Sacred team games

Occasionally, sacred societies specialized in a specific sport. Team games were undoubtedly recreational activities, but they also had a larger social and religious function, like most facets of native life.

The ring and rod game is the most common example. It was a sport practiced mainly by men throughout the American continent that consisted of throwing a spear or arrow at a bow or ring rolling on the ground. The ring was symbolic. In the Zunni version, there was a ring covered by a net that represented the cloth of the ancestral protector known as Woman Spider.

This is a very old game that had a great diversity in the objects used and in the rules. Despite the diversity of players, it seemed that there were always two teams, representing a fundamental duality: “we” (the population) and “they” (las fuerzas ocultas). If you bet, as in the arapaho culture, the winnings were distributed among the members of the team.

Sometimes the time at which the meetings were held was crucial. The Northwest coast wasks, for example, played this game to score the first salmonette of the season.