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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.
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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, rooster-fighting, 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: • It became an all-absorbing activity • 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 the quarter horse. • Later 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.
