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The World Series of Choctaw Stickball
They Remember, the Little Brother of War
The World Series of Choctaw Stickball
By William D’Urso
The big man in the creaky office chair hasn’t always been here, but he’s here now and will be here as long as he needs to be. The guy known to everyone as Doc sits upright, almost statuesque, scanning the field, stretches of silence interrupted by his soft, grandfatherly voice. He speaks in a gentle voice that is never in a hurry, as timeless as the game he has played and watched his whole life. The Choctaw World Series of Stickball has been played here, at the Choctaw Central High School, as long as he can remember.
He scans rosters for the players’ names as the action unfolds below, squeezed onto the Swiss Army knife playing field designed for soccer, football and track, but sometimes he’s too slow, missing his moment as he slowly inhales and exhales. In this tidy but unswept press box, above the concession stand and butter-popcorn air, he’s both an announcer at the games, and a custodian, of sorts, a keeper. He helps to preserve the game as it once was, explaining its purpose as he watches, demystifying strategy and untangling points of dispute in the game’s history, a history he has both lived and learned.
He’ll tell you it’s an old game, older, and far more violent than lacrosse. He will tell you players carry two sticks instead of one, and use a buckskin ball that should never be touched with a bare hand. There’s a spirituality to the game and the way it is played, but that doesn’t make it into the spoken word of his play-by-play commentary. Neither do his worries, that the game’s traditions are slipping away, even as his people reach out to seize them.
Doc is silent for a moment. Listen. Behind the clash of sticks and sounds of competition, there is a drumbeat, thump, thump, thump, a steady cadence in the background, like a memory nearly lost. Like the game, the drum is from an older time, before Europeans came to this continent, made of hickory and deerskin. And the people, Doc’s people, sitting in the stands, are quiet, too. As they watch this arcane game, sometimes talking to each other in their mother tongue few fully understand anymore, they reconnect to an older time as well. Both could have been lost long ago, a midday shadow gone in sunlight, but on this day they still linger.
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This is why they still watch, why they still play, and why Doc sits in this press box for almost two weeks every summer. Few away from here would miss the language or the game, never even knowing they existed, but these people would. And when they listen to the drumbeat, to the speech of their ancestors, and hear the victory shouts in this game, they remember the people they were, they are, and will remain.
This ritual, the 11 days of the Choctaw World Series of Stickball, played on a school field in small town Mississippi, brings their scattered numbers together again in the place of their ancestors, and the past lives again.
It’s good that Doc is back, that they are all back, together again. He hasn’t always been here, although, there was never any doubt that he would return, that any Choctaw tribal member would return.
The Choctaw always come back.
Jackson, Mississippi is where you’ll go first on your way to Choctaw, most likely. It’s a friendly town steeped in a southern drawl and a matter of fact point of view.
In this rural landscape, out of towners are often assumed to have a certain viewpoint, and they’re easily spotted.
“I knew you were from out of town because your shirt was tucked in,” said a woman to a stranger.
But hospitality is also as constant as the unpredictable weather. The sky can change fast in central Mississippi, the thick sticky air uniting in big, gray and black clouds, the cumulonimbus floating together to block out the sun. The rain soon comes, and between Choctaw and the airport in Jackson are miles of woodland that recall an older wilder time, when game first walked these paths.
If you take a wrong turn, you’ll find yourself heading to Choctaw by way of back roads. The cracked, narrow asphalt running past undergrowth that seems to take on its own personality, and roads of red dirt that lead to dead ends; green fields stacked with wrecked rusted cars.
Then, when you’re close enough, they appear: Casinos rise out of the woods, a sudden and surreal combination of civilization and wilderness joined as one.
It is not game, but gaming establishments that feed the tribe now, serve as a source of revenue and provide jobs, a benefit the federal government handed out as a sort of consolation, a tithe for the years of mistreatment all the Indian tribes have suffered. The casinos are a step forward toward a still uncertain and in many ways alien future, but to a degree they also finance the preservation of the past, allowing the tribe some latitude to maintain what remains of their heritage as they believe it should be. But the reservation is not the people, and in truth, the casinos are only a small part, just a sliver of the Choctaw Indian Reservation, a total of 35,000 acres spread over 10 Mississippi counties. Nearly 10,000 tribal members live here in eight communities and many of them send stickball teams to the annual World Series of Stickball, dozens of teams and hundreds of players that gather to remember. Just a bit down the road is the school, and the press box where Harold “Doc” Comby sits in the old office chair. He’s the Deputy Director of Choctaw Public Safety, but he’s set that aside for now.
