|
Scotty
Dawes, on the Black Lodge district team, in the white hat,
distracts the Big Horn district team during a hand game Wednesday
night at Crow Agency. At left is head guesser C.J. Other Medicine.
|
I was told by several people that the Crow hand game was difficult
to explain, but that once I'd watched a few rounds it would start
to make sense.
I suppose it did, sort of in the way that the one cricket game
I ever watched had begun to make some sense by the time it ended.
The big difference is that at a cricket game, cricket is the main
attraction.
Watching a Crow hand-game tournament Wednesday night at Crow
Agency, the mechanics of the game seemed less important with each
passing minute. What mattered was the spectaclethe teams in
their elaborate, mostly handmade outfits, the constant yelling and
chanting, the beating of drums and the shaking of rattles, and the
furious, frantic, highly theatrical gesticulations of the players
themselves.
Some of their movements seemed improvised, but others were too
stylized and must have been traditionalkneeling down and pawing
the carpeted surface on which the players were gathered, for instance,
or grabbing one arm with the other and then thrusting the cradled
arm downward, as if into the sleeve of a shirt, while waggling the
fingers.
|
Ed
Little Light conceived of the hand-game tournament 51 years
ago.
|
Arranged on bleachers behind the team of male players were rows
of women and children, the women and girls dressed in matching dresses
and shawls, the boys in outfits matching those of the men.
In the first game of the tournament, pitting the Crow Reservation's
Black Lodge district against the Big Horn district, the men wore
cowboy boots, cowboy hats, jeans and beaded white shirts (Black
Lodge) or beaded white vests (Big Horn).
The women wore green dresses (Black Lodge) or dresses of pinkish
paisley (Big Horn), as well as elaborately beaded, tasseled shawls,
beaded moccasins and store-bought scarves. Everything else seemed
to be ornamentation of the wearer's choosingbraid holders,
bone chokers, feather pendants, earrings, headbands, silver bracelets
and rings.
The women and children take part in the game, often used as
"hiders" of the playing pieces, but their main job is to make a
tremendous racket to distract the opposing team while it is guessing
where the playing pieces are, and then to make, if possible, even
more noise when their team scores a point.
Wednesday night marked the opening of the junior games, open
to everyone 30 and younger and always held in the third week of
April. The senior games, for those over 30, are held in the first
week of May. The games start on Wednesday and continue until the
championship round on Sunday.
The hand game, or variations of it, have always been played
by the Apsaalooke people, as the Crow call themselves in their language,
but the formal tournament dates back to 1966.
It was dreamed up by Ed Little Light, of the Black Lodge district.
Little Light, who attended the opening of the junior tournament
on Wednesday, said he was at a six-team basketball tournament when
the inspiration hit him.
"I says, hey, by God, I got an idea!"
The idea was to invite each of the six districts of the Crow
Nation to send a team to the tournament, and to have everyone dressed
in elaborate costumes, as a way of showing respect for tradition
and to make the people proud of their districts. Fifty-one years
later, the hand-game tournament is the second-biggest event of the
year on the reservation, second only to Crow Fair.
The tournament has expanded since then to include nine teamssix
from the traditional districts, two based more on family groupings
than geography and one from the neighboring Northern Cheyenne Reservation.
The winner of the tournament hosts the next one, and last year,
Wyolaknown as "The Mighty Few"won both the junior and
senior divisions.
"That was very rare," said Louis Walks Over Ice, who was making
the pre-tourney announcements in the multipurpose building in Crow
Agency. "I can't remember another time that happened."
Also helping with the set-up was Myrann Crooked Arm, of Wyola.
She was the first one who tried explaining the rules of the game
to me. She said there were two elk teeth and four bones, and that
two of the bonesthese were actually plasticwere marked
with black tape.
|
A
line of drummers supports the Big Horn district team.
|
Each team has a medicine man whose job is to choose who will
hold the various pieces. In the case of the elk teeth, the hider
has only one and the guesser has to pick which hand it's in. With
the bones, the guesser has to choose which hand is holding the unmarked
bone.
The winner of each roundfive guesses per roundis
awarded one of 14 sticks. The game is over when one team has all
14 sticks. (Don't take a quiz or try playing the game based on this
explanation; there seem to have been all sorts of complications
and variations I was not privy to.)
The games can teeter-totter back and forth indefinitely.
As Crooked Arm said, "Games last 10 minutes to four hours. It's
all different. The times are never the same."
But again, for the spectators at least, the overall show is
the thing. The way the game is played, it has to be. Hardly anyone
but a few of the closest spectators can see what's going on anyway.
The men on each team, perched on custom-upholstered stools, sit
on the floor in long rows, and the view on either end of the playing
area is blocked on one end by three seated judges, on the other
by the announcer's table.
So the audience is mainly reacting to the reaction of the teams
and their squadrons of drum-beating, rattle-shaking supporters.
But there is money involved, so there is considerable interest in
the score, which is announced after each round.
Each team pays an entry fee of $1,200, and it's winner-take-all
in the double-elimination tournament. But there is a table where
spectators can place bets on each game, and if they win they can
cash in or let the bet ride through another game and another, as
long as they keeping winning.
Besides a medicine man, each team has a head guesser and No.
2 and No. 3 guessers. The head guesser does most of the work, but
if he falters and makes a few wrong guesses, he might turn the job
over to his helpers. If they falter, the guessing duty can go on
down the line of subaltern guessers.
|
Young
girls from the Black Lodge district await the chance to make
some noise.
|
Walks Over Ice explained that there is a lot of psychology involved,
lots of bluffing and the detection of "tells," just as in a poker
game. Sometimes a hider will squeeze extra hard on the hand holding
the tooth, or hold it lower than the other handunless of course
he or she is bluffing.
Walks Over Ice said that if you want to be the head guesser,
you're chosen for your luck, your skill, your record of bringing
home the bacon"your prowess, I guess you would say."
The scheduled start time Wednesday was 7 p.m., and only two
games were scheduled because the next day was a school day, but
the big multipurpose building was still mostly empty at 7.
About 7:30, as Walks Over Ice was making preliminary announcements,
he said at one point, "We said 7 o'clock. Sometimes these games
are Indian time."
Sure enough, the first game didn't get underway until 8:20,
and it wasn't until about 9:30 that the crowd really started to
swell. Even then there were still many people outside, mostly swarms
of kids running around the perimeter of the building, stopping now
and then at concession stands to fuel themselves with food and drink.
There were babies and young children everywhere, in the laps
or on the hips of women in the cheering sections, held by parents,
siblings and grandparents in the bleachers, or snoozing in strollers
despite all the noise.
It was, as Little Light, the founder of the games, said in his
introductory remarks to the crowd, "a beautiful night on the Crow
Indian Reservation."
That first game seesawed back and forth for half an hour, an
hour and then an hour and a half. I started to wonder whether this
would be one of those epic four-hour matches Crooked Arm told me
about. What if the second game was also a long one, with a long
break in between?
I still had to drive back to Billings, and unlike the school
kids sprinting around the building, or the little drummers who had
been making noise now for almost 90 minutes straight, I was tired.
I kept thinking I ought to stay long enough to see who the winner
of at least the first game was, but then I reminded myself that
no, the spectacle was the thing, and I began to make my way home.
If you have a mind to see the spectacle for yourself, I'd recommend
going down on Saturday. Most of the teams are still in it on Saturday,
I was told, and the crowd is usually biggest then. It is also worth
noting that everyone was unfailingly kind to this interloper full
of questions, even when the questions were rather stupid.
To get there: Take Interstate 90 south to the Crow Agency exit.
The multipurpose building is on the east frontage road about a mile
south of town.
More photos:
|
A
young girl with the Black Lodge district gets some last-minute
primping.
|
|
|
Women
with the Big Horn district team celebrate a victory in the
hand game.
|
|
|
Note
the end of the bone piece sticking out of the fist in the
foreground. The man on the left, pointing, is trying to guess
which hand holds the unmarked bone.
|
|
|
Three
little drummer boys, Black Lodge district.
|
|
|
A
trio of judges keeps on eye on the action.
|
|
|
Ed
Little Light shows the bones, right (actually plastic in this
case), and the sticks used in the Crow hand game.
|
|
|
At
left is an elk tooth, next to two "bones" used in
the guessing game.
|
|
|
A
little girl with the Big Horn district fiddles with her braid.
|
|
|
Women
and children with the Black Lodge team raise a racket.
|
|
|
The
action is not easy to follow. This little girl, with her back
to the game, takes a break to do some texting.
|
|
|
Near
the main entrance to the multipurpose room, a group of men
stands watching the first game Wednesday night.
|
|
|
It
took awhile, but the multipurpose room at Crow Agency gradually
filled up.
|
|
|
There
were children everywhere at the hand-game tournament, including
this Black Lodge baby.
|
|