Unknown Maker, Native North American

The ball playing sticks were made in the nineteenth century by a member of the Choctaw people for a game that was often used to peacefully settle conflicts between different towns. Teams of twenty or more men would gather for festivities of several days' duration that included the playing of a stickball game called

"toli" in which players carried the ball down the field in their sticks and tried to throw it to hit the goal of the opposing team. Although the game involved elements of ritual and Choctaw doctors, rainmakers, and other religious and ritual people were much in evidence, these sticks are implements of superb functionality. The pair displayed here are shaped so that the player can catch the ball, a leather-wrapped projectile the size of a golf ball, tuck it into the netting of the larger stick, then keep it from falling out by placing the smaller racket on top. The rackets are beautifully crafted from bentwood, a craft that has revived with the recent renewal of interest in "toli " among the Choctaw.