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CTCT and NAIC UT Connect for Native American Games
Tribes often resolved disputes with a game of stickball.
Members of the Native American and Indigenous Collective (NAIC) at the University of Texas joined CTCT for exhausting and exhilerating native field games at Pease Park on Friday, March 29. There was some pushing, some shoving, but everyone was able to walk away happy.
The main events were stickball, which is a Cherokee version of La Crosse, in which players move a rawhide ball with net sticks toward a goal. In Chunkey two teams of players try to score by throwing their sticks to land as close to a rolling disc as possible. Games were important to the Cherokee ritual cycle, and stickball was commonly used as a replacement for warfare between tribes and communities.
Wado to NAIC for all your hard cultural work while balancing being full time students, and Wado to everyone who came out!!
Stickball players advanced the ball with netting sticks.
Pam Bakke demonstrates Cherokee Pottery
Pam Bakke (lower right) guides members through pot making process.
Pam Bakke dropped by from the Nation's Cultural Outreach Office this April to demonstrate the art of pinched-pot pottery. Rather than using a wheel or kiln, Cherokees pinched wet clay into the shape they desired and let them dry in the air until hard. During her visit we made and decorated our pots in Cherokee fashion, pressing stones, wood, or tools into the wet clay to create designs. Cherokees often fired the pots with soft wood to darken the clay's color, but we allowed our to air dry. Modern Cherokee pottery is more valued as art rather than objects for daily use, but ours will probably stay on our shelves at home.
According to legends the first pinch pot was made by a Cherokee woman who modeled the pots on clay nests built by wasps. The presentation will include air-dry clay for participants to make their own pots.
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