THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARIBBEAN BALL AND DANCE COURT

Birgit Faber Morse

ABSTRACT

The Caribbean ball game was first observed by the Spanish conquistadors and chroniclers on the island of Hispaniola and subsequently in Puerto Rico. It was the Tainan custom that evoked the greatest interest among them; they were amazed by its sporting and ceremonial features. This paper will summarize the ethnohistorical sources which bear witness to the similarities between the Tainan ball game and the ones in Mesoamerica and South America.

From the archaeological evidence of the courts and their associated artifacts we know that the phenomenon seems to have developed in Puerto Rico during Period III (AD 600-1200), when the Classic Tainos there were getting organized into settlement hierarchies and centralized authority structures. From there it spread west and east during Period IV (AD 1200-1500), covering most of the Classic Taino area by the time of Columbus' arrival.

INTRODUCTION

The conquistadors first observed the Caribbean ball game being played by the natives in Hispaniola and subsequently In Puerto Rico. It was aTalno custom that evoked great interest among them. They were amazed by both its sporting and ceremonial features and by the rubber of which the ball was made, which was then unknown in Europe.

The early Spanish chroniclers, especially Oviedo (1851) and Las Casas (1927) have described where and how the game was playfed among the natives in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. I will first summarize the ethnohistorical source!, which bear witness to the similarities between the Taino ball game and the ones played in Mesoamerica and in South America. Then from the archaeological evidence of the ball and dance courts and their associated artifacts, I shall follow the development and diffusion of the court phenomenon starting as early as Period III (AD 600-12ÖÖ) in Puerto Rico, until it covered most of Classic Taino area by the time of Columbus' arrival (Fig. 1).

THE ETHNOHISTORICAL SOURCES

Las Casas had the opportunity before leaving Spain for the New World to see a rubber ball that Columbus had brought back from his second voyage and he was very impressed by its remarkable resilience. Later, after having lived for several years in the islands, he mentioned the Tabunuco trees growing in the Hispaniola mountain forest, from which latex rubber was obtained (Las Casas 1927).

Las Casas writes that in Hispaniola the ball game was played on a clean swept clearing, which was usually rectangular, about three times longer than wide, and fenced by low mounds on the longer sides. Oviedo tells us about the existence of enclosures called bateys, where the ball game and other ceremonies were carried out. They were usually located outside the chief's or caciques' houses, which was built on the best sites in the villages. He adds that the spectators sat on stones about the court while the caciques used wooden stools called duhos.

446

FABER MORSE 447

Both narrators mention that when the game began, the teams took their places on the court which was divided in half by a line that no player could cross. Each team would have from ten to thirty players; both men and women participated, but teams normally comprised aöingle sex. The ball was so solid and heavy that if hit, it could split and sprain a hand, and also state that trie ball was hit by the hips, shoulders and other parts of the body, but never with the hands. The purpose was fff keep the rubber ball bouncing; points were lost if it rolled or went dead.

The ritualistic aspects of the game are discussed only infrequently in the ethnohistorlcal sources. Oviedo mentions a situation In which two teams played for possession of a captive as a prize and Las Casas writes about the custom of betting, which was practised by both the players and the caciques in inter-village games.

Both Oviedo's and Las Casas' remarks have been extended to cover Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas (Stern 1948:29). A French source from the early 17th century (Jean-Pierre Moreau ,1991) also mentions the ball game being played among the Carib Indians on Martinique in the Lesser Antilles.

As the early explorers advanced to the mainland of South America and Mexico, they found the rubber-ball game played in a way that they recognized from the Antilles. Further expansion Into Central and South America brought forth variation of the game. (Fig. 2). In Mexico, the game and its players are described and illustrated in the pre-conquest codices like the Borgia and the Fejérváry-Mayer and later by the Quiche-Maya In the Popol Vuh. The historians of the conquest like Duran (1951 ), Motolina (1903) and Sahagún (1938) noticed the importance of the game among the local population and compared it with the game they had observed in the Greater Antilles.

There was a relatively high development In the technology of rubber among the Indian tribes in the Amazon region of South America and therefore it must have been a favorable environment for the development of the rubber ball (Nordenskjöld 1917). The ball game was played among the tribes who lived in the area, extending from northwestern Venezuela to the tropical zone in Bolivia and Paraguay (Stern 1948, map 2) (Fig. 3). The most valuable account was given by Father Gumilla (1791) in his writing about life among the Otomacs living along the upper Orinoco River in Venezuela.

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

The earliest known court site dates from about 1000 BC to the Olmec lowland culture in Mexico, and clay figurines representing players with balls and protective belts were discovered there from the same time period. The most elaborate constructed courts, which are also found in Mesoamerica, were constructed by the Maya and Toltec peoples between AD 500-1200 (Fig. 4).

Archaeological research has discovered evidence of pre-columblan courts and rubber balls in the southwestern United States in the remains of the Hohokam culture (AD 500-1200) (Haury 1938). These courts are simple earthen-wall structures similar to the Antillean ones. The same type of parallel earth embankments is also common in Mexico but they are faced with stones (Stern 1948 and Taladoire 1981). There are no ethnohistorical sources that mention courts and the ball game in the United States; our knowledge here stems solely from the archaeological evidence. The opposite is the case with South America where we only have the historical writings of the missionaries and ethnographers describing the ball games played in unmarked plazas. The only mainland evidence that in any way could be directly related to the Antillean structures is a small, 9m in diameter, circular plaza surrounded by stones, reported in the Guianas with a froglike figure carved into one of the stone slabs (Alegría 1983:129).

448 THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARIBBEAN BALL AND DANCE COURT

It was the Puerto Rican naturalist, Agustín Stahl (1889) and the North American archaeologist, J. Walter Fewkes (1907) who first maintained that the archaeological remains of the batey and ceremonial plazas were associated with the pre-columbian ball game. Since then no scholar has disputed this identification, although there has been some discussions about the function of specific courts. Information about a large number of these courts was published during the late thirties in the New York Academy of Science's Scientific Survey of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands by Rainey (1940), Mason (1941) and Rouse (1941 ). Alegría (1983) has since been able to collect information about 80 bateys.

The most specialized and elaborate complex of ball and ceremonial courts was found at Caguana (Capá), Utuado in the mountainous interior of Puerto Rico (Fig. 5). This site was originally excavated by Mason (1941) and later restored for the Instituto de Cultural Puertorriqueña by Alegría. The Caguana complex centers around a large quadrangular court with a small oval plaza attached to one side, both of which are edged by stones. The sides of the large court are lined with limestone slabs andgranite boulders, many of which are decorated with petroglyphs, and its ends are closed with stone pavement. These central structures have been identified as dance plazas (Rouse 1992, Oliver 1991 : personal communications). Surrounding these are nine rectangular courts, some of which are open-ended and others completely closed. They were probably used as ball courts. During the original excavation of the site, Mason (1941) discovered the floors and posts of several large buildings, which he thought may have been houses or temples of an important cacique. Caguana yielded Ostionoid and Chican ceramics dating from Period lllb and IVa respectively (Rouse 1992).

Most Puerto Rican courts are located in the mountainous interior, which is among the most rugged in the Greater Antilles, and would have given an incentive to level the ground and form embankments (Rouse 1992). Intensive cultivation of sugar cane, particularly in the coastal plains since the 16th century, has probably destroyed many courts. Only a few have been found near the coast, most recently at the Elenan Ostionoid sites of Tibes (Gonzalez 1984) and El Bronce (Robinson et al 1985), both of which date from Period Ilia and lllb when the Ostionoid peoples were moving into the interior of Puerto Rico. These courts are located near the south central coast and are situated on relatively flat ground that only needed a minimum of levelling. Tibes is a large ceremonial center with nine structures; all except one are rectangular like the one at El Bronce. They were lined with stone slabs in the form of pavements (Fig. 6), or set vertically and several had petroglyphs etched into the slabs, particularly in the plaza at El Bronce. Some also yielded burials, a practice that the later Chican peoples lacked; their burials were found in cemeteries and mounds in close proximity to, but outside the courts (Morse 1990). A possible earlier plaza or ball court has been discovered at the site of Las Flores at Coamo in south central Puerto Rico not too far away from Tibes and El Bronce. A radiocarbon sample suggests a date for its construction of not later than AD 650 (Wilson 1991:145) which is at the very beginning of Period Ilia.

Several large Puerto Rican village sites such as Hacienda Grande (Rouse and Alegría 1990) and Maisabel (Siegel 1989), lack artificially structured courts. Others were located in the countryside, for example, "los bateyes de Trujillo Alto" (Rodriguez 1978) in the neighborhood of Cuevas; Vescelius (1952) mentioned that perhaps these were built on the boundaries between chiefdoms. As far as the geographical orientation of the courts, they seem to have a general tendency to run north-south, but there is no uniformity and in many cases it seems to depend on the topography of the site.

Two important diagnostics of the classic Taino culture in Puerto Rico are the "stone collar" or belt and the "elbow stone" both of which have been found in and around the courts in complete or fragmented form. They seem to fulfill the same function, since the elbow stones are partial belts that can be completed by

FABER MORSE 449

attaching cordage to their nobbed ends and both seem to have had wooden prototypes. It is necessary to distinguish between two types of the Antillean ball belts, the slender and the massive (Figs. 7 and 8). The latter could only have been used ceremonially like the monolithic stone belts of Mesoamerica; whereas the slender stone collars and their prototypes could have been worn by the ball players as belts in order to better deflect the ball and to protect their bodies.

As we move eastward and westward from the main island of Puerto Rico, the structured ball courts and their contents become simpler and less specialized. Only two bateys have been discovered farther east. The nearest one is at El Destino in the high central region of the island of Vieques (Rodriquez and Rivera 1981 ). It is similar in size and shape to the other one which is at Salt River on the north coast of St. Croix. Both are approximately 30 by 25 m, which is rather average as far as Antillean ball courts go. The ceramics from these two courts belong to the Chican subseries, dating from Period I Va and both consisted of a row of upright stone slabs, which at El Destino were plain, but at Salt River had several petroglyph carvings (Fig. 9). The Cruzan ball and dance court is located in the middle of a village site. Behind it and outside the courts boundary, is a cemetery and an area containing numerous bones (Morse 1990).

Gudmund Hatt (1941 ), who excavated the court and the surrounding area in 1923, believed that the latter could have been a place where the Chicans worshiped the bones of their ancestors. Hatt also recovered several small stone balls, fragments of stone collars and three-pointed stones in and around the court area (Hatt 1924). The Danish National Museum possesses from previous times two whole ball belts and two large three-pointers with endfaces carved on them. They all supposedly came from the Salt River area in St. Croix (Fig. 10). This is interesting because the ball and dance court at the Salt River site is the easternmost known in the West Indies (Morse 1990). So far, no such public structures have been discovered farther east and south in the Lesser Antilles.

The beginning of the westward diffusion from Puerto Rico across the Mona Passage is well documented by two stone aligned enclosures on Mona Island with Capá-style pottery dating from Period IVa (Alegría 1983). At El Atajadizo on the Hispaniolan side of the passage the site's earlier Chican component is not associated with court structures, while the later has two ball and dance courts, a village area and a separate cemetery containing primary burials. Fragments of stone belts were discovered in the courts (Veloz Maggiolo 1972). Until now about 30 ball and dance courts have been reported in Hispaniola and the largest structure is the famous Corral de los Indios in the south central part of the isiand. The corral was first described by Schomburgk(1852); it is circular with a diameter of about 225 m and is enclosed by a double row of stones. Hatt observed several courts in the Constanza Valley during his f ieldwork there in 1923. The valley contained four Indian settlements and six bateys which were grouped in pairs; they were mostly rectangular and "fenced" on two sides with low earth mounds. Hatt (1932) also mentioned that petroglyph carvings were quite common and that he found fragments of ball belts, both of the massive and the slender types, but that they were less numerous than in Puerto Rico.

Unspecialized ball and dance structures become fewer and larger in number as we move west through the Dominican republic (Wilson 1990:24) with just a couple in Haiti and a few on the very eastern tip of Cuba across the Windward Passage. These are single courts lined only with earth embankment and they are associated with Chican pottery, dating from Period IVa, but lack ball belts (Rouse 1942). Further work is needed in this area and in the islands of the southern Bahamian interactionsphere to settle the question of the extension of the batey. No artificial structures for playing the ball game have so far been found in the rest of the West Indies (Alegría 1983).

450 THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARIBBEAN BALL AND DANCE COURT

CONCLUSION

From the archaeological evidence of the Caribbean ball and dance courts and their associated artifacts we know that the Tainos of Puerto Rico began construction of these sites during Period Ilia and lllb (AD 600-1200) when it is thought that settlement hierarchies and centralized authority structures were in the process of development (Siegel 1989). The use of stone ball belts seems first to have started during Period IVa (AD 1200-1500). Both of these phenomena spread east to St. Croix and west to the eastern half of Hispaniola. The stone belts stopped there, but the courts continued through the rest of Hispaniola to eastern Cuba (Rouse 1992). By the time of Columbus' arrival, they covered all of the Classic Taino area. Purely earth embankments and the late time period are characteristic of the western part of their distribution, where the courts are simpler and less specialized. The ball courts are rectangular in shape and are often marked on their longer sides with rows of upright stone slabs, many öf which bearpetroglyphs. The square, oval and circular plazas are not weli suited for playing the ball game and probably served for dancing and other ceremonial purposes. AtCaguanain Puerto Rico, Oliver (1991 personal communication) believes that petroglyphs were associated only with dance plazas.

The ball game was probably present during earlier times and played in a nonstructural plaza that served several functions for the native community. The open areas surrounded by refuse, which were excavated by Hatt (1923) at Longford and Vescelius (1952) at Richmond on St. Croix may have been examples of this practice (Morse 1990). Artifacts from these Virgin Islands sites belong predominantly to Period IIB (AD 300-600). The Caribbean ball and dance courts may well have had their roots in the recently discovered Saladoid practice of clustering the refuse around ceremonial areas (Siegel 1989, Rouse 1992).

Until these discoveries, it made sense to explain the similarities between the Mesoamerican and Antillean ball courts and stone belts by suggesting diffusion from the Mayas and their neighbours, either via Yucatan or along the Circum-Caribbean route (Stern 1948 and Alegría 1983). At this point, we should also consider the possibility of a parallel development from an earlier non-structural form of the game which had spread throughout tropical South America, where the pre-columbian rubber technology reached its highest level.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This author wishes to thank Irving Rouse, José Oliver and Peter Siegel for their helpful comments and suggestions in regard to this study.

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454 THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARIBBEAN BALL AND DANCE COURT

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Figure 1 : Peoples and cultures at the time of Columbus' arrival in the West Indies (Rouse 1992, Fig. 3).

MAP 5:

LOCATION AND ELABORAT OF THE BALL COURT

KEY T O SYMBOLS

n L o c a t i o n Structural . . S Central plaia . Plaia . . . P Outiidc village Koom R Roundariei marked

Figure 2: The location and elaboration of the ball courts in the America; (Stern 1948, map 5).

MAP 2:

THE RUBBER BALL

KEY T O SYMBOLS.

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The extension of the rubber ball in the Americas (Stern 1948, map 2).

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4 View of the late Classic Maya-Toltec ballcourt at Xochicalco, Morelos, Mexico.

456 THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARIBBEAN BALL AND DANCE COURT

Fig. 5 Aerial view of the Caguana (Capa) ceremonial site in Utuado, Puerto Rico. (Rouse 1992, Fig. 28).

Fig. 6 Rectangular Puerto Rican courts lined with stone slabs.

Figs. 7 & 8 Tainan stone ball belts from the American Museum of Natural History, New York. Slender style above and massive style below (Ekholm 1961).

458 THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CARIBBEAN BALL AND DANCE COURT

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F i g . 9 View from Salt River, St. Croix of the southwestern end of the stone row with petroglyph carvings (Hatt 1923).

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Fig. 10 Two large three-pointed zemis with endfaces carved on them from the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen.