Long before the ships of Columbus brought playing cards to North America, the indigenous peoples engaged in gambling activities. The Native populations of the Western Hemisphere have been no different than other populations since the beginning of time. They have had games and have wagered valuable possessions on the outcomes of the games.
Stewart Culin’s Games of the North American Indians classifies hundreds of Native games into categories of (1) games of chance, including dice games and guessing games, and (2) games of dexterity, encompassing archery, javelin and darts, shooting, ball games, and racing games. All categories were found among all North American tribes at the time of contact with the European intruders upon the continent.
Guessing games usually involved sticks that one person would hold in his or her hands behind the back. Another person would seek to determine which hand held the most sticks or held a stick with a particular marking. Other guessing games would involve having to find a hidden object such as a stone or a ball that might be placed into one of several moccasins or in some place in a room.
The most prevalent game of chance involved objects that had characteristics of today’s dice. Tribes of every linguistic group had dice games. Most often the dice were stones with two distinguishable sides. They were tossed by hand into baskets or bowls, and counting systems were used to keep score for two individuals or two groups competing with one another.
All tribes in North America had some game involving throwing or shooting an arrow, spear, or dart through a hoop placed at a distance. A variety of other targets would be used as well. Also, some contests involved keeping arrows in the air for a long time or achieving great distances with shooting. Ring and pin games were also quite popular. A ring (the target) was tied to a stick by a string. The string was then used to swing the stick into the air with the object of having the stick go through the ring.
Although most arrow-type games and running games were based upon individual skills, Native Americans also had a wide range of team games involving kicking balls or moving balls toward goals by means of rackets or clubs. Europeans learned the game of la crosse from the indigenous populations of the North American continent. In addition, all tribes had varieties of running games involving individual runners as well as teams of relay runners.
Wherever there was a game or a contest, schemes existed to place wagers on the results. In most of the skill games the participants in the games were men; however, those making wagers would often include both men and women, and the betting activity could become rather excessive.
Culin relates some harmful effects of tribal gaming, citing an account of a bowl and stick-dice game among the Assiniboin of the northern plains: “Most of the leisure time, either by night or by day, among all these nations is devoted to gambling in various ways, and such is their infatuation that it is the cause of much distress and poverty in families”. He suggests that if a young man gained a reputation for being a heavy gambler that this would be an obstacle in the way of gaining a wife. Many arguments ensued among the people because of gambling. Culin writes, “We are well acquainted with an Indian who a few years since killed another because after winning all he had he refused to put up his wife to be played for”.
According to Culin, among the Assiniboin women could become as addicted to gaming as the men; however, as they usually did not control property resources as much as men, their losses were not as “distressing”.
Other accounts of Native American games have been more positive. Burt and Ethel Aginsky found that among the Pomo of California, gamblers were a highly honored group and that a family would happily welcome an apprentice gambler as a son-in-law. The gaming was also sanctioned by tribal religion, and the full society participated in games that involved wagers. Tribal members, however, were cautioned against winning too many possessions from one another as this would cause “hard feelings”.
Henry Lesieur and Robert Custer reviewed several studies of Native American gaming and found patterns of activity that mitigated the possibilities of the development of pathological gambling behaviors: (1) Games were formalized rituals with many spectators, (2) players could not go into debt as a result of the games – they could wager only those possessions they brought with them to the games, and (3) individuals had to have permission of their family in order to make wagers.
Although the modern era has seen a massive expansion of Native gaming facilities in North America, today’s Native games are patterned almost exclusively upon games developed by Asian and European newcomers to the continent. Similarly, while the new Americans very early established contact with Native peoples and also incorporated gambling practices into the life of their new communities, there is very little evidence that they borrowed games from Native peoples, la crosse being one exception.
The lack of a general cross-fertilization of game development among tribes and settlers of European origin is evidenced in the almost complete lack of mitigating controls over pathological gaming, such as those identified by Lesieur and Custer, in modern Native American casinos. Today’s Native American gaming is simply an outgrowth of emerging patterns of non-Native gaming.
|
|