The Choctaw are cautious, sometimes, wary of what outsiders will do, how they might twist the fabric of who they are into something it is not. They’re no longer alone here. They compete with a deluge of culture that is not their own.
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There’s good reason to doubt newcomers. It’s a lesson the Choctaw have learned at great cost over the centuries. Trust in newcomers has cost them almost everything, the lives of their people, their land, and some of who they once were. And it is not an unfamiliar story.
When the Spanish landed in South and Central America in the early 1500s, the cruelty, violence and disease they carried with them affected historic changes on the continents. The Aztecs and Inca were butchered, their wealth stolen and extorted. The highly profitable expeditions of the Conquistadors made Catholic Spain the wealthiest nation in the world, a super power amidst building tensions with Protestant England. It made the nation eager for even more.
Hernando de Soto was the first of these Spanish conquerors to venture deep into what would become Mississippi, crossing the great river that would share the same name, an expedition in the mid 1500s whose only ambition was greed. The Choctaw’s encounter with European armor and guns was bloody, and one-sided. But in spite of this experience, the Choctaw did not turn away the traders who came later. In the late 1700s the Choctaw signed the first of a series of treaties with the federal government, one of the first tribes to do so. These agreements established peace, carving out boundaries for co-existence.
Yet these promises, like many others, would be broken. With each treaty, the Choctaw gave up more land, until the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, signed in 1830, sent thousands of tribe members into exile a few years later, to Oklahoma. More than two-thirds of the 19,000 tribes people living in the land of their ancestors were the first Indians were displaced, relocated to land the federal government had set aside for Native American transplants. It should have been a final blow to the Choctaw in Mississippi.
Yet some refused to leave, digging in to the place where they had always lived. And they are still here today, in the towns of Choctaw, Bogue Chitto, Conehatta, Red River, Standing Pine and others, the homeland of the Choctaw Indians. And for the last 66 years they’ve celebrated their culture with the annual Choctaw Indian Fair, stickball at its center, and remember those who refuse to forget who they are.
Every Fourth of July weekend, Independence Day for American citizens, the Choctaw celebrate their own. While residents of neighboring towns sing the national anthem, conduct parades and have barbecues, the Choctaw gather, tap their drums and play their game in vast numbers, with a level of skill far surpassing that on display in the July 4th softball game or the backyard Thanksgiving Day touch football game. They are the best in the world at their sport, competing in several divisions, Men, Women, Over-35, and Youth (10-13 and 14-17). For nearly two weeks, games will be played all day long.
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Thomas Ben’s role is also custodial. He’s the commissioner of the game, charged with the preservation of the rules, and with ushering the sport into an age of online live streaming, so tribal members who cannot attend can still participate. Slender with a side of toothy grin, he oversees the games as a fan as a much as an official.
On this national holiday, he looks over the game on the field in the thick air aftermath of a heavy rainfall. The players, some in face paint, many shoeless, sprint across the slick grass, sticks in hand, slamming into each other. To the uninitiated, it seems to be blunt force barbarism just civilized enough for sport. Yet that is why they come back each year, to lift who they are on their shoulders and carry it into the future, to find themselves in the game.
“This is us. This defines the Choctaw people,” Ben said. “I’ve traveled to some of the other communities in other states and they lost some of what they hold dear. With us, it’s still strong.”
Today, in an early round of the tournament, they see a mismatch in the 18- to 35-year-old men’s bracket. Beaver Dam, one of the game’s historically good teams, is outmuscling and outplaying Tushka Homma, a team representing the Choctaw Nation from Oklahoma that has only participated in the annual tournament since 2010, which has taken place in its current form since the ‘60s.
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To those who are not Choctaw, the sport at first appears chaotic, a silent film whose plot has yet to be revealed. Dozens of players wielding two long sticks called kabocca race across a the field, apparently smashing each other to the ground at random, a 12-foot-tall wooden post standing upright in front of each of the two football goalposts.
