The Daily O’Collegian

The floor of the Starlight Terrace began to tremble at 7:15 p.m. Saturday.

A skylight illuminated the more than 50 feet stomping around its center. People from age 3 to 70 danced to the rhythm of rattles attached to women’s calves, which together created the sound of a waterfall.

A chorus of male voices sang a song in an ancient language. People in the audience studied the counter-clockwise dance to decide when to join this growing human wheel.

About 150 people from the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma — Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole — attended the first Stickball, Stomp Dance exhibition, which the Native American Student Association hosted Saturday.

Sasha Bighair, NASA president, said the associations planned this event so OSU students would see a stomp dance, which is an ancient ceremony of the Five Civilized Tribes.

“We organized it especially for NASA members who are part of the Five Civilized Tribes and haven’t been to one before,” she said.

Sam Proctor, a member of the Creek Nation, said the stomp dance is a ceremony of fellowship and bondage between tribes.

“My ancestors did it as a way to identify with our Creator,” he said. “It was a long time ago, but we do it to find the same person.”

Before the stomp dance, NASA members representing OSU won two stickball matches against members of the Chickasaw Nation at 1 p.m. on the Rugby fields.

Bighair said NASA will do the exhibition annually.

“This year, it turned out pretty good, so we hope it will be good next year,” she said. “All the people who came to help us made it a success.”

The stomp dance in Muskogee is called Opvnkv Haco, which literally means drunken or inspirited dance, according to Jack B. Martin’s Creek-Muskogee Dictionary.

These ceremonies help tribes to preserve their language and songs, said Kevin Mack, a member of the Seminole tribe and the master of ceremonies at the stomp dance.

“Even if young people don’t understand what they are saying, they keep the language alive,” he said.

Mack said stomp dances also help to narrow the generation gap.

“It’s better for young people to be here, keeping the culture alive, than being in the streets,” he said.

Stickball is also part of the ceremonies of the Five Civilized Tribes.

NASA members, visitors from Creek and Chickasaw nations, and students from Glenpool middle and high schools played four stickball matches from 1-5 p.m.

The first two were Fish Game matches, where women competed against men. Each team must throw a ball to hit a wooden fish at the top of a pole. The female team won both matches.

“The guys didn’t have a chance,” Bighair said.

The NASA stickball team played against the Chickasaw Nation in the last two matches. They played “A-ne-jo-di,” a full-contact game that inspired modern lacrosse, according to the online lacrosse magazine E-lacrosse. Native American tribes used to call it “the little brother of war” as warriors replaced battles with stickball matches to resolve conflicts, Thomas Vennum Jr. wrote in his book “American Indian Lacrosse.”