Native American Games: The History and Legacy of the Different Sports Played by Indigenous Groups across the Americas

Athletics in Central and North American societies go much further back than most people realize. The native peoples took their sports just as seriously as any of today’s most fervent soccer fans. One major difference between modern sports and these aboriginal games is that the native people's sports often had strong religious content, and games were sometimes seen as literal substitutes for war, played to resolve disputes between towns or tribes.

The sport that archaeologists call the Mesoamerican ballgame, best known from the ancient Maya and the more recent Aztecs, has a 3,000-year history. It’s probably the most ancient sport in the world and lasted far longer than the Olympics of Greece and Rome. It spread from the mysterious Olmecs of the Mexican Gulf Coast to as far north as the American Southwest and perhaps as far as Colombia in South America. A much milder form is still played in several places in Mexico. Players of the game used a rubber ball thousands of years before the Europeans were aware that something like rubber existed. The ball was extremely heavy, and an errant hit could seriously injure a player. In its classic form, the ballgame was both recreation and literally deadly serious. Teams of two to four players competed, and the captain of the losing team was sometimes immediately decapitated and offered as a sacrifice. Skull racks were frequently near ball courts, used to display the skulls of human sacrifices. In the Aztec version, the player might have his heart cut out and offered to the gods.

Snow Snake was a popular winter game among the formidable Iroquois. The game was played by creating a deep, narrow, and long channel in the snow and throwing specially carved sticks down the channel to see how far they would slide. The sticks were perhaps eight feet long, under an inch thick, and maybe an inch wide, and they would writhe and wobble as they hurtled down the channel. The writhing motion reminded the players of snakes, so the throwing sticks were called “snakes,” and the name of the game came from the thrown snakes. There were versions for children and women.
Cherokee Stickball was a popular and rather dangerous game. Players used two webbed sticks to pick up and throw a ball toward the other team’s goal. There were no time-outs and no replacements, and players could block, tackle, and wrestle their opponents and clobber them with the heavy playing sticks. The game was strenuous, and players often suffered broken bones and sometimes even died. The Cherokee regarded the game as “the little brother of war,” and it was sometimes actually a substitute for war, used to settle disputes between Cherokee towns and tribal groups. The rival groups met before the game and agreed that the side of the dispute of the winning team would prevail in the dispute. The stickball game was one of the ancestors of today’s sport of lacrosse. The Cherokee still play the game today, albeit in a less dangerous form.

The game the Cherokee called “Chunkey” was their variety of a widespread and ancient game using small discoidal stones and sharp sticks or spears. Two players started next to each other, with one throwing the stone and the other throwing a spear. Sometimes, both players had spears, and in a running start, one player threw the stone, and both threw to where they thought the disk-shaped stone would stop. The spear closest to where the disk stopped rolling won the point. Chunkey was a popular game for Cherokee of all ages. It was less strenuous than the stick game and did not require as much skill. It helped develop traits such as throwing accuracy and running endurance, both very useful in a warrior society.