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160 BUEEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
the vicinity of Bayou Lacomb, they resorted to the sloping banks of streams
or bayous, but avoided the water.
At the present time both men and children play marbles, drawing rings on
the ground and following the child's game.
The children play also " tag " after the manner of white children.*
Bossu mentions archery contests.'
TRAVEL AND GREETINGS
There is very little to be said under this heading. We know that
the Choctaw towns were linked to one another and to the surrounding
peoples by numerous trails of the usual Indian one-man pattern, but
the Choctaw seem to have strayed from home less than most Indians,
and trade Avith the French, English, and Spanish posts so rapidly
displaced the much less prominent aboriginal intertribal trade that
very little may be gathered regarding the latter. That these Indians
had little difficulty in making their way about, even in unfamiliar
parts of the country, when they had occasion to do so is evident from
everything related by the travelers who came in contact with them.
Cushman says on this point
It was truly wonderful with what ease and certainty the Choctaw hunter and
warrioT made his way through the dense forests of his country to any point he
wished to go. near or distant. But give him the direction, was all he desired;
with an unerring certainty, though never having been in that part of the country
before, he would go over hill and valley, through thickets and canebrakes
to the desired point, that seemed incredible. I have known the little Choctaw
boys, in their juvenile excursions with their bows and arrows and blow-guns to
wander miles away from their homes, this way and that through the woods,
and return home at night, without a thought or fear of getting lost ; nor did
their parents have any uneasiness in regard to their wanderings. It is a uni-
versal characteristic of the Indian, when traveling in an unknown country, to
let nothing pass unnoticed. His watchful eye marks every distinguishing fea-
ture of the surroundings—a peculiarly leaning or fallen tree, stump or bush,
rock or hill, creek or branch, he will recognize yeats afterwards, and use them
as landmarks, in going again through the same country. Thus the Indian
hunter was enabled to go into a distant forest, where he never before had been,
pitch his camp, leave it and hunt all day—wandering this way and that over
hills and through jungles for miles away, and return to his camp at the close
of the day with that apparent ease and unerring certainty, that baffled all the
ingenuity of the white man and appeared to him as bordering on the miraculous.
Ask any Indian for the directions to a place, near or distant, and he merely
points in the direction you should go regarding that as sufficient information
for any one of common sense.*
The skill of the forest Indian, as we now know, arose from the
conditions of his life. Under similar circumstances white men have
developed equal sagacity.
» Bushnell, Bull. 48, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 20.
•Appendix p. 263; Nouv. Voy., vol. 2, p. 101.
* Cushman, Hist. Inds., p. 182.