"Choctaw Vintage Stick Ball" Sweatshirt

The Choctaws, or Chahtas, are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States. The Choctaw culture has it roots in the Mississippian culture era of the mound builders. Native American stick-ball, 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, stick-ball provided a "civilized" way to settle the issue. The earliest reference to stick-ball was in 1729 by a Jesuit priest. The stick-ball 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..."