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SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL. LIFE 153
There may be some question, however, whether Mr. Scott has distinguished
between regular games and practice games. Simpson
Tubby asserted that the bands were arranged into what we should
call town moieties, the Bok Chito, Turkey Creek, and Biasha bands
playing on one side and the Moklasha, Chankey, Sixtowns, and
Seventowns playing on the other. Noxapater and Talla Hikia were
branches of Bok Chito. The first moiety used the colors blue and
white; the latter the colors yellow and green. Practice games were
held between the bands on each side in order to pick out the best
players for the regular games, in which 40 men were usually entered
on a side. In such games each side usually bore the name of some
one band, but players from the other bands were drawn in to help
them out. Later Simpson modified his original statement regarding
the moieties by saying that the Bok Chito and Biasha bands played
on one side, the Moklasha, Sixtowns, and Seventowns on the other,
while the Turkey Creek and Red Water bands played sometimes
on one side and sometimes on the other. Some of this confusion
was no doubt due to intermarriage, which Simpson says occasioned
much trouble in selecting the players. He added that the band
captains made up the parties but the head chief might interfere
if he disliked their arrangements. The matter is still further confused
by Simpson's statement that they did not play games band
against band before the coming of the whites but made up squads
drawn from any source. This was called the " peace game." He
claimed that the first Choctaw to manufacture ballsticks was named
Musholeika (" to go out " or " to put out " like a light). By 1893,
he said, most of the Choctaw had left the country, and then the
whites got the Indians into the habit of betting, dishonesty crept in,
and when trouble arose between the players, the spectators took up
for their respective sides until free fights resulted. So far as gam-
bling is concerned, we know it to have been an inseparable feature
of native ball games from primitive times, but it is true that games
are now more apt to end in a riot than was formerly the case.
Each captain had to indorse the players of his band as bona fide
members of it, and they must satisfy him that they had observed
the regulations. They were obliged to remain away from their
wives for 30 days preceding. They must not eat hog meat or any
kind of grease, but were given barbecued beef cooked in quarters.
The night before the game they were allowed scarcely anything,
and only a little water at any one time. The play was very rough
and lasted as a rule from about 9 to 4.30.
The date for a game might be fixed from 15 to 100 days ahead but
usually between 30 and 90. A set of counting sticks with the num-
ber of sticks equal to the days intervening was given to each side
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