1600's Games

Researching games from the 1600's in the United States is difficult because the Declaration of Independence was not signed until the late 1700's. Consequently, 17th Century Native American and European toys and games will be discussed instead.

One popular Native American Indian game was the bowl and dice game. The bowl and dice game has three separate phases. The object of the game is to win more sticks than any other player. Arguably, this could be considered a game that catches the essence of gathering materials for survival. However, its primary purpose seems more like an original means of having fun.

In the UK, children played with dolls and they played skittles. Children did not have nearly as many luxuries as kids do today. The majority of children in the 1700's had to rely on their own imaginations and didn't have toys.

As it was stated in the 1700's Games blog, dolls do capture an essence of real-life experience, but skittles does not.

The fact that children were being creative and thinking of ways to have fun seems original. However, it is hard to distinguish imaginative games as an essence of life experience or not. The children could have been playing house or pretending to play school, but they also could been creating games such as "freeze-tag"as well.

The 17th Century is certainly different from the 18th and 19th century. It will be interesting to see how it also differs from the 20th century and see whether or not it is an outlier in the experience and time correlation or not.

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