Colonial America Sports Timeline
Early Explorers to the Americas Discovered a New World of Recreation
Apr 12, 2009
The first European explorers saw Native Americans as backward, undeveloped, and savage. Indigenous tribes from Alaska to Florida, however, had highly developed cultures evident in the sports and games they played.
In many areas of human development, especially sports, Native Americans were far more advanced than their European conquerors. French explorer Samuel de Champlain was amazed at the strength and lightness of Iroquois birch-bark canoes. The shipwrecked Cabeza de Vaca noted that the bows of the Apalachee Indians (Florida) were so strong that no Spaniard could bend them. And Europeans were unable to match the hunting prowess of the Native Americans until they began to adopt aspects of their clothing and technique.
In the 16th century, Europeans brought horses to the New World and got their first glimpses of such things as lacrosse sticks, kayaks, and rubber balls.
Sports and games were an integral part of daily life for Native Americans. Survival depended upon the development of physical endurance (running, rowing, swimming), dexterity, and technical skills (archery, horsemanship, hunting)—feats of athleticism that are either at the core of or have evolved into many modern sports. Sporting contests were vital components of religious rituals, and many tribes used various games of chance as a means of divination.
Timeline of Sports and Recreation in the New World
1492: In the year Christopher Columbus reaches the West Indies, Iroquois plays a form of lacrosse called baggataway in lower Ontario and upper New York State
1500: In Mexico, Spanish explorers discover a tlachtli, a court on which Aztecs played the Mesoamerican Ball Game, a ceremonial sport that combined elements of volleyball and basketball—ritualized competitions that included human sacrifice. A form of the game called Ulama is still played today.
1521: Cortez brings Arabian horses to North America
1610: Earliest accounts of the polo-like game Pato (“duck”) played in Argentina. Pato was played on horseback in fields between neighboring ranches; the first team to reach its ranch house with the pato (early games used a live duck), won.
1609-10: During Jamestown’s “Starving Time,” which killed 240 of 300, colonists engaged in lawn bowling
1619: The first African slaves are brought to Jamestown to labor on tobacco plantations. Like the Native Americans, the Africans had highly developed cultures that included many competitive sports and games that served as preparation for war, hunting, or friendly competition.
1621: On Christmas Day at Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford confiscates implements for “pitching the bar” and playing stool ball (a precursor of cricket and baseball) from newly arrived sporting Englishmen who'd refused to work on Christmas
1643: First account of Native American football matches
1665: First horse races held in New York.
This period, coinciding with the end of the Renaissance in Europe, shaped the development and role sports and games play in daily life. As the nations of North America developed, new sports (such as baseball and American football) would emerge and would exemplify the character of life on this continent.
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