Sports in Early America
Festivities/Sports
► Pilgrims
rejected the idea of
Christmas as a holiday.
► Some new arrivals from Britain rejected the
idea that these Pilgrims held.
► The majority of early colonists did not want
to mimic the ways and traditions of the
Mother Country.
Britain’s Festive Culture
► Games
and competitions were often held on
holidays. (Christmas, Plough Monday,
Shrove Tuesday and Easter Sunday).
► Folk games included: Stoolball, foot races,
quoits and skittles.
► Games allowed men to show off their
physiques and skills.
►
► Britons
loved violent games- Wrestling and
cudgeling.
► Cudgeling- wicker shield and stick were
used to draw blood from an opponent.
Sport and Animals
► Individuals
would throw stones at roosters
on Shrove Tuesday. Whoever delivered the
lethal blow took the prize home.
► Rooster fighting and animal baiting were
common.
► Due
to to things like animal baiting the
bulldog became a national symbol for Great
Britain.
Football
► This
game excited villagers the most of all.
► Most places had no real common rules.
► The football was made normally of an
inflated animal bladder and encased in
leather.
► Purpose of the game was to move the ball
across a defined goal line.
► Games
and festivities relieved some of the
grimness of life which routinely included
early death from disease and famine.
Taverns
► Tavern-keepers
promoted prizefights, roosterfighting, animal baitings and other contests.
► Many contests involved bloodshed, “blood sports”.
► Admission was often charged for these events.
Puritan Assault
► Puritans
did not care for festivities on
Sunday or religious holidays.
► King James I issued a Declaration (Book) of
Sports in 1618.
► Parliament tried to overturn the Book of
Sports, but was blocked by future kings.
► Puritans,
as well as Quakers, tried to do
away with traditional games in the New
World.
► Villagers were placed in the stocks if they
presented a huge problem for these
Protestant Reformers.
►
Sabbatarian Legislation
► It
was not until the 1930s that Pennsylvania
dropped bans on Sunday baseball games.
► Even today local ordinances prohibit certain
activities on Sunday in parts of the country.
“Lawful Sport”
► To
be lawful:
1. Dissociated from traditional revelries
2. Must refresh the participants worldly and
spiritual duties.
“Lawful Sport”
►
One must stop playing a sport if:
1. It became an all-absorbing activity
2. Resulted in idleness, gambling, excessive
drinking or deceit.
Cards and dice were unlawful sports. Inn-keepers
were fined for permitting gambling.
► Puritans
allowed:
1. Fishing
2. Hunting
Children and Sports
► Played
with toys.
► Were allowed to swim in the summer and
skate in the winter.
► Played football and bat-and-ball games.
Training Days
► Law
required that all men between the ages
of 16 and 60 meet for military training on a
regular basis.
► Troops competed in wrestling, foot races,
jumping, horse racing and shooting-at-the
mark.
New York and Early Sports
► Dutch
settlers bowled, held boat races and
played kolven/golf.
► 1664- first organized horse race at the
Newmarket course on Hempstead Plains,
Long Island.
► 1736-
America’s first circular track for horse
racing was built.
► Rooster fighting as well as animal baiting
were common.
Sports in Southern Colonies
► Less
restrictive way of life than the North.
► Puritan
and Quaker groups had little
influence in this region.
The Great Awakening
► Until
the Great Awakening of the 1740s
southerners expressed their emotions,
drank and gambled without incurring the
wrath of the clergy.
► Southern
planters wanted to display the
same lifestyle as English country gentry.
Virginia sports- billiards, ninepins, skittles,
versions of cricket, horse racing and
gambling.
Virginians
► Bred
► Later
the quarter horse.
in the eighteenth century they turned
from the native quarter horse to the English
thoroughbred.
►
► Horse
owners formed jockey clubs in
various southern states.
► The clubs kept careful records of bloodlines
and races.
► Although
the great planters displayed
reckless courage, brawling was replaced
with more genteel forms of boxing.
► Gander-pulling
was a favorite blood sport
throughout the south.
►
Backcountry’s Sporting Ways
► Appalachia,
Mississippi Valley and Ozark
Plateau comprise the backcountry.
► Wrestling along with “rough-and-tumble”
were main sporting events in this region.
Warfare
► Competitions:
Running, jumping, leaping throwing
axes, sledges and spears.
► Above
all, backcountry people admired shooting
skills.
► The precise shooting of the “hunters from
Kentucky” accounted for American success against
the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.
Pastimes in the Revolutionary Era
► Republicanism,
as well as, evangelical
Protestantism tried to suppress popular
pastimes/games.
► They felt that folk games would weaken the
new society.
► George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
had somewhat of a difference in opinion on
games at this time.