Snow snake is a Native American

winter sport Winter sports or winter activities are competitive sports or non-competitive recreational activities which are played on snow or ice. Most are variations of skiing, ice skating and sledding. Traditionally, such games were only played in cold area ...

traditionally played by many tribes in the

Great Lakes region The Great Lakes region of North America is a binational Canadian–American region that includes portions of the eight U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin along with the Canadian p ...

, including the

Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota language, Dakota: Help:IPA, /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribes and First Nations in Canada, First Nations peoples in North America. The ...

, Wyandotte,

Oneida Oneida may refer to: Native American/First Nations * Oneida people, a Native American/First Nations people and one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy * Oneida language * Oneida Indian Nation, based in New York * Oneida Na ...

and other

Haudenosaunee The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

people.

Play

A game of snow snake is played by four teams, called "corners", who compete in trying to throw their wooden "snow snakes" the farthest along a long trough, or track, of snow. The game is divided into rounds, and in a round each team gets four throws. At the end of each round, two points are awarded to the team of the person who made the farthest throw in the round, and one point is awarded for the second farthest throw. Play continues until one of the teams wins, by achieving a certain predetermined number of points (usually 7 or 11). There are two roles on a snow snake team: the Player, and the Goaler. The main role of a Goaler is to craft and maintain a team's wooden "snow snakes" in between games. The Goaler is also tasked with selecting which will be used for each throw during the game. A Player, meanwhile, is a player who actually throws the snow snakes during a game.

Equipment

The poles used in the game, collectively known as "snow snakes", have different names depending on their length. The smallest poles used are the six-inch-long "snow darts". The next size up is the three-foot-long "short snake", also known as a "mud cat". Longer poles are known only as "snow snakes", and can be anywhere from six to ten feet in length. Snow snakes can be made from a variety of materials. In the Sioux tribe, they were traditionally made of bone, with feathers trailing behind for symbolic decoration, while other tribes traditionally used native North American hardwoods, such as

maple ''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since http ...

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

hickory Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus ''Carya'', which includes around 18 species. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (Assam), as many as twelve are native to the United States, four are found in Mexi ...

, and

juneberry ''Amelanchier'' ( ), also known as shadbush, shadwood or shadblow, serviceberry or sarvisberry (or just sarvis), juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum, wild-plum or chuckley pear,A Digital Flora of Newfoundland and Labrador Vascular Plants/ref> is a g ...

. In modern times, other hardwoods not traditionally available, such as

ebony Ebony is a dense black/brown hardwood, coming from several species in the genus ''Diospyros'', which also contains the persimmons. Unlike most woods, ebony is dense enough to sink in water. It is finely textured and has a mirror finish when pol ...

, have become popular materials for snow snakes. Many players customize their snow snakes, by decorating them with colorful designs, or adding minor modifications, such as waxing the wooden surface. The trough, or track, that snow snakes are thrown down is typically five inches deep, rising up in a slope at the end where the players stand. In modern times, some groups will add obstacles like jumps or snow barriers to their tracks, for added interest.

History

According to the Iroquois oral tradition, the game of snow snake dates back more than 500 years, to before the arrival of Europeans in North America. Originally a form of communication between villages, the throwing of "snow snakes" in a trough of snow developed into a competitive sport during long winters when the long track was not used for communication. The name "snow snake" is said to have come from the serpentine wiggling motion of the poles as they slide down the icy track.

References

External links

{{commonscat
Snow Snake: Traditional Winter Game of the Haudenosaunee
at Oneida Nation
Snowsnake
at Onondaga Nation
Gooniikaa-Ginebig Ataadiiwin (Snow Snake)
at The Ojibwe Winter Games Great Lakes tribal culture Native American sports and games Snow sports Throwing sports