Chunkey

Chunkey was played in huge arenas as large as 47 acres (19 ha) that housed great audiences designed to bring people of the region together (i.e. Cahokians, farmers, immigrants, and even visitors).

[5] Many Native Americans continued playing the chunkey game long after European contact, including the Muscogee (Creeks), Chickasaw, Choctaw, and the Mandans, as witnessed by the artist George Catlin in 1832, The game of Tchung-kee [is] a beautiful athletic exercise, which the Mandan seem to be almost unceasingly practicing whilst the weather is fair, and they have nothing else of moment to demand their attention.

This game is decidedly their favourite amusement, and is played near to the village on a pavement of clay, which has been used for that purpose until it has become as smooth and hard as a floor.

The play commences with two (one from each party), who start off upon a trot, abreast of each other, and one of them rolls in advance of them, on the pavement, a little ring of two or three inches in diameter, cut out of a stone; and each one follows it up with his 'tchung-kee' (a stick of six feet in length, with little bits of leather projecting from its sides of an inch or more in length), which he throws before him as he runs, sliding it along upon the ground after the ring, endeavouring to place it in such a position when it stops, that the ring may fall upon it, and receive one of the little projections of leather through it.In the early colonial era, it was still the most popular game among American Indians of the Southeast.

[7] Muscogee chunkey yards were a large carefully cleared and leveled area, surrounded by embankments on either side, with a pole in the center, and possibly two more at either end.