be crippled IN the first inning. Above all,
he must not 60 near a woman, and the
PLAYER who should violate this regulation
would expose himself to the summary ven
geanee of his fellows As before stated, if
woman even so much as touches a ball
stick on the eve of a game it is thereby rem
dered unfit for use. As the white mans law
is now paramount, extreme measures are
seldom resorted to, but in former days the
punishment for an infractiOn OF the regula-