Native American games and contests

• TRIBES AFFECTED: Pantribal

SIGNIFICANCE: Games reflected the importance of athleticism to most Indigenous American groups, provided entertainment, and helped develop skills for work, hunting, and war.

Indigenous Americans 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 Indigenous 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 Indigenous American games involved teams playing against each other, in contrast to the more individualistic sports of pre-contact Europeans. Unlike the spectator sports of the contemporary era, 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 specific Indigenous group. According to Stewart Culin, who did an extensive study of Indigenous American games, they were played to drive away sickness, produce rain, and fertilize crops.

Races and Ball Games

Different groups had various forms of foot races. In pre-Columbian America, hunters literally ran down deer and other game, while communication within and among different groups took place using swift couriers. Inca runners ran thousands of miles, uniting their empire. The Pueblo 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 celebrated the tercentennial of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 by reenacting the part played by the runners who spread the word of the rebellion.

The Indigenous Americans of the Plains played a form of dodgeball 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 the Inuit (Eskimos). The Inuit also did a blanket toss, spreading a blanket like a trampoline and throwing participants as high as 15 or 20 feet (4.6 to 6.1 meters) in the air. Various forms of kickball were played, including what was known in the 1980s as hacky sack. 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 (Haudenosaunee) 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 Indigenous groups played games involving throwing or shooting arrows, either at circular targets drawn on the ground or through rolling hoops. The Crow 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. The Crow played the stick game with teams, and each team had supporters who 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. Others 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 to outstanding Indigenous American athletes was fleeting at best, in the twentieth century, Indigenous Americans participated in non-Indigenous athletic events, and there were a number of Olympic-class Indigenous 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 Indigenous American 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 Indigenous American athletes.

Bibliography

Culin, Stewart. Games of the North American Indians. Dover, 1975.

Grueninger, Robert W. "Physical Education." Teaching American Indian Students, edited by Jon Reyhner, U of Oklahoma P, 1992.

Jackson, Jason Baird. “Games, American Indian.” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, 15 Jan. 2010, www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=GA006. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025.

Kennedy, Lesley. "The Native American Origins of Lacrosse." History, 28 May 2025, www.history.com/news/lacrosse-origins-native-americans. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025.

Macfarlan, Allan, and Paulette Macfarlan. Handbook of American Indian Games. Illustrated by Paulette Macfarlan, Dover, 1958.

Nabokov, Peter. Indian Running: Native American History and Tradition. Ancient City Press, 1987.

Oxendine, Joseph B. American Indian Sports Heritage. Human Kinetics Books, 1988.

Schoor, Gene, and Henry Gilfond. The Jim Thorpe Story: America's Greatest Athlete. Julian Messner, 1951.

“Traditional Games of Native Americans.” National Aboriginal History Organization, 14 Mar. 2024, www.naho.ca/2024/03/07/native-american-games/. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025.