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Activities: Context Activities Sacred Play: Gambling in Native Cultures  Back to Context Activities
Gambling has long been a part of Native American cultures. Hand games, like gift exchange, are an important way to redistribute goods among community members. Gambling is not all fun and games, however. In the oral traditions of native peoples, gambler figures, like tricksters, tend to be threshold figures who can move between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Gambler myths, however, tend to have a more gothic edge than trickster tales. Gamblers often preside over the world of the dead, rather than merely visit it, and they are often associated with the end of the world. In contrast, the transgressive nature of the trickster is often a creative or generative force. Thus, gambler stories often are about an individual or community facing fear of annihilation. In Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, for example, the tribes' Cultural Hero challenges the Gambler. The stakes are high: the Hero works on behalf of the community, but wages his life. These crucial encounters dramatize the people's belief about how the original world was altered to its current form. As Kathryn Gabriel points out in Gambler Way, gambling can be seen as a way of tapping into cosmic forces. At times an attempt to gain insight into or even control the otherwise unpredictable future, the outcomes of games can suggest what the cosmic forces have in store. Dice and other gaming equipment are even sacrificed on Hopi and Zuni altars. As Gabriel says about gambling in these communities, "It is likely that the rites were performed to discover the probable outcome of human effort, representing a desire to secure the guidance of the natural powers that dominated humanity." Various native games, such as dice or hoop and pole, invoke and elaborate basic assumptions about the universe, from the nature of causality to the constant tension between opposing forces. Moreover, the communal nature of the games fosters identity within the group. Still, the games are competitive: winning was often seen as a blessing and an assurance of continued order and balance—hence the high stakes and profound meaning of native gambling (medicine men sometimes perform ceremonies to invoke the aid of spirits in winning). Many native myths involve gambling, where divine power helps the protagonist win games of chance over antagonistic opponents. Because these are sacred rites, tribal members are reluctant to discuss their details. The Navajo, for example, fear speaking about gambling away from sacred times and places, lest doing so bring down the wrath of the cosmic forces (much as they would be loath to casually discuss the Nightway). In cultures where there is no need for a straight-edge distinction between the sacred and the secular, practices like gambling both reveal and maintain profound cultural values and beliefs. Never trivial or merely parasitic to "real" or "productive" activity, gambling always conveys deep meaning in native culture. These traditional associations of gambling are present in contemporary debates over bingo palaces and Indian casinos. Because Indian Nations are sovereign states, gambling is legal on tribal ground. For many native communities, such as the Pequot of Connecticut, casino revenues have led to an economic and hence cultural renaissance. Libraries and museums as well as educational and language programs are now available where none existed before. Critics, however, argue that legalized gambling in any form is merely a way of taxing the poor and disenfranchised. Indeed, Indian gambling has long had its detractors. Europeans settlers professed shock when confronted with the intensity of Native American gambling. In 1775, Captain Bernard Romans said of a Choctaw hoop and pole game that it was "plain proof of the evil consequences of a violent passion for gaming upon all kinds, classes, and orders of men." And indeed, from a Western point of view, the stakes of native gaming seemed high; traditionally, players would sometimes continue betting until losing everything they owned (even including the clothes on their backs), and Captain Romans notes that several Choctaw committed suicide after such losses. Gambling in most native cultures is not an idle pastime and certainly is not understood as vice or bad habit. First, it is a very pragmatic way of redistributing goods and food without the bloodshed of fighting or even war. But more profoundly, gambling is a form of what has been called "sacred play"; like many aspects of native life, it is inseparable from spirituality. Teaching Tips
[1092] William J. Carpenter, Life on the Plains (1915), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-99804]. Navajo and cowboy playing cards. These cards show the type of interethnic male-male bonding seen in James Fenimore Cooper's novels. Interaction like this largely died out when white males started to bring their families to settle in the West. [6651] Anonymous, Men Playing a Game in Subterranean Lodge at Chino Village (n.d.), courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library. In what looks not unlike a ritual or ceremonial formation, these men are engaged in game-playing in an underground lodge. In Native American cultures, gaming is a sacred activity that in some cases allows the players to tap into cosmic forces. [6693] Anonymous, Bone Game, Makah (c. 1900), courtesy of Larry Johnson and the Washington State Historical Society. This game, called the "bone game" by the Makah Tribe of the Pacific Northwest, is often referred to as the "hand game" or the "stick game." The activity is guessing which hand is holding a piece of bone, but the game is complex and involves drumming, singing, and trickery. [8225] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Pau-Puk-Keewis," from The Song of Hiawatha (1855), courtesy of Ticknor and Fields, Boston. The sixteenth chapter of Longfellow's famous Song of Hiawatha tells the story of the gambler Pau-Puk-Keewis. Although Longfellow based this work on Iroquois history and mythology, Pau-Puk-Keewis comes from the Chippewa oral tradition. |
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