When Hudson’s Bay Company surveyor Peter Fidler made contact with the Ktunaxa at the Gap of the Oldman River in the winter of 1792, his Piikáni guides brought him to the river’s namesake. These were the playing grounds where Napi, or Old Man, taught the various nations how to play a game as a way of making peace. In the centuries since, travellers, adventurers, and scholars have recorded several accounts of Old Man’s Playing Ground and of the hoop-and-arrow game that was played there.
Although it has been destroyed, much can be learned from an interdisciplinary study of Old Man’s Playing Ground. Oral traditions of the Piikáni and other First Nations of the Northwest Plains and Interior Plateau, together with textual records spanning centuries, show it to be a place of enduring cultural significance irrespective of its physical remains. Knowledge of the site and the hoop-and-arrow game played there is widespread, in keeping with historic and ethnographic accounts of multiple groups meeting and gambling at the site.
In this work, oral tradition, history, and ethnography are brought together with a geomorphic assessment of the playing ground’s most probable location—a floodplain scoured and rebuilt by floodwaters of the Oldman—and the archaeology of adjacent prehistoric campsite DlPo-8. Taken together,the locale can be understood as a nexus for cultural interaction and trade,through the medium of gambling and games, on the natural frontier between peoples of the Interior Plateau and Northwest Plains.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-231) and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 971.23/400497352
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Based on thesis (Master of Arts - University of Alberta), under title: Old Man's Playing Ground : an intergroup meeting and gaming site on the plains/plateau frontier Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- Geographic Area Code
- n-cn-ab
- ISBN
- 9780776621388 9780776621364
- LCCN
- E99.P58
- LCCN Item number
- Y25 2014eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaOONL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (xxiii, 285 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)mat00910784 (OCoLC)879870069 (CaOOCEL)447638
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Title proper/short title
- Gaming and trade on the plains/plateau frontier
- Transcribing agency
- CaOONL
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Title Page 4
- © COPYRIGHT 5
- ABSTRACT 6
- RÉSUMÉ 7
- TABLE OF CONTENTS 8
- LIST OF TABLES 12
- LIST OF FIGURES 14
- Preface 18
- Introduction 28
- Chapter 1: Background: Stories of Place 34
- Chapter 2: Ethnohistory of the Hoop‑and-Arrow Game 62
- Chapter 3: Landform Identification & Geomorphic Assessment 88
- Chapter 4: Archaeological Assessment of the Lower Landform 122
- Chapter 5: Archaeological Assessment of DlPo-8 138
- Synthesis & Conclusions 232
- References Cited 238
- Appendix A: Interview Transcripts 260
- Interview with Allan Pard 260
- Interview with Henry Holloway 272
- Interview with Art Calling Last 286
- Appendix B:Hoop-and-Pole Game Variants 304
- Index 308
