George Catlin, born Wilkes-Barre, PA - Ball Play-no. 23 - unknown - T-Shirt

Ball Play-no. 23 is a 19th-century lithograph by George Catlin that records a traditional Native American ball game in full motion, with players and the surrounding crowd caught in the energy of competition.

Visual Elements & Composition

The scene is built around movement. Players press across the open ground in a tight, dynamic cluster, and the eye is pulled toward the ball and the struggle for it. The layout is documentary in spirit: figures are drawn with an ethnographer's attention to posture, dress and physical effort, so the image reads as a record of an event rather than a posed tableau.

Meaning & Symbolism

For the communities depicted, this game was far more than recreation. It could serve as a sacred ritual, a way of settling disputes, and a test of endurance and skill, and matches drew in entire villages. Catlin, who traveled extensively through the American West and made the Indian Gallery his life's project, recorded these gatherings before settlement changed them. The work preserves a practice that authorities often sought to suppress, and it stands as part of a body of hundreds of paintings documenting Indigenous lifeways across North America.

Wearing the Ball Game

A ball game is a scene of constant motion, and a tee moves with its wearer in the same way. The composition reads differently as you walk, turn and gesture, with players and crowd shifting across the chest. Worn in everyday settings, the shirt carries a piece of nineteenth-century Indigenous history into the present, with the artwork's source in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection behind it.