Today, games played with a rubber ball are such a significant part of modern culture that championship sports events are observed by more people, and with more fervor and enthusiasm, than most national holidays or religious celebrations. Ball games are taken so seriously that nations have actually gone to war over the outcome of soccer competitions.

Until the end of the fifteenth century, when Europeans first made contact with the Tainos, rubber ball games were unknown in Europe and, presumably, in the rest of the world. There was no such thing as football, soccer, basketball or baseball.

Before the European conquest, ball games were played throughout the tropical Americas. In most areas, the games took place in the central plaza or on unstructured fields. In some regions, however, the games were played on courts, specially constructed for that purpose. These have only been found among the Mayan of the Yucatan and Central America, in the Mexican highlands inhabited by the Aztecs and their neighbors, and on the Taino islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Virgins. On St. John, our eminent National Park archeologist Ken Wild, has found evidence of a structured ball court at Cinnamon Bay.

The Mayans called the game pok ta pok. In Mexico, the game was called tlachtli. The Tainos called the game batey, which was also their word for the ball court and for the ball itself.

In a description of the ball game as played by the Tainos, the chronicler, Fernandez de Oviedo wrote:

"In every town there is a place set apart in the public square and at the entrance to the town for the playing of the ball game. They play in teams of ten or twenty players to a team. There are stone seats and they provide beautifully carved wooden seats for the caciques (chiefs) and nobility. These stools or benches, which are called duhos, are made of the finest wood, ornamented with elaborate carvings and sculptures and hollowed out to form a concave seat. The balls are made by boiling together the roots of trees and shrubs, the sap of certain trees and many other things until a thick mixture is formed; this they shape into a round ball. This ball is somewhat spongy though solid and heavy…they only strike the ball with their shoulders, heads, elbows, and most frequently with their hips and knees. This they do with such agility and speed that it is amazing to watch…

"The point of dispute is to see if one team can send the ball over the opponent's line or, whether the opposing team will put it out of bounds or return it to the first team; and they do not stop playing until the ball falls on the ground, or because a player did not catch it on the rebound…This victory counts for one mark. They then take alternate turns at serving the ball. The winning team is the one which first makes up the number of points or marks previously agreed upon as necessary for a victory."

Pre-Columbian ball games were played for various reasons. Sometimes, like in the Oviedo description, it was played just for sport. Many times, the games were played to appease the gods through the sacrifice of human beings. Although these macabre and bloody rituals are usually associated with the Mayans, there is ample evidence that the Tainos also practiced human sacrifice in conjunction with the ball game.

The Spanish chronicler, Juan de Castellanos, reported that when the Tainos of Anasco, Puerto Rico began their rebellion, they captured a young Spaniard named Juan Suarez. The cacique ordered that Suarez be tied up and that a ball game be played in which the winners were to be granted the privilege of killing the young Christian. Suarez was saved at the last minute by a Spanish soldier, Diego de Salazar, who reported the natives to be, "almost stuptified in the preparations for the sacrifice."

In another incidence of the ball game serving as an instrument of human sacrifice, Oviedo wrote an account of how Don Cristobol de Sotomayor met his death:

"After the most prominent Indians agreed upon a rebellion, Agueybana, the chief cacique of the island was allotted the duty of killing Don Cristobol who was his Spanish lord and master. Agueybana lived in Sotomayor's house and served him because he had been allotted this duty in the apportionment of the Indians. And they tried him and decided his fate by playing a game of batey."

Concerning the same incident, Castellanos reported, "Agueybana paid his master, Don Cristobol, whom he served, in his own coin; as they sang the death song in a kind of drunken orgy."

In Santo Domingo, the archeologist Sir Robert Schonberg, found a large circular plaza, similar to one found in Puerto Rico, by another archeologist, J. Alden Mason. Both of these plazas are assumed to be ball courts. The entrance to the plaza was a twenty-one foot wide highway made of stone blocks weighing hundreds of pounds each. In the very center of the plaza, he found a piece of granite over five feet high on which was carved a human face. A similar stone carved with a face was discovered in the ball court in Puerto Rico. Schonberg and Mason are both convinced that these stones were used by the Taino for ritual human sacrifices.

Today, the human sacrifice aspect of the ball game is less obvious than it was in the past, and the origins of the game have faded into the haziness of antiquity. Nonetheless, games played with rubber balls have become an integral part of modern culture, not only in the Americas, but all over the world.
By Gerald Singer

top of page