The crowded field adds to the chaos, more crowded than for either football or soccer, and as they race back and forth, they throw something to each other, something too small to catch every time, almost too small to see and keep track of, a small ball, a towa, golf ball sized, spray painted orange.
That makes it easier to see, and after a few moments, as the ball appears and disappears, now in the air, now upon the ground, and now carried between the sticks, the game begins to make more sense too. There is strategy in what first appears as mayhem, subtle feints and misdirection, elegance in between the crevices of brute physicality. The action never stops. The game is played in running time, and just as the ball rolls out of play, an official puts another into the fray so play can continue. The only stoppages in the game come when a player is hurt on the ground and cannot rise, and then a medical cart is called to assist.
That is what outsiders notice first, the bone-jarring collisions between barefoot men, and the way fallen players leap back to their feet quickly, before showing any weakness. In a sense, it is not unlike the way American football is often viewed by those from other countries, a brute contest without subtlety.
But there is more to the game than random collisions. The apparent chaos is full of meaning, and the game rewards the traits of the warrior: speed, strength, endurance and bravery. After the contest begins with something similar to a jump ball at the center of the field, the men pass and shoot the ball with surprising grace, using both sticks to arc it over the mob gathered around each pole. And when a team scores, the ball striking the pole either while shot or carried, the players, and the spectators whoop, and holler. Scoring takes great effort, teamwork, and communication. And like any sport, these are skills that must be learned, passed down from fathers to sons, mothers to daughters.
After the first 15-minute quarter, Beaver Dam leads 5-0, their shots more accurate, their will more strong, and in many cases, particularly among the defenders, their bodies heavier.
Traditionally, the Choctaw used the game as a way to settle disputes and avoid war among the various tribes and communities. It was decisive and challenging, definitive and violent. There were few rules of any kind. The Choctaw called it Ishtaboli, The Little Brother of War.
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In the pine tree wilds of central Mississippi, before the Europeans penetrated the forests, the tribes would play the game for days, sometimes fielding hundreds of players per side, on fields that stretched over rough terrain for miles. At times, the game had the feel of real war; the high-pitched rapid cries after a goal, war paint, bloodshed, even death. Like other Native American stickball games, some consider it a forefather of lacrosse. The Choctaw even boast that it is the granddaddy of America’s pastime, baseball, and historians consider it North America’s oldest sport.
Like lacrosse, there are sticks, and a ball, and passing plays. But there the similarities end. This is not a game for private school students; the Little Brother of War has retained its ferocity. There are no helmets, padded gloves, faceguards or chest protectors. Most players don’t even wear shoes. The two sticks the players wield are as long as 36 inches, made of hickory, a tiny buckskin net at the end. In a pinch, deer leather from Walmart works.
The kabocca are not meant to be used as weapons, but when a player is on the attack, and charging toward the goal, or one steps in front of another to stop him, they sometimes have that effect. When a player hurls the ball downfield, the whipping action of the follow through can easily end with a stick in another player’s eye, and sometimes it is not an accident. Although violence is a given, fights and intentional brutality are rare. Ben, a former player, was once clubbed over the head by an opponent who purposely used his stick as a weapon. Even now, he maintains a look of disbelief when he retells the story. These days, rules have made the game safer.
Players can’t tackle below the waist anymore, or hit players who aren’t making a play on the ball, so the contact isn’t quite as fierce as in football, mainly resulting only in the collapse of tackler and the target. But still, it’s not rare for a player to get knocked unconscious or made groggy for a moment or two, yet according to tradition, even the injured should play on. Stopping is a sign of weakness. Still, there are often plenty of replacements if that happens. Although hundreds at a time don’t take the field anymore, at the World Series each team puts 30 on the field at a time, and it’s not unusual for a team to roster to number as many as 100 players.
It’s a sport that allows for a variety of body types. The players aren’t always muscled, or thin, or tall. Some, often the defensive players who remain back, guarding the pole, have the look of offensive linemen. Others, the attackers, are smaller, leaner, and quicker, with soccer-player speed and agility.
