In Etah in 1855: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 05:20, 25 March 2025
| Date of Game | 1855 |
|---|---|
| Game | |
| Location | Etah, Greenland |
| Modern Address | |
| Field | Add Field Page |
| Home Team | Add Club Page |
| Away Team | Add Club Page |
| Score | |
| Has Source On Hand | No |
| Innings | |
| Number of Players | |
| NY Rules | No - Predecessor |
| Tags | |
| Description | While American whalers brought baseball to Arctic waters, the Inuit had already developed their own bat-and-ball games. The Inuit of Etah (also spelled Iita), the northernmost settlement in Greenland, played a particularly distinctive version. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane provided two of the earliest documented observations of these indigenous games as part of the Second Grinnell Expedition of 1853-1855, in search of the lost ships of Sir John Franklin. In 1855, toward the end of the expedition, Kane first noted the presence of bat-and-ball games during his observations of walrus hunting. After describing the community’s intense focus on processing the valuable walrus catch, he observed children at play: “the children, each one armed with the curved rib of some big amphibion [sic], are playing ball and bat among the drifts.” A more detailed account came later in Kane’s account of the expedition. Before departing Etah, Kane wrote of being led by a young guide named Sip-su to what he called a “play-ground” where children gathered. “Each of them had a walrus-rib for a golph or shinny-stick,” Kane wrote, “and they were contending to drive a hurley, made out of the round knob of a flipper-joint, up a bank of frozen snow.” Kane noted the children's reactions—“Roars of laughter greeted the impatient striker as he missed his blow at the shining ball”—and observed that the players were “counting on the fingers of both hands, Eight, eight, eight: the game is ten,” indicating a scoring system. |
| Sources | Elisha Kent Kane, Arctic Explorations in the Years 1853, ’54, ’55, Vol 2 (Philadelphia, PA: Childs and Peterson, 1856), 132, 206–207. |
| Source Image | File:Arctic Explorations in the Years 1853, 54, 55, Vol 2.pdf |
| Has Source On Hand | No |
| Comment | This sounds like a shinty-type bat-ball game. Edit with form to add a comment |
| Query | Edit with form to add a query |
| Submitted by | Steve Rennie |
| Submission Note | |
| First in Location | |
| Players Locality | Local |
| Entry Origin | |
| Entry Origin Url |
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