Jessica Crawford, southeastern regional director of the Archaeological Conservancy, described Thursday as an amazing day. It was a truly amazing day for at the site of the ancient Lyons Bluff village in Oktibbeha County, the first fully competitive stickball game held there in 300 years took place.
Archaeologists from the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, with the Chickasaw Explorers, were working at the ancient village site along with the Mississippi State University Department of Anthropology summer archaeology field school. On Thursday they were joined by archaeologists and students from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. They were in Mississippi as part of the Choctaw Nation’s Youth Immersion Program learning about their cultural heritage.
The day’s events developed out of the Chickasaw Explorers’ archaeological survey of a circa 1300 to early 1700s village site at Lyons Bluffs, a site with a temple mound that might date as early as the 1300s.The Chickasaw Explorers is a two-week archaeological fieldwor, and cultural heritage program for Chickasaw high school and college students that is offered by the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. It provides young Chickasaw leaders with an opportunity to experience and learn about the historic Chickasaw homeland. The Choctaw Nation’s Youth Immersion Program for Oklahoma Choctaw high school and college students is in Mississippi studying the cultural heritage of their homeland.
The groups decided to gather at Lyons Bluff on Thursday. At that ancient site Chickasaw and Choctaw stickball teams formed. Two tall cane pole goals were set up and a game began. Playing in the shadow of a 700-year-old temple mound, the Chickasaw team from Oklahoma, assisted by a few Choctaws who played on their team, defeated a team of Oklahoma Choctaws 5 to 4. It wasn’t the score that mattered. It was the beautiful setting with a strong spiritual sense of place about it. It was bringing life back to an ancient village site uninhabited for the last 300 years.
Playing stickball at the ancient village represented more than just a game. It was young people experiencing their heritage in their homeland. Ball games have been a part of Native American culture since prehistoric times. Early French missionaries among the Choctaw found them playing a form of stickball in 1729. To call it simply a game, though, is a misnomer for its playing was not only a social and cultural event but often a means of settling disputes between villages and even neighboring tribes.
The Choctaw version of stickball was played on a field ranging in length from 100 to 500 yards. The fields had no designated width. Historic accounts of games show each team having from 20 to hundreds of players (the teams Thursday each had about 10 players). At each end of the field would be planted tall poles, sometimes one and sometimes two poles. If there was one pole, the object was to hit the pole with the ball. If there were two poles, then the object was to throw the ball between the poles in order to score a point.
On Thursday a tall cane pole was set in the ground on two ends of a field that had once been the plaza in front of the temple mound. As play commenced, it was as though an older time had returned. The players ran with a stick in each hand playing an ancient game on an ancient landscape.
About seven years ago Ryan Spring, an active stickball player from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, explained to me how the sticks are held and used. There are two sticks, one about 33 inches long and the other about 30 inches long. He called the long one the “father” and said it was for defending. The shorter one he called “the mother” and said it was held in your prominent hand and used for throwing the ball. The ball he called “the child.”
After Thursday’s ball game ended and pictures were taken everyone enjoyed a picnic lunch in open-sided tents set up at the base of the ancient mound. As the meal ended we all gathered together for the Four Corners Dance, which is a traditional Chickasaw and Choctaw dance dedicated to the earth, the four seasons and the four directions. On Thursday we also were thankful that the rain had ended and did not return. In a line with males and females alternating and holding hands we danced in a spiral, stopping four times to face north, south, east and west. After the dance the guest began to leave and the archaeologist went back to work on a survey and surface collecting on a grid pattern. It had been a truly amazing morning which harkened back to an earlier time.
The morning’s stickball game reminded me of a local stickball event of note. Buried in the history of stickball is the story of what may have been America’s first professional ball team. In 1829, Columbus resident Gideon Lincecum had an idea as to how some money might be made. He decided to raise two teams of Choctaw ball players and take them on a tour of the eastern United States, putting on exhibitions of ball games and traditional dances.
Word was sent out across the Choctaw Nation, then still in Mississippi, that any ball players who wished to join the traveling teams should be at Okshush Spring by noon Nov. 29. Oak Slush Creek about two miles west of downtown Columbus was near the site of John Pitchlynn’s 1820s house. More than 400 ball players showed up. Lincecum only wanted 40 players and rigged a drawing so as to only get the 40 players that he wanted to travel with him.
The two teams departed, traveling up the Military Road, crossing the Tombigbee River and passing what are now the Columbus Farmers’ Market and the soccer complex. The only exhibition game I have seen a reference to was possibly one in Huntsville, Alabama. The trip turned into a financial failure. It is not clear how far the traveling Choctaw teams made it. There was a reference by Lincecum to seeing Pushmataha’s grave and as it is in Washington, D.C., they may well have made it that far. The Choctaws were to be compensated for their play and so by today’s standards they were professional ball players. That might have made the Choctaw ball teams America’s first professional ball teams.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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