Native American toys
Native American toys encompass a variety of playthings created and used by children in traditional Indigenous cultures. Like children worldwide, Native American children engaged in play with toys that reflected their environment and cultural practices. Common types of toys included dolls, often adorned with clothing and accessories, as well as noisemaking toys, spinning tops, and items for games, such as balls and sticks. These toys were typically crafted from locally sourced materials like wood, bone, stone, and clay.
Infants were entertained with rattles and visually appealing objects hung in their cradleboards. As children grew, they made crude figurines and engaged in imaginative play, mimicking adult roles with small utensils that helped them learn necessary skills. Boys frequently received miniature bows and arrows to practice hunting, while other toys like bull-roarers and kachina dolls held cultural significance in various tribes. Each toy not only served as entertainment but also played a role in cultural education and the transmission of traditions among Native American communities.
Subject Terms
Native American toys
Tribes affected: Pantribal
Significance: The toys with which American Indian children played were meant both to amuse and to prepare children for their roles as adults
In traditional American Indian societies, children played with toys, as children in every society do. Many traditional Indian toys were similar to the types of toys widely found in other cultures, such as dolls, spinning tops, noisemaking toys, items (such as balls and sticks) used in games, and miniature versions of tools used by adults. Toys were generally made of materials that could easily be found locally—wood, stone, bone, or clay.
Toys designed for infants were intended to be amusing and to hold attention. These types of toys included rattles and attractive objects hung on the bow of the cradleboard, such as strings of carved bones that would rattle when the baby moved them by hand.
Children often made crude clay figurines of sheep, goats, horses, dogs, cats, cradleboards, canoes, and humans. They utilized bits of stone, wood, and rags in their play, much as children do today when pretending. Dolls were common, and it was not unusual for dolls to have clothing, cradleboards and houses. Some dolls were actually hollow pottery with pebbles inside. Small play utensils and implements helped Native American children learn the work that would be required of them as adults. Children of most tribes made cat’s-cradles with string, jumped rope, spun tops, bowled hoops, and played with balls. The tops were made of wood, stone, or bone and spun with a long thong of buckskin. The handles for the tops were made of sticks, sometimes whittled into a spoonlike shape. As the children matured they played with checkers, dice cut from sticks, knucklebones, or shells and pitched quoits.
“Buzzer” or “hummer” toys operated by strings were common. Boys in some tribes had bull-roarers, which were made of a flat piece of wood, tapered at one end, with a stout cord that passed through a hole at the other end. When this toy was swung rapidly at arm’s length, its blade rotated and produced a roaring noise that could be heard for some distance. Some tribes regarded this to be an important sound producer and used it in ceremonies, but most thought it a child’s toy. Boys were given miniature bows and arrows and were taught to stalk game and hunt very early. During play, boys would imitate medicine men and had medicine bags made of squirrel or bird skins with small white shells or pebbles for charms. Boys of the Sioux tribe, and probably others, imitated white traders, using fur for a beard and birchbark for hats and shirts. They would smear their faces with light-colored dirt to imitate pale skin.
Hopi children received kachinas or dolls and toy weapons from adults during the kachina dances. Children also had drums and peashooters. Inuits gave their children sleds, boats, hunting outfits, bows and arrows, carved figures of ducks or seals, and dolls (often with fur clothing), which were carved from ivory, wood, or stone. The children of Plains Indians had dolls, sleds, clay blocks, balls, and tops. Children in the Ojibwa tribe had dolls and small animals made of cattails.