Native American Games and Toys
This boy cornhusk doll belonged to a Ojibawa child and was probably made around 1910. The Ojibawa nation lived in the Northern Plains area.
This is a Cheyenne doll from the 1910s. All of it, even the head, is made from leather. Other dolls were made from cornhusk, like the others you see, or even porcelain. When white American children were done with their porcelain dolls, often the heads were donated to Native reservations. There the Indians made new bodies for the heads and gave them to their kids.
This female cornhusk doll was made in the early 1900s, by Cheorokees in Oklahoma. Although originally from North Carolina, the Cheorokee nation was forced to move to Oklahoma, the Indian Territory, by Andrew Jackson on the Trail of Tears.
If these doll clothes seem more "white" than "Indian,"
don't worry about your deductive abilities, you're right!
Often Native Americans around this time made doll
clothes in the new white styles they were encountering as
well as in traditional Indian style. These were made in the
1890s by Plains area Indians.
It may look like a dinosaur egg, but it's a ball! It was used in a game called Tongva, in which the players rolled the ball. Notice that it's kind of oval instead of perfectly round, so that it's harder to roll very far.
These marbles were made by Plains Indians
(Indiana, Oklahoma, Missouri) from the 1840s until the 1920s. The earth-colored ones
were the marbles the Native Americans actually used; the colored ones came later and
were sold to whites as "Indian marbles." Both types were made of clay, rather than glass
like those made by the whites.