the incantations, he remembered the
fact for a different reason than discomfort.

The eighty ball-players of Ioco stood in a row near the bank, submerged
to the knees. They had gone in with a tumultuous rush, and with their
faces painted, their heads crested with feathers, clad fantastically and
gorgeously but scantily, they were holding their ball-sticks high in the
air with an eager grasp,--all except Amoyah. Although still in his place
in the line, he was looking over his shoulder with an amazed and
startled gaze.

For there upon the bank, as if struck from his hand in the confusion and
turmoil of first entering the water, lay his ball-sticks. He seemed
about to return for them, as the implement of the game must be dipped
also in the water at the appropriate moment of the incantation. But old
Cheesto, the Rabbit, motioned him to forbear lest by this unprecedented
quitting of the line during the ceremonial the efficacy of the spell be
annulled; he himself stooped down and picked up the ball-sticks. Then,
notwithstanding his age and his fierce rheumatism, notwithstanding his
long and cumbrous robe of buffalo skin, the skirt of which he seemed to
clutch with difficulty, he plunged into the icy water, waded out to the
young man, handed him the ball-sticks, and regained the bank just as the
other cheera-taghe standing at the margin of the river began the
incantations supposed to influence the success of the competition.

This Indian game, which has left its name on one of the watercourses of
Tennessee, Ball-Play Creek, required a level space of some five or six
hundred yards in length but no other preparation of the ground. At one
end, in the direction of Niowee, two tall poles were fixed firmly in the
earth about three yards apart, and slanting outward. At the end toward
Ioco a similar goal was prepared. Every time the ball should be thrown
over either goal the play would count one for the proximate town, and
the game was of twelve or twenty points according to compact, the
catcher of the twentieth ball being entitled to especial honor. It was
of course the object of each side to throw the ball over the goal toward
their own town, and to prevent it from going in the direction of the
town of the opposing faction.

All the morning crowds of Cherokees of all ages and both sexes had been
gathering from the neighboring towns, and were congregated in the wide
spaces about the course at Ioco. These fields had earlier been p