NEWS

UNC to host American Indian stickball match Saturday

CHAPEL HILL -- A Creek Indian story describes a stickball match between the birds and the four-footed animals, in which a "flying rat" – a bat – enabled the four-footed animals to win.

On Saturday (Nov. 16) at 11 a.m., a club team whose name derives from that animal – the Flying Rats of the University of Georgia – hopes to be just as lucky, as it takes on the Paint Town Stickball Team of Cherokee in an American Indian stickball exhibition game. The 90-minute event, free to the public, will take place at the Finley Practice Facility on Old Mason Farm Road near Finley Golf Course.

The game is part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s observance of American Indian Heritage Month and is made possible through a grant from UNC’s Office of Distinguished Scholarships and Intellectual Life.

Jerry Wolfe from the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, an expert on traditional stickball and a 2002 N.C. Heritage Award recipient, will accompany the players to offer commentary and answer questions.

Stickball, the forerunner of modern lacrosse, is an ancient game that southeastern American Indians called the "little brother to war." Requiring many of the same skills and rituals as war, stickball historically settled disputes between towns and sometimes between tribes. Today, the game is played with teams of 10 players, each using two wooden sticks similar to lacrosse sticks. Like the modern version, stickball’s objective is to score goals with a ball. And it is a bruising contact sport, played in bare feet and without pads.

The Paint Town Stickball Team is one of several teams that play regularly in the Cherokee communities of western North Carolina.

"Cherokee teams rarely travel this far to play a game," said Dr. Brett Riggs, research archaeologist at the UNC Research Laboratories of Archaeology. "Having the opportunity to see them in Chapel Hill is truly special."

Other UNC event sponsors include the Research Laboratories of Archaeology; the departments of anthropology as well as recreation and leisure studies; the curriculums in peace, war and defense, and American studies; the Office of Student Affairs; the Graduate School; the Center for the Study of the American South; and the Carolina Indian Circle.

More information on stickball can be found at the Flying Rats’ Web site: www.uga.edu/~toli/home.html.

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Contacts: Dr. Theda Perdue, history professor, tperdue@email.unc.edu; or Dr. Vin Steponaitis, director of the UNC Research Laboratories of Archaeology, (919) 962-3846 or vin@unc.edu