Oldest Known Game in North America

By Peggy Derrick

Catalog Number: 1927.010.01

We think of hoop rolling as a quaint, nineteenth century child’s game, but in fact a complex version of it was once played by thousands of participants in tournaments viewed by thousands more. The game of chunkey is sometimes said to be America’s oldest pastime. Chunkey is associated with the great precontact city of Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis, MO, and the game is thought to have spread from there along with the Mississippian culture identified with Cahokia, its cultural and political capital.  

Chunkey was played by participants with specially designed sticks or spears (the “chunkey”). Players on two teams raced after the rolling stone disk, hurling their spears and trying to place it closest to the disk. It was a fast-paced game of skill that was as culturally important to the Cahokians as our sports are to us today.

Chunkey stones and images of chunkey players have been found over a broad swath of the continent, from northern Florida in the far south east, west to Oklahoma, and north to the Great Lakes, as Mississipian culture influenced Indians of the Midwest, the south, and the plains. When Europeans arrived in North America, chunkey was still being played throughout the region of Mississipian culture, and there are written accounts by many observers of versions of the game being played by different tribes.

This beautifully polished chunkey stone was donated to the La Crosse County Historical Society in 1927, and Society records state it was found in Onalaska.  According to the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center, chunkey was played in the Upper Midwest by Ho Chunk, Hidatsa and Mandan peoples.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on July 9, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Ceremonial Pipe

By Peggy Derrick

Catalog Number: 1930.018.02

This Ho Chunk pipe has been in the collection of the Historical Society since 1930; it is probably much older than that. The ribbons tied to it are manufactured, dating to the late 19th or early 20th century, but the rest of the materials and techniques in this pipe are entirely traditional. They reflect ways of making and decorating that date before European contact. The stem is wood and the bowl is catlinite, a red stone also called pipestone, that comes only from a region in western Minnesota. Native peoples all over North America traded catlinite among themselves and used it for pipe bowls.

The ornamentation on the pipe includes strips of black fur, and a patterned red band in the middle that is created with flattened and dyed porcupine quills, in a technique known as quillwork. It has geometrical designs in white against the red ground.

It takes a lot of time and skill to process porcupine quills, flattening them, coloring them with vegetable dyes, weaving them together or embroidering them onto an object. Quillwork was traditionally done over birch bark or deer hide, and used to decorate all sorts of objects, as well as clothing and moccasins.

After the introduction of glass seed beads, beading nearly replaced quill work, but it never died out, and some artisans still practice the craft today.

The pipe is also ornamented with hawk feathers and a small fur tail, probably from a mink. The feathers and the mink tail are attached by a cord made of deer hide.

This type of traditional ceremonial pipe is sometimes called a calumet, or peace pipe. “Peace pipe” was a name given by white explorers and settlers who did not have pipe traditions themselves and did not fully understand the role of the pipe in mediating relations between individuals and groups. The smoke carries prayers to the Creator; by smoking from the pipe a person enters into a covenant, or sacred space, where only the truth can be spoken. It was therefore natural that to Native Americans the pacts they made as individuals or groups would be ratified by the ritual of the ceremonial pipe. They were probably very offended if their white visitors and neighbors failed to respect and honor the compact between people implicit in its use.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune June 25, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Frontier Hospitality

Peggy Derrick

Catalog Number: 1961.006.01

This large glass-insulated, silver-plated water pitcher, with its 1865 patent date, is said to have belonged to Fredericka and John Levy. It makes a very appropriate symbol for a couple whose home became synonymous with hospitality in the tiny settlement that was La Crosse when they arrived in 1846. Their one and a half story log cabin was in fact only the fifth settler’s home on Prairie La Crosse.

The store/trading post in the Levy home consisted of one large room. This room, with its welcoming hosts and large fire place, became a center of social life for the region. Travelers stayed with the Levys, bringing news and goods to trade. Traders, loggers, Native Americans, green settlers from the east and from abroad--all found their way to the Levy home. 

The Levys had arrived just before the tiny outpost had begun a period of rapid growth, as the federally-mandated Indian Removals opened up land for settlers. When these began to affect the Ho Chunk in the Coulee Region, a contingent came to John Levy and asked him to intervene and write a letter on their behalf to President Polk, asking him to rescind the order for forced removal. Levy, who had built relations with the tribes and saw them as valuable customers, obliged, but with no success.

For the next several decades the Levys’ businesses thrived. John Levy gained a reputation as a thoughtful, energetic, and honest community member, and he served as mayor three times. They built a larger house, and in 1856, after ten years of putting up visitors in their home, opened the Augusta Hotel, with 100 rooms. 

 John Levy was born in 1820, in London, to German-Jewish parents. He was educated on “the continent,” in Paris and Amsterdam. He came to America at the age of seventeen and went into the fur business in St. Louis, eventually moving up river, first to Prairie du Chien, and then to La Crosse, bringing his wife and child with him.  As an active community supporter, several of the first church services, both Christian and Jewish, were held in the Levy home. Other Jewish settlers followed him, victims of the German Revolutions of 1848-49. They formed a Hebrew benevolent society, and became community leaders with important civic positions.

This article was originally featured in the La Crosse Tribune on June 18, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.