Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Deep South.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Deep South.

Painting by George Caitlin. Mandans playing Chunkey

Chunkey, an ancient Native American sport, is enjoyable for everyone. Also, it’s easy to play. The game goes back at least as far as the 7^th century A.D.

Much like stickball, Native American tribes, particularly those in America’s Southeast, played this game to settle disputes. They took this game seriously and even played it to gamble. Quite a few players lost everything in their wagers, sometimes with even more tragic consequences such as suicides. Today, it’s usually played for fun.

Below is a basic overview of the game. The Native Americans then and now play different variations of the game and have different methods of scoring.

Playing Field

• In previous centuries, the tribes played it on a hard surface, such as packed clay.
• Nowadays, it’s played on grass.

Equipment Needed to Play

• Hickory or popular spears that are eight to ten feet long. These are called chunkey (pronounced ‘tchung-kee).
• Round chunkey stone, sometimes with a hole in it. These were often made of sandstone, clay or granite.

How the Game is Played

• A player rolls the chunkey stone across the playing field underhanded, like a bowling ball.
• Players with spears hurl them at the stone. The player whose spear came closest to the stone scores a point.

Famous American painter and artistic chronicler of the West witnessed this game, as seen in his painting at the beginning of this post, He recorded what he saw in writing as well.

The game of Tchung-kee [is] a beautiful athletic exercise, which the Mandan seem to be almost unceasingly practicing whilst the weather is fair, and they have nothing else of moment to demand their attention. This game is decidedly their favourite amusement, and is played near to the village on a pavement of clay, which has been used for that purpose until it has become as smooth and hard as a floor. … The play commences with two (one from each party), who start off upon a trot, abreast of each other, and one of them rolls in advance of them, on the pavement, a little ring of two or three inches in diameter, cut out of a stone; and each one follows it up with his ‘tchung-kee’ (a stick of six feet in length, with little bits of leather projecting from its sides of an inch or more in length), which he throws before him as he runs, sliding it along upon the ground after the ring, endeavouring to place it in such a position when it stops, that the ring may fall upon it, and receive one of the little projections of leather through it.

— George Catlin, 1832

Sources

Lindsey Bark, “Chunkey: A Game of Stones,” Cherokee Phoenix, August 27, 2020, Chunkey: A Game of Stones | Culture | cherokeephoenix.org

Anne Gregory, Chunkey, Cahokia, and Indigenous Conflict Resolution (Thesis), Scholar’s Bank, University of Oregon, September 25, 2020, Chunkey, Cahokia, and Indigenous Conflict Resolution (uoregon.edu)

E. Metcalf, “Chunkey: More Than Just a Game,” Real Archaeology(blog),November 5, 2023, Chunkey: More Then Just a Game | Real Archaeology (vassar.edu)