Cherokee Stickball

I have watched them play this for years, and I still have no idea what the rules are. Some have one stick and some have two, and frequently they wrestle each other to the ground or tackle each other in pig piles. Sometimes they throw the sticks away to focus on the wrestling. There’s a ball. No idea how you score.

I used to live near Ballground, GA, which was reputedly the place where the Cherokee and the Creek would gather to play this game in lieu of war. Sometimes: there was a brutal war fought there at least once, which caused the Creek to retreat far to the south. 

UPDATE:

Don’t know if anyone scored or won, but the game is over. They all came together and slapped hands like at a little league game, then did this ritual with whoops while the referees(?) tossed water in the air onto the players. 

UPDATE: I asked some of the players to explain the rules after the game. Apparently there are two sticks on either side that serve as a goal, which are hard to see because they're just unadorned sticks stuck upright in the ground -- I think in the top picture you can see them, with leaves still on them so you might have thought they were sapling trees. You can score by carrying or throwing the ball through them. You can't pick the ball up with your hands, only a stick; but if you catch it in the air with your hand you can carry and throw it with your hands. You can discard or pick up sticks at will, so if somebody throws down their stick to wrestle you can grab theirs and deny them the ability to scoop the ball off the ground. 

Apparently the black-short team won, although exactly when any of them scored was opaque to me as a viewer. They didn't even get excited about it.