Prizes of winter supplies often were awarded to winning tribes in high-stakes games played in the late fall - oddly enough, the same time of year that high-stakes domestic field hockey games are held in the United States. Many years ago, some villages played not only for honor, but for a degree of survival. The game of tóka, like baggataway in the Northeast United States, is not for the faint of spirit. "The thing is, fewer and fewer people are speaking the language, so this could be a way to make it stronger." "We had Ina Lopez, the narrator of the film, speak a while without adding subtitles," Cyndee Wing says. But since the Wings have been putting various aspects of Native culture on film since 1974, there was generous compromise from all sides. Indeed, to allow Cyndee and David Wing to film the game, a certain consensus had to be formed with the tribe - part of it involving the surrender of a bit of artistic freedom. "They are a nomadic people, and the group has to agree on things, or they won't survive." "The Tohono O'odham rely on consensus," says Cyndee Wing. The fields on which the game is played are no longer between villages, but the game is not exactly constrained or codified in a rulebook like non-Native sports sometimes are.
![the native game the native game](http://www.nativetech.org/games/img00012.gif)
Over the years, the conventions of the game have changed somewhat.
![the native game the native game](https://agent.evolable.asia/search/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/10619vn-900-675.jpg)
"The fields were often the pathways between villages, and the games would be miles long." "There are some parallels that the game has with lacrosse," Cyndee Wing says from her Arizona studio. Tóka, like other Native games such as the Cherokee da-nah-wah'uwsdi, or its Iroquois cousin bagataway, had little or no rules just conventions and rituals handed down from one generation to the next. "We got them all on stage before the film was screened to do the song, and it was powerful." "We brought some of the women from the film to the American Indian Film Festival in 1994, got them in vans and drove them to San Francisco," Cyndee Wing says.
![the native game the native game](https://miro.medium.com/max/324/1*PDGhGtyRJABsI6JWXfnMtQ.png)
The film "Tóka" won the Best Short Documentary at the 1994 American Indian Film Festival. The game has been captured on film, in a 24-minute documentary by Cyndee and David Wing. The spirit of that young child is why saguaro are revered in Tohono O'odham culture.
![the native game the native game](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2560/1*MwPj0CfbHxAoGKTbEG_n2A.png)
Years went by, and a plant game up in its place - a saguaro cactus. The toddler - a boy in some stories, a girl in others - was left waiting on an anthill and sank into the ground. Legend also has it that a woman spent so much time traveling to other villages to play tóka that she neglects her child. I'itoi, says the oral history, