Native American games and contests

Tribes affected: Pantribal

Significance: Games reflected the importance of athleticism to most Indian tribes, provided entertainment, and helped develop skills for work, hunting, and war

American Indians traditionally participated in a variety of games and contests. Children tended to mimic adult activities to ready themselves for work and war, while men tested themselves in preparation for hunting and warfare, developing their skills and endurance. Both men and women found entertainment in playing games, including games of chance.

Athletic games involved wrestling, throwing spears, shooting arrows, kicking sticks or balls, running, and many other activities. These games tested the strength, stamina, and courage required for survival in the Americas. Pre-Columbian Native Americans played forms of field hockey, ice hockey, soccer, and football, and they developed canoes, sleds, snowshoes, kayaks, toboggans, stilts, swings, and rubber balls. Many Native American games involved teams playing against each other, in contrast to the more individualistic sports of pre-contact Europeans. Unlike the spectator sports of today, there was more total participation, and participation was more important than winning, even though betting on outcomes was universally common.

Games also had a religious aspect, and their history and rules were often bound up in the traditional beliefs of the tribes. According to Stewart Culin, who did an extensive study of Indian games, they were played to drive away sickness, produce rain, and fertilize crops

Races and Ball Games

Different tribes had various forms of foot races. In pre-Columbian America, hunters literally ran down deer and other game, while communication within and among tribes took place using swift couriers. Inca runners ran thousands of miles, uniting their empire. Pueblo Indians would get up at dawn and run to their cornfields located miles away. Various forms of races were held to develop the endurance of runners, including shuttle relay races, kick-stick, and kickball races. In 1980, the Pueblo Indians celebrated the tercentennial of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 by reenacting the part played by the runners who spread the word of the rebellion.

Plains tribes played a form of dodge ball in which the batter tossed and batted a rawhide ball. Fielders would try to catch the ball and then throw it at the batter, who would try to dodge out of the way. Football games were played across the continent, even by Inuits (Eskimos). Inuits also did a blanket toss, spreading a blanket like a trampoline and throwing participants as high as fifteen or twenty feet in the air. Various forms of kickball were played, including what was known in the 1980’s as hackeysack. In the Southeast, ball games were used to earn hunting privileges, to settle disputes, or to determine who were the best warriors.

The Choctaw played a game called kabocca with a wooden ball about the size of a golf ball. As many as seven hundred players on one team would try to move the ball toward one or another of the goalposts, which were as much as a mile apart, using sticks with cup-shaped ends to catch and throw the ball. Games could be very rough and could last several days—scores could run into the hundreds. The Iroquois called kabocca the “little brother of war.” This game, now known as lacrosse, was uniquely American.

Shinny is a form of hockey that was played throughout North America. The ice version was played by both sexes, but the field version was played mainly by women. Doubleball was a variation of shinny that used two baseball-sized balls that were tied together with a half-foot leather strap. A player carried the double ball or threw it with a hooked stick.

Some tribes played games involving throwing or shooting arrows, either at circular targets drawn on the ground or through rolling hoops. Crow Indians still practice an arrow-throwing game involving throwing arrows at a circular target drawn on the ground.

Various forms of bowling were practiced. The Cherokee pitched stones at clay pins. Another Cherokee game involved rolling or sliding a disk-shaped stone while contestants simultaneously threw poles to land where they guessed the stone would stop. In the Southwest, corncob targets were knocked down with wooden balls.

Gambling Games

Gambling games were popular. Stick games that involved guessing which hand held a hidden marker were widespread. Crow Indians played the stick game with teams, and each team had supporters that dressed similarly and sang as the game was played to give their players power and to confound the opposing team. The Menominee would shake dice-like objects in a bowl and then throw them out. Other tribes would place an object in one of several moccasins, with the object of correctly guessing the moccasin hiding the object.

Children’s Games

Children participated in a variety of games. Girls would put up miniature dwellings and play “house,” while boys hunted small game to feed their “families.” Northwest Coast children played games such as fish trap, a form of tag in which the “fishers” simulated a net while the “fish” tried to avoid getting caught.

Famous Athletes

While traditionally any recognition given outstanding Indian athletes was fleeting at best, in the twentieth century Indians have participated in non-Indian athletic events, and there have been a number of Olympic-class Indian athletes. Billy Mills (Sioux) won the gold medal for the ten-thousand-meter race at the 1964 Olympics, and in the process he beat the United States Olympic record of Louis Tewanima (Hopi), who had won the silver medal in the same event in 1912. The greatest Indian athlete was Jim Thorpe (Sauk and Fox). According to an Associated Press poll in 1950, he was considered the greatest athlete of the half-century. He won the gold medal for the pentathlon and decathlon in the 1912 Olympics and went on to play professional football and baseball. An American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame was established in 1972 at Haskell Indian Junior College to honor Indian athletes.

Bibliography

Culin, Stewart. Games of the North American Indians. New York: Dover, 1975. First published in the twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1902-1903), this is the most extensive study of Indian games available. It includes detailed drawings of the various implements used in the games.

Grueninger, Robert W. “Physical Education.” In Teaching American Indian Students, edited by Jon Reyhner. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Describes a variety of Indian games appropriate for schools.

Macfarlan, Allan, and Paulette Macfarlan. Handbook of American Indian Games. Illustrated by Paulette Macfarlan. New York: Dover, 1958. Describes various Indian games; intended to teach children how to play the games.

Nabokov, Peter. Indian Running: Native American History and Tradition. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Ancient City Press, 1987. Describes the races held as part of the tercentennial commemoration of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. In addition, discusses the history and accomplishments of Indian runners.

Oxendine, Joseph B. American Indian Sports Heritage. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics Books, 1988. Comprehensive history and description of Indian games along with short biographies of Indian sports figures.

Schoor, Gene, with Henry Gilfond. The Jim Thorpe Story: America’s Greatest Athlete. New York: Julian Messner, 1951. A biography of one of the most famous athletes of the twentieth century.