Cited by 2Sociology, History and Politics of SportAmerican Sports and LiteratureIndigenous Cultures and History

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 30 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

American Indian Sport History

Open access
Guiliano, Jennifer, Eby, Beth·2021·Routledge Handbook of Sport History

Abstract

Swimming, cycling, and golf were modern as were the newer sports of baseball, basketball, and American football that would rise to public attention in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Lesser known sports as well as those with fewer professional opportunities have been overshadowed by considerations of how Natives fit into ‘the big three’. Games could demonstrate friendship between communities visiting for council or they could be used to settle disputes. Football, arguably the most well-known sport that Natives participated in, began at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1893. Hopi runner Louis Tewanima would participate in both the 1908 and 1912 Olympics, garnering silver in the 1912 10,000-metre event. Women at the Fort Shaw Indian School competed in, and won, the women’s basketball tournament at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The opportunities of Native sport were further mitigated by the rampant discrimination athletes faced.

Overview

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Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This handbook chapter surveys the historiography of American Indian sport history, arguing that Indigenous communities adapted both pre-contact games and colonizer-introduced sports to their own value systems, and that the field needs decolonial approaches that center Native voices and knowledge. It traces this history from lacrosse, shinny, running, and horse racing through boarding-school athletics, baseball, football, and "Rez ball," to mascot activism and contemporary professional athletes.

Key findings

  • Lacrosse was played under many names and forms — the Onandaga played *dehunshegawaes* ("they hit a round object"), the Ojibwe *bagaa'atowe* ("they hit something") — and served purposes including honoring the dead, encouraging fertility, settling disputes, and training for war; in 1763 Ojibwe players at Fort Michilimackinac used a game to disguise warriors who rushed the gates.
  • Native women had far greater athletic access than white counterparts constrained by Protestant gender norms; Fort Shaw Indian School women won the basketball tournament at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, playing full court, twenty-minute halves, with no timeouts — rules used by their male counterparts, unlike the modified game played by white women.
  • Running and horse racing operated as both sport and survival: Pawnee Big Hawk Chief ran the world's first recorded (but unofficial) sub-four-minute mile in 1876; Narragansett Ellison Brown Sr. won the Boston Marathon in 1936 and 1939; Oglala Lakota Billy Mills was the first Native to win the 10,000-meter run at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; Hopi Louis Tewanima took silver in the 1912 10,000-meter event.
  • Boarding-school sport served assimilationist ends but also anticolonial ones, giving students community, autonomy, and travel; Navajo women embraced basketball in the early 1920s, before Mormon missionaries brought the game to the reservation in the 1940s, and the Shiprock Cardinals collected over a thousand trophies in state, regional, and national tournaments from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Methods

  • This is a historiographical overview chapter in the *Routledge Handbook of Sport History*, synthesizing existing scholarship rather than presenting original primary research.
  • It draws on a wide secondary literature (e.g., Vennum on lacrosse, Downey's *The Creator's Game*, Oxendine's *American Indian Sports Heritage*, Gilbert's *Hopi Runners*, Bloom on boarding-school sports, Guiliano's *Indian Spectacle*) plus archival sources such as Native letters, diaries, and newspapers.
  • No formal sample, dataset, or statistical analysis is described.

Limitations

  • The authors state that sports Indigenous women played, particularly before the 20th century, have long been underexplored, partly because contemporary archival practices preserve written and photographic evidence from boarding schools, colleges, and progressive organizations rather than oral histories and artifacts.
  • The authors state that Native voices and interpretations are silenced in many archival spaces, and that archives within the settler-state purview either fail to incorporate Native experiences or reproduce archival silences by not challenging dominant discourses.
  • The authors state that sport history has little existing scholarship on the inverse question — how sport is transformed by its relationship to Indigeneity — and that centering Indigenous experiences requires recognizing that Native ways of knowing may challenge dominant discourses of sport as pleasurable, civilizing, and capitalist.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.4324/9780429318306-42

Cites

24 of 24 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

27 Sources not found · 17 Own interpretation · 3 No basis given · 2 Not checked yet · 1 Own result

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 38
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 4
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 3
38 of 38
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The dominance of boarding schools and the associated sports of baseball and football have overshadowed other sporting histories in the early to mid-twentieth century.

