In 1834, Catlin witnessed the Choctaw's ball-play-a form of lacrosse-in Indian Territory, near present-day Oklahoma. The artist related that the game often involved as many as a thousand players, "with five or six times that number of spectators" betting on the outcome of the match. Known to the Choctaw as "little brother of war," the intensely physical, even violent, sport included scratching and wrestling as players struggled desperately for the ball.

George Catlin described stickball 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.”