>>Dr. Nelson: All right, up here we've got
the ball grounds. This is where y'all play
stickball. Is that right?
>>Chief Comingdeer: Yeah, this is where the
social game of stickball is held. This is
the they call it the ball court or stickball
field. And there's different forms of the
game, but this is one that we've retained
here. And we play on a certain schedule events
and whatnot, and it's kind of a it's a community
game to where children up to elders can come
in and play, men and women. Of course this
is where the men use the ball sticks, and
the women are all on one team and the men
are all on another team. And the pole is the
the goal. You can see the top, what we called
the head, that's the target to to hit.
>>Dr. Nelson: So you you whack the the head
with the ball, and you score how many? How
many points is that?
>>Chief Comingdeer: Here it's four.
>>Dr. Nelson: You get four points there, and
if you hit the pole?
>>Chief Comingdeer: It's above there's a mark,
and between that mark and the head is one
point.
>>Dr. Nelson: Yeah, one point there.
>>Chief Comingdeer: So they keep score. There's
a scorekeeper. They make marks on the ground,
a designated line, and that's how you know
who wins the game.
>>Dr. Nelson: Well, you're talking about children
and elders playing. I I gather it's not as
rough as it might've been back in the old
days.
>>Chief Comingdeer: This this game here is
is in the way we've been instructed, it's
the intention of it is to bring people together
because anymore, like I said, we don't live
at our ground anymore. We live scattered across
the Cherokee Nation and some even live outside
the Cherokee Nation. Our procedure here is
that through the winter we might not see each
other all that often, and before we can start
dancing again next spring we should have a
designated number of of assemblies here at
this ball court to where our people come back
in and become sort of reacquainted with each
other.
.
>>Dr. Nelson: I I should say in case there's
some folks who were wondering, we're not going
to be shooting any footage of the actual grounds
interior. Maybe you could tell us a little
bit about why that is.
>>Chief Comingdeer: Yeah, we just out of respect
for our our ground and out of respect for
all the people affiliated with this ground
would prefer to adhere to our rules. Everything
has to rest, and in our tradition, in our
heritage that fire is a living part of our
people. And just as you and I have to rest
at night, we have to rest at night, and we
have to eat and breathe air. The fire is no
different. It's very intense, very engaging
during the the season of dancing, and medicine,
playing ball, and then we have that resting
time which is now. And that fire has to rest,
and it will regain its energy for next year.
>>Dr. Nelson: It's it's fascinating to talk
about it as such a living thing, something
that that hungers that that wants to be around
people that is alive and that lives in in
the folks here.
>>Chief Comingdeer: The growing season was
all messed up. There was kind of a little
Ice Age, you know, three or four years before
removal. And if you remember during the removal,
the forced removal, it was the coldest winter
on record. The Mississippi froze. Well, that
had been going on for three or four years,
and it was it was an environmental kind of
an environmental catastrophe going on, and
so our corn crops weren't producing, Creeks
and Cherokees. Nothing was coming up. The
summers were cool, and the winters were really
harsh. We have stories of our people freezing
to death in their homes, cabins, and whatnot.
Well, the men were forced to go back to hunting
year-round because the crop was failing. This
is leading up the removal. And they say that
there were so many Cherokee men with guns
all over the countryside hunting for food
that it scared the white people, and so the
white people demanded that the Army do something
about it, the government do something about
it, these Indians with guns everywhere. There
was a disarmament. They went through and they
they made a demand among the Cherokee people
they had to turn their guns in, weapons in.
One of the final groups of men to keep outlandish
killing from going on, they surrendered their
weapons at this fort, this military fort.
And the way the story was told to me, the
men went into the fort each carrying their
their rifle. And they stacked the rifles up,
you know, like this, and as they were leaving
one of the military officers made an announcement.
They said, "You men, when you turn your gun
in, you can pick up your rations at the gate
before you leave." And our Cherokee men, they
talked about that briefly, and they gave a
response to the military. And they said, "We've
turned our rifles in, but we would rather
starve to death than take your rations." And
so they left and they did starve to death,
lots of them, and that's the condition our
people were in at the time of the roundup
before they started the detachments west,
you know, on the on the forced removal. But
to me, that speaks of the terms in which we
were we were willing to live and die. If we
couldn't provide for our own self, then we
were willing to die as a Cherokee, but not
all of us died. Some of us survived, and we
made it here. We made it right here where
we're at today.
>>Dr. Nelson: Carrying on, and adapting, and
still playing ball, and still dancing. Very
good thanks for sharing that.