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Sometimes the game appears chaotic, bodies of all types jockeying for the ball. The limitations of the game and the equipment make the contest all the more difficult. The net on each stick is small, smaller than the mouth of a paper coffee cup. Passing and catching is left to those with the greatest skills, and even then it is difficult. A well-placed tackle can easily disrupt a catch, and catching the golf-ball sized sphere demands concentration and plenty of room: One stick catches the ball, the other cups it in place, but the crowded field doesn’t make that easy. More often, players settle for hurling the towa as far down field as they can toward a clutch of their teammates. Then both sides swarm the ball, bodies flying and falling. When the masses reach the ball, it often has the look of a rugby scrum, players bunched around the ball in hopes of knocking it into the open.
But even when that happens, running with the ball isn’t often a better option, particularly against skilled competition. The player with the ball on the open field is a target, the ball is easily jarred loose, and savvy teams know how to stop a player from running the length of the field. At various moments, one sees flashes of other modern games in Choctaw stickball, the passing of basketball, the back and forth flow of soccer and the line play of football. At times, it seems as if the sport is a mashup of every game that has ever been played from the playground to the stadium, yet it is also a game that remains close to its roots in ritual, not yet commercialized or made safe and sterile.
In this game, Beaver Dam is the bigger, more physical team. Clad in blood-red T-shirts, they crash toward the ball every time it comes near the post. Conspicuously parked in front of the pole, the fabvvsa, is Lorenzo Bell, 6 foot, 6 inches of beard and bulk, his sweaty hair captured in a bandana. Opposing players, hoping not to be nailed by him, generally stay out of his way. But around the post is often where it’s most congested, where players are already smashed together in a kind of stickball mosh pit, making a concussive tackle difficult, and making scoring opportunities a challenge. Getting close with control of the ball is difficult, made more difficult by the number of players the team chooses to leave on defense, and the ferocity they display in defense of their post, which they guard as if it is their home.
Tushka Homma tries scoring from outside. Shooting the ball can have the look of a basketball shot. The player makes a little jump, and raises the sticks in the air, flicking the ends like a sharpshooter flicks his wrist. Like a basketball, the best shots tend to have a high arc and hit the post up high, but plays anywhere on the post are fair game. Still, it takes skill to shoot a tiny ball so it strikes a pole that is maybe four inches in diameter, and strength and will to muscle the ball in close. This is the difference in the game. On this day Beaver Dam’s relentless ferocity and experience overwhelms the less experienced Tushka Homma.
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The chasm widens in the second quarter. Leading 8-0 midway through, the action mounts on the sideline. The ball is flung to the edge of the field, the nearest players are not the quickest players, hurtling themselves to get control of the towa. In absence of speed, a wide Beaver Dam enforcer lowers his left shoulder into a Tushka Homma player, knocking him to the wet grass in a clatter, arms and legs flailing.
“Ooooooh,” Doc’s voice crackles through the speakers. “Man, I could hear that one from all the way up here.”
Beaver Dam scores again soon after, and one of its players horse collars a Tushka Homma player. This is the way the game is played, and no one complains. They go on, someone shouting, “Hit him!”
Games with less experienced teams sometimes offer more fan-friendly contests, at least to the unfamiliar; a series of long sprints with armed pursuers waving sticks aloft. Like many other sports, however, it is defense that makes the difference. Tushka Homma, plagued by inexperience as they struggle to stop Beaver Dam’s runners, and are hammered into the ground each time they approach the pole themselves.
“Nine points might seem like a good cushion,” Doc said over the speaker. “But last night we saw Tucker score 22 points.”
Still, it doesn’t look like Tushka Homma will make a strong case to win the game. A Tushka Homma player adorned in blue and white face paint gets smashed to the ground. They call him Pinti in the mother tongue, the translation is The Mouse.
“We’ve played this all our lives,” says The Mouse later, whose given English name is Jared Tom. “To us, it’s like riding a bike.”
At halftime, Beaver Dam goes into the 20-minute break with an 11-0 lead. It is only their first game of the tournament, but as the week wears on, they know the games will get more difficult, that their bodies will ache and injuries will take a toll. And the better teams tend to have strategy, like they do, with coaches and an organized approach. Many coaches are also players who take on the responsibility of organizing the teams, handing out schedules and T-shirts. The very best teams have coaches that patrol the sidelines, shouting out instructions with the fervor and urgency of an NFL coach in the final minutes of the Super Bowl.
