Pre-Stickball Game Ceremony

A ceremonial pre-stickball game dance in 1888 at the North Carolina Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. Smithsonian Institution ethnologist and photographer James Mooney (1861-1921) captured many aspects of American Indian life as it was changing during the turn of the twentieth century.

Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution; photograph by James Mooney