The combatants, ranged in two long rows, numbered at least five hundred on each side, and already they began to show an excitement approaching that which animated them when they would go into battle. Their eyes glowed, and the muscles on their naked backs and chests were tense for the spring. In order to leave their limbs perfectly free for effort they wore no clothing at all, except a little apron reaching from the waist to the knee. The extent of the playground was marked off by two pair of “byes” like those used in cricket, planted about thirty rods apart. But the goals of each side were only about thirty feet apart. At a signal from the oldest of the chiefs the contestants arranged themselves in two parallel lines facing each other, inside the area and about ten rods apart. Every man was armed with a strong stick three and a half to four feet in length, and curving toward the end. Upon this curved end was tightly fastened a network of thongs of untanned deerskin, drawn until they were rigid and taut. The ball with which they were to play was made of closely wrapped elastic skins, and was about the size of an ordinary apple. At the end of the lines, but about midway between them, sat the chiefs, who, besides being judges and stakeholders, were also score keepers. They kept tally of the game by cutting notches upon sticks. Every time one side put the ball through the other's goal it counted one, but there was an unusual power exercised by the chiefs, practically unknown to the games of white men. If one side got too far ahead, its score was cut down at the discretion of the chiefs in order to keep the game more even, and also to protract it sometimes over three or four days. The warriors of the leading side might grumble among one another at the amount of cutting the chiefs did, but they would not dare to make any protest. However, the chiefs would never cut the leading side down to an absolute parity with the other. It was always allowed to retain a margin of the superiority it had won. The game was now about to begin, and the excitement became intense. Even the old judges leaned forward in their eagerness, while the brown bodies of the warriors shone in the sun, and the taut muscles leaped up under the skin. Fifty players on each side, sticks in hand, advanced to the center of the ground, and arranged themselves somewhat after the fashion of football players, to intercept the passage of the ball toward their goals. Now they awaited the coming of the ball. There were several young girls, the daughters of chiefs. The most beautiful of these appeared. She was not more than sixteen or seventeen years of age, as slender and graceful as a young deer, and she was dressed in the finest and most richly embroidered deerskin. Her head was crowned with a red coronet, crested with plumes, made of the feathers of the eagle and heron. She wore silver bracelets and a silver necklace.