Other teams act more like rec league squads, just there to be around friends and have a good time. They pay little attention to where the players stand, and hardly practice. Beaver Dam and Tushka Homma both play to win, but one was more equipped to bring home the title.
The game ended with a whimper, a stoppage after the third quarter with score still 11-0, a 20th century accommodation to the Little Brother of War.
My uncle could not speak English, not very much, so he didn’t speak much English. He spoke Choctaw to his dog. This dog had a good mind.
In the concrete bleachers before the game began, the fans remembered. Then, there was silence, and no drum beat.
The silence was in honor of one of their own, a gesture of respect for a stickball great and storyteller; a man whose flaws and talent made him into something else, a memory that could survive through rumor and story.
When people mention Jake York, the word “legend” often isn’t far behind. He was a one-armed stickball player, someone the salt and pepper observers of today say was one of the best. All that and a dedicated Marlboro man, they joke. At least a pack a day, even when he was diagnosed with throat cancer.
His name wasn’t even Jake York — it was John Walter — but he wasn’t a legend so much for his achievements on the field. He was something bigger than that. Through stickball he somehow became somebody else, a staunch defender and a carrier of tradition. Transformed, he became a version of himself that left his vices behind, the kind of player who became part of the game’s history. Like Babe Ruth and baseball, there is Jake York and Choctaw stickball, inseparable. That was what the people remembered in the silence, that and the stories he told.
When they threw the newspaper outside, “Holisso hót amálah ákmpa,” [“Go bring me the paper”] calling to the dog, then the dog used to bring it. When it brought it in its mouth, he’d say, “Yakókih,” [“Thank you”] and acknowledge it by shaking its hands, even though it’s a dog.
In that creaky old office chair with the too-loose armrests and the fading black fabric, Doc wheeled across the room. His announcing partner took the reins, and Doc spoke softly, like he was telling a secret. He leaned forward, resting on his right elbow, narrow eyelids peering through wire rim glasses, and spoke about Jake York.
“One time he told me he took LSD and didn’t remember nothing for three days!”
A hearty wheeze of a laugh comes out, his eyes becoming small, his smile becoming broad. These are the memories he keeps, and he doesn’t jealously guard what he remembers. He shares it, because if he doesn’t, it will be gone, just as the finer points of the game will be gone, the spiritual roots will be gone and the history. To share was once to risk losing ownership of their culture. Now, it is a way to preserve it. Because Doc knows if he says nothing, if he does not tell you about Jake York, and nobody shares their game, then no one will know what they have missed.
“If you want to eat, you’ll have to walk here to eat the food,” telling the dog in Choctaw. “Even though you stand on all fours, you must [walk over] to get the food,” he said. And it used to stand up and walk there.
Tradition, says Doc, is meant as a guide for morality. He wonders if the tradition has been lost, if it will ever fully return.
“This game is a part of Native American spirituality. A lot of people don’t understand that,” Doc said. “There’s a reason you don’t touch the ball. It’s spiritual. It represents the Earth. Nobody teaches that anymore.”
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It is a problem that transcends culture, the concern of older generations that the kids of today will never understand values as they did, that the path to learning how to live has been forever lost.
Doc is 60 years old, and old enough to feel like tradition still means something. Old enough to forget things, like how he got his nickname.
“People have always called me Doc,” he said. “My parents called me Doc. When I was a kid, I thought that was my real name.”
Younger generations have started to forget the traditions Doc uses as a guide, the ones that teach how to live, how to be good. He’s a child of the land, and lived off it as a kid on the reservation. He picked cotton with his father, and gathered firewood. His father always picked the dead and dying trees, a service to the land they had come from. But unlike many others, Doc once left. He worked for the Bureau of Indian affairs in Minnesota, and Oklahoma, traveling from post to post raising his daughter. And then he returned. There was never any chance he would not come back, it was only a matter of when.
“It doesn’t matter where you die,” Doc said. “The tribe will bring your body home.”
His world is a world where people have two names, and traditions have real meaning. It’s a world that has changed many times. It isn’t change itself that worries the Choctaw but changes in the past haven’t always worked well for them, and sharing who they are hasn’t always turned out well. They are a people who remember the awful things that have happened to them, and they sometimes worry about it happening again. Some are quiet and reserved about their heritage, fearing that if they say too much they’ll lose ownership over who they are, something that has almost happened before. The only fear is that the game, and who they are, could be taken from them.
