From 1841 to 1848, Eastman served in present-day Minnesota as a commanding officer at Fort Snelling, a military outpost at the confluence of the Mississippi and the St. Peter’s Rivers (the latter renamed in 1852 the Minnesota River). Located within a place considered sacred by many Dakota people, the fort, which still stands, was a center for trade and diplomacy. During the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, the fort oversaw the incarceration of Dakota noncombatants in a nearby concentration camp.

Eastman made hundreds of sketches of the Dakota and Ojibwe who visited and lived near Fort Snelling, and he converted his drawings into illustrations for ethnographic publications and finished paintings for commercial sale, such as this work. Eastman’s second wife, Mary, explained that this scene portrays a ball game traditionally played between Dakota villages.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)