    “The dominance of boarding schools and the associated sports of baseball and football have overshadowed other sporting histories in the early to mid-twentieth century.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    There is little existing scholarship on how sport is transformed by its relationship to Indigeneity.

    “However, what it also illustrates is a shortcoming within sport history where there is little existing scholarship on the inverse: how is sport transformed by its relationship to Indigeneity?”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The Haudenosaunee-Iroquois are consistently ranked in the top five teams in the world in lacrosse.

    “Its importance remains as the Haudenosaunee-Iroquois are consistently ranked in the top five teams in the world in lacrosse.”
3 of 3

Citations

Cites

Show all 24 references

Research works printed but not linked: 6

  1. Ranking chiefs would compete against one another, demonstrating their knowledge of ocean currents as well as their physical skill. Like indigenous ball games which missionaries and colonizers feared would lead to gambling and laziness, surfing was also perceived by missionaries in the 1820s as potentially corruptive. Despite their prohibition, surfing along with canoeing and hula remained a vital part of Kanaka Maoli culture as it not only served as a form of resistance to white colonizers but also became a way for Native Hawaiians to build industries around tourists who would journey to Hawaii after its annexation. Similarly, Inuit, Iñuiat, Yupik and other Alaska natives would develop their own sporting culture around circumpolar life. Stick pull games simulated common activities in daily life including grabbing a slippery salmon from rushing water (the Indian Stick Pull) and pulling seals from holes in ice (the Eskimo Stick Pull). 37 Other games mimicked skills competitors would need to hunt seals, carry animals across long distances as a result of successful hunts, and contests of balance that represented practice needed when moving over ice floes. Dog mushing, cross country and downhill skiing, as well as curling, ice hockey (known as ricket prior to the 18 th century) and other sports appropriate for ice play also encouraged Native athleticism. They also adopted games from the lower forty-eight 36 Jérémy Lemarié, "Debating on Cultural Performances of Hawaiian Surfing in the 19th Century," Journal de La Société Des Océanistes, no. 142-143 (2016): 159-174.
  2. Davies, Wade. "How Boarding School Basketball Became Indian Basketball." American Indians and Popular Culture: Media, Sports, and Politics 1 (2012): 263-78.
  3. Dyreson, Mark. "The" Physical Value" of Races and Nations: Anthropology and Athletics at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition." In The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games: Sport, Race, and American Imperialism, 127-155. University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
  4. Gilbert, Matthew Sakiestewa. Hopi Runners: Crossing Between Indian and American. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2018.
  5. Ledbetter, Bonnie S. "Sports and Games of the American Revolution." Journal of Sport History 6, no. 3 (1979): 29-40.
  6. Sparks, Randy J. "Gentleman's Sport: Horse Racing in Antebellum Charleston." The South Carolina Historical Magazine 93, no. 1 (1992): 15-30.

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Metadata

Authors
Guiliano, J., & Eby, B.
Affiliations
  • Indiana University Indianapolis (US)
  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
Corresponding author
Guiliano, Jennifer
Venue
Routledge Handbook of Sport History
Publisher
Routledge
Published
2021-07-26
Pages
303-311
OpenAlex
W3184249804
Cited by
2
References
24
Citations by year
2026: 2
FWCI
0.00
Type
book chapter
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Routledge eBooks (publishedVersion)
  • IUScholarWorks (Indiana University) (submittedVersion)
  • Purdue University Indianapolis (Indiana University) (submittedVersion)
Funders
University of Miami
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Sociology, History and Politics of Sport
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › American Sports and Literature
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Indigenous Cultures and History
Keywords
Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Olympic Games, world's fairs, discrimination in sport, Native American schools, American football, swimming, cycling, baseball, basketball, golf

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