Someone once asked a former commissioner, Henry Williams if he’d try to get the tournament on TV. Doc remembers the exchange:
“‘How come you don’t have ESPN come out here and tape this?”’ someone asked.
“Because they would take it from us,” Williams said. “If you teach the light-skinned people everything, they’ll take it.”
Even the language itself is at risk. Few but the tribal elders speak the language fluently. The kids, they can understand some words, some sentences, but many cannot hold conversations. It’s less established than the game. But they’re performing triage on the language, allowing for it to be grown and fostered. A language program has been enacted to try and get it back into the schools and to teach the children how to speak the language of their ancestors. Stickball, Ishtaboli, the kabocca and towa, is just a part of the equation, a way to keep the past alive in the present.
Then, “Binilih,” [“Sit”] he commands, and it would sit.
“Ittólah,” [“Lie Down”] he commands, and it would lie down.
“Nosih,” [“Sleep”] he commands, and it would close its eyes.
Jason Lewis came back to make sure the language stayed alive. He grew up far from Choctaw, in the dry air of Southern California where he attended UCLA. But his heritage tugged at him, nagged at him to pay attention, return and take action. He’s 38 now, and works for the Choctaw tribal language program. For three years he’s been working on a program to help the youngest generations learn the language, a key to resuscitating one of the most unique parts of Choctaw culture.
“We’re putting a language program in the schools, because the little ones aren’t getting it at home,” he said. “The language loss is happening really rapidly.”
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Jake York knew this, and in his own way, he told people not to give up on their mother tongue. He told them through story, one his uncle had told him; The Dog who Spoke Choctaw. The story became a fixture of modern Choctaw culture, and was collected in Choctaw Tales by Tom Mould. When he died last December, it was one of the ways they remember him, in the story about the dog who knew their language.
That dog was never spoken to in full English, which is how it learned Choctaw. Uncle never spoke to it in English but, “Ittólat tonólish,” [“Lie down and roll”] he’d say, and the dog would lie down and roll.
“Illipah,” [“We eat”] you’d say to make it walk on its hind legs and make it walk there to eat.
“A holisso hoyot alah.” [“Fetch the paper.”] As commanded, it would bring it in its mouth.
That is what I want to tell you. If a dog can learn Choctaw, then you all can learn, too.
The final night of the tournament, the championship game between Beaver Dam and Koni-Hata began as the others have. The procession of players walked in silence, only the drumbeat as the background. But this time the crowd had gathered, collected from the 10,000 Choctaw from the neighboring communities. It was a game that Beaver Dam, in part, dedicated to their storyteller Jake York.
He helped remind this latest generation that it isn’t hard to remember where they came from. They remember the origins of this warlike game, and its power to solve differences. But the people have also forgotten some things, or at least tucked them away for now.
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That is why they have begun to open their game to the world. They’ve overlooked some of the wariness they have used to protect themselves, and are less wary of sharing so prized a cultural property. Because sharing it is a way to keep it alive. Practicing the sport in this annual ritual is one way to do so, but another is to keep the game alive in the minds of people who are not their own, adopted enthusiasts of Choctaw culture, to make themselves and their culture visible.
This, in part, is Ben’s job, to help take the game into the future. This year the production crew added aerial footage to the YouTube live stream. It came from a drone, a battery powered quad copter operated from the roof of the press box. High above the field it buzzed and zoomed, following the action, the old and new sharing the future.
And just months after the storyteller passed, the team that has claimed Jake York as their own remembered him in their victory. Beaver Dam took home the trophy, defeating Koni-Hata 3-2 in sudden death overtime.
With victory, the ritual was over. This time there was no silence. That moment had passed, but the team had not forgotten. The squad from Beaver Dam joined together on the field, held their sticks high and tapped them together, a celebration, a remembrance, joining the drum beat. And they gathered around, the sticks forming a peak high above the swarm, chanting their team name, their community name, their language.
They had listened, and they had remembered. And now, on a field in Mississippi, on land that is their own, the past could be heard in the sound of their voice.
All photos taken by William D’Urso.