Game Played by Indian Children

In the 1860s when Mary and Mel Hutchens lived on 2nd Street, little Indian girls use to come and play with them. Mary and Mel taught the Indian girls a game called Pussy Wants a Corner. Then the Indian girls taught them a game with sticks.

They laid three sticks together: two sticks close together and the third stick on top of the first two, thus three similar sticks were laid at intervals of a few feet until there were fifteen or twenty piles of them. Then the tiny girls would hop over all the piles, but it was necessary to keep standing on one foot without resting, as the game was to hop over one pile and see that their foot did not touch a stick, then they would try the next pile. One little Indian girl did it easily; then they asked Mary to try. She had never hopped before. She hopped over four or five, resting between each pile; but then she touched the next pile so that the top stick rolled off the other two, and she missed. The little Indian girl looked very sad and told her she must leave the game and showed her where to sit down.

Each girl came and patted her on the back and told her they were sorry. No one laughed at her. The other little Indian girls tried; several failed and took their places with Mary under the cottonwood tree. The ones who succeeded in jumping all the piles of sticks stood up.

Mel was only about four years old and she didn’t try for a long time. Finally, when she saw that some of the others had failed, she took courage and tried. She went farther than Mary, but finally touched a stick and missed.

They became tired of hopping and decided they wanted to do something else, so Mary and Mel taught them to play Ring Around the Rosie. They couldn’t understand very well and kept squatting down and jumping up when they shouldn’t, but finally, they learned to do it fairly well, and they liked that game too. [1]

[1] - Autobiography of Mary Elizabeth Hutchens Sherner, p. 83.