About this work
The eye goes immediately to the sky — to the ball suspended above a surging mass of bodies, the single still point above a scene of barely contained motion. The vastness of the early lacrosse battlefield, which could span for miles and involve hundreds of competitors, is the true subject of this canvas. Hundreds of Choctaw players crowd the open plain, wielding their paired sticks — called Kapucha — in pursuit of a small leather ball. Players had to move the ball across the field to score without using their hands, simultaneously holding two stickball sticks with a net at the end to wield it.
To distinguish the two teams, one side painted themselves white — a detail Catlin renders with the ethnographic precision that defines his best work. The palette is earthy and expansive: ochres and dusty greens underfoot, a pale sky above, the figures rendered in warm flesh tones and the white body paint that catches the light. The composition breathes the scale of the event itself.
This oil on canvas, measuring 25¾ × 32 inches, was painted between 1846 and 1850 and now resides in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
It is a repainting by Catlin of an original of the same name made between 1834 and 1835 — the year Catlin first witnessed Choctaw lacrosse in Indian Territory near present-day Oklahoma and was captivated by the game. He found in it something that transcended sport: he described ball-play as "a school for the painter or sculptor, equal to any of those which ever inspired the hand of the artist in the Olympian games or the Roman forum."
The game the Choctaw called Ishtaboli — "the little brother of war" — carried deep cultural and diplomatic weight. It was used as a method of mediating social relations and served as an alternative to war in diplomatic concerns between tribes when actual weapons could be avoided. Catlin returned to this subject again and again, producing multiple related works including "Ball Players," "Ball Play," "The Ball Play Dance," and "Ball-play of the Choctaw — Ball Down." This version, made during his years refining and recomposing his Indian Gallery imagery, represents the subject at its most fully resolved.
This is a painting that needs room — a wide wall, generous light, ideally in a study, library, or living space where people pause and look closely. The horizontal sweep of the field rewards attention: the longer you look, the more individual figures emerge from the crowd, each one a small study in athletic effort. It speaks to the collector drawn to American history outside its official narrative — to sport, ceremony, and physical culture as documented by a man who understood he was witn
