Sports Were Essential To The Life Of The Early North American Indian

During the forest campaigns (circa 1750-1815) the red nations won victory after victory, regularly drubbing first British and then American militiamen and regular troops. The current consensus is that when the numbers were anywhere near equal, the Indians never lost. In the end they were beaten because they were too few and had too few resources. In retrospect, the historical wonder is not that they were beaten, but that it took the whites so long to do it. The most obvious explanation is that for centuries Indians had been so passionately engaged by ferocious games and playful wars that they were better trained and more skillful in the martial arts than were the whites. To paraphrase the familiar aphorism: The battles of the Forest Wars were won on the playing fields of the Cherokee, Iroquois, Shawnee and other Indian nations.