An Indian Ball Player's Training.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1813, 18 July 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

An Indian Ball Player's Training.

As described by Mr. James, Mooney, the training of the Cherokee ball-players includes a course of precautionary measures. They bathe their, limbs with a decoction of Tephrosia Virginiana, or catgut, in -order to render their muscles tough libe the roots of that plant. They bathe themselves with a deooction of the smarll rush, which grows by the roadside, because its stalks are always ereot and will not lie flat upon the ground, however much they may be stamped and trodden upon. In the same way tney bathe with a decoction of the wild crab-apple, or the iron wood, because tbe trunks of these trees, even when thrown down, are supported and kept from the ground by their spreading tops. To make themselves more supple, they whip themselves with the tough stalks of the wataeu, or stargrass, or -with switches nude from tbe bark of a hickory sapling. After the first scratching tbe player renders himself an object of terror to his opponent by eating a rattlesnake which has been killed and cooked- by tbe shaman. He rubs himself with an eel-skin to make himself slippery like the eel, and rubs each limb down once with the fore and ; iind leg of a turtle, because the legs of that animal are remarkably stout. He applies to tbe shaman to conjore a dangerous opponent so that he may be on* able to see the ball in its flight, or may dislocate a wrist or break a leg. Sometimes the shaman draws upon tbe ground an armless figure of his rival with a hole where the heart Should be. Into this hole he drops two black beads, covers them with earth, and stamps upon them, and thus the dreaded rival is doomed, unless (and this, is always the saving cause) his own shaman bas taken precaution against Bach a result, or the one in whose behalf tbe charm is made had. rendered tbe incantation unavailing by a. violation of some one of the. in terminable; rules of the gaktunta. ... JF4&