Ancient North Americans Played High-stakes Games
From games of chance to tests of physical skill, ancient North America Indians took their sport and recreation seriously, research shows.
“Games are ubiquitous. Every society seems to have them,” says Barbara Voorhies, a research professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Gambling was especially prevalent—because with nothing at stake the games would simply be incredibly boring.
“Based on the ethnographic record, gambling must be very deep-seated in human prehistory because it shows up everywhere, from the arctic to the tropical lowlands, and in hunter-gatherer to more complex societies,” says Voorhies, a specialist in archaeology, human ecology, and Mesoamerica. “It’s everywhere.”
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Ball-Play Dance. George Caitlin circa 1834-1835. ( Public Domain )
Voorhies is editor of a new book, Prehistoric Games of North American Indians: Subarctic to Mesoamerica (University of Utah Press, 2017), that examines the role of games among ancient indigenous people throughout North America.
For the book, 20 archaeologists looked at how games fit into the social logic of ancient societies; how games influence economies, religion, politics, and health care; and how they promote cooperation or competition among participants.
Some of the findings derive from diaries of Spaniards who arrived in Central Mexico. They described a dice game the Aztecs played, and it seems the ancient Maya enjoyed similar games.
“Dice games are pretty widespread across the continent,” says Voorhies, who is also a contributor to the book. “By and large they are women’s games,” though not in these two societies. There were also several types of ball games played across Mesoamerica, some played with rubber balls.
Pok-ta-pok player in action ( CC BY-SA 2.5 )
“One generalization we can make about North American games is that women play against women and men play against men,” Voorhies says. “Gambling might be between the players, but also among onlookers.”
Sisters might have played a dice game and bet on who would cook dinner or get firewood. Sometimes, people would gamble on a game with the loser becoming the winner’s slave for a time.
Voorhies’ interest in ancient games began in 1988 when she was excavating a shell mound in southern Mexico. On a floor-like surface, she found a puzzling semicircular pattern of 24 holes, with a rock imprint in its center.
“It looked like somebody was playing marbles,” she says. “That was the first thing that occurred to me. At the time I didn’t think anybody in Mesoamerica played marbles so I discounted that and was perplexed about this whole thing.”
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Mexico's Tarahumara people at play based on hole patterns at Tlacuachero site (1907 illustration). (Image credit: Barbara Voorhies)
Then in 2009, she returned to the site, expanded the excavation to expose more of the floor, and found several more of the same features. “Whatever it was, people were doing it a lot. So I renewed my efforts to figure out what it was.”
A colleague referred her to American ethnographer Stewart Culin’s 1907 book titled Games of the North American Indians , considered to be the most complete work ever prepared on the games of North American Indians living during Culin’s lifetime.
She then realized her discovery in Mexico was most likely a game board, since it closely resembled dice game scoreboards from several groups in the American southwest and northwest Mexico that Culin describes in his book.
Top image: George Catlin, Tchung-kee, a Mandan Game Played with a Ring and Pole", 1832-3. ( Public Domain )