Ishtaboli or Lacrosse Game

The Choctaw men (from southeast Native American tribes) loved to play Ishtaboli, a stick and a ball game that the French colonists renamed Lacrosse. The game was so violent that the Choctaw called it "the little brother of war." The Choctaw built huge playing fields that could hold up to seven hundred Ishtaboli players at one time.

To play, warriors and nobles would wear loincloths with fringed belts and elaborate structures covered in egret feathers that stuck out behind them like tails. They carried long sticks made from wood with webbed ends woven from strips of deer hide.