Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Daniel Houle
Unabridged: 1 hr 38 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 10/16/2021
Genre: History - Native American
Athletics in Central and North American societies go much further back than most people realize. The native peoples took their sports just as seriously as any of today’s most fervent soccer fans. One major difference between modern sports and these aboriginal games is that the native people's sports often had strong religious content, and games were sometimes seen as literal substitutes for war, played to resolve disputes between towns or tribes.
The sport that archaeologists call the Mesoamerican ballgame, best known from the ancient Maya and the more recent Aztecs, has a 3,000-year history. It’s probably the most ancient sport in the world and lasted far longer than the Olympics of Greece and Rome. It spread from the mysterious Olmecs of the Mexican Gulf Coast to as far north as the American Southwest and perhaps as far as Colombia in South America. A much milder form is still played in several places in Mexico. Players of the game used a rubber ball thousands of years before the Europeans were aware that something like rubber existed. The ball was extremely heavy, and an errant hit could seriously injure a player. In its classic form, the ballgame was both recreation and literally deadly serious. Teams of two to four players competed, and the captain of the losing team was sometimes immediately decapitated and offered as a sacrifice. Skull racks were frequently near ball courts, used to display the skulls of human sacrifices. In the Aztec version, the player might have his heart cut out and offered to the gods.
In 1831, the Cherokee Nation brought a case against the state of Georgia to the Supreme Court. They argued that as a separate foreign nation, certain Georgia laws overstepped their jurisdiction and wrongfully stripped Cherokees of their rights. The ...
On December 29, 1890, the U.S. military entered the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with the intention of disarming the natives. When met with resistance, the cavalry opened fire on the Lakota in a massacre that killed several hundred men, wome...
Red Horse, a Lakota chief, recorded a detailed eyewitness account of the Battle of Little Bighorn. He recalls seeing a rising cloud of red dust just before US soldiers charged their camp. With the hot sun bearing down on them, the Sioux took no pris...
In 1877, the U.S. government ordered the Nez Perce Indians to leave their tribal lands in the Pacific Northwest for a reservation in Idaho. Though this mandate violated previous treaty agreements, the Army forced the Indians to flee. Led by Chief Jo...
As archaeologists quickly learned, there are numerous temples dedicated to Quetzalcoatl all across Mesoamerica. From the Aztec to the Maya, Quetzalcoatl - the Feathered Serpent - rears his beautiful head from magnificent relief carvings in temples ...
Pauite leader Wovoka founded the Ghost Dance movement in the late 1880s as conditions for Native Americans became increasingly hopeless. Wovoka declared himself the messiah and spread the news that Indians were to prepare themselves for salvation th...
Preserving Native American culture is an effort that is pervading the anthropological and cultural work of today, and without the work of past observers like Z.A. Parker – certain pieces of history could have been missing from books permanentl...
In 1890, the US government feared an imminent Indian uprising among the displaced Sioux people. General Nelson A. Miles reported from the field summarizing the issue at hand. The government was failing to fulfill the terms of the treaty they had coe...
James McLaughlin worked as an Indian agent for most of his life. His most infamous act, however, was ordering the arrest of Sitting Bull for fear that his participation in the Ghost Dance movement would inspire Indian rebellion. “The newspaper...