Culture of The Choctaw - Stickball

Stickball

Native American stickball, one of the oldest field sports in the Americas, was also known as the "little brother of war" because of its roughness and substitution for war. When disputes arouse between Choctaw communities, stickball provided a "civilized" way to settle the issue. The earliest reference to stickball was in 1729 by a Jesuit priest. The stickball games would involve as few as twenty or as many as 300 players. John R. Swanton states of George Catlin's remarks on the game,

"It is no uncommon occurrence for six or eight hundred or a thousand of these young men to engage in a game of ball, with five or six times that number of spectators, of men, women, and children, surrounding the ground, and looking on..."

The goal posts could be from a few hundred feet apart to a few miles. Goal posts were sometimes located within each opposing team's village.

"The nature of the playing field was never strictly defined. The only boundaries were the two goalposts at either end of the playing area and these could be anywhere from 100 feet (30 m) to five miles (8 km) apart, as was the case in one game in the 19th century." (Kendall Blanchard, The Mississippi Choctaws at Play: The Serious Side of Leisure)

The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians play stickball today in the 21st century. Every year at the Choctaw Indian Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi stickball can be seen played on a modern day football field.