The ball game was usually played about a single post, though not the one in the square-ground, and it was indulged in by both men and women, who played against each other, the women throwing the ball with their hands, the men with their ball sticks. Single tallies were made by striking the pole above a certain mark, but five points were counted if the carved bird which surmounted it was touched. Sometimes, however, the men played their own game, a game similar to lacrosse except that two small ball sticks took the place of the one large one. Each side strove to bring the ball home to its own goal, marked by two straight poles set up a couple of feet apart, and twenty points constituted a game, ten sticks being stuck into the ground by the scorer of each side and then drawn out again. In dividing up, the Wind, Bear, Bird, Beaver, and some other clans, called collectively “Whites,” played against the Raccoon, Fox, Potato, Alligator, Deer, and certain others who were known as “People-of-a-different-speech.” But these games were only practice games, or make believe games. The regular games were always between certain towns, and they were very serious matters conducted with the deliberation and ritualism of a war expedition. Each game was preceded by careful negotiations: the players fasted and were scratched with gar teeth, they enlisted the aid of the supernatural by employing a medicine man, they marched to the appointed place as if to meet an enemy, wagered quantities of property on the result, and conducted it so energetically that serious injuries were sometimes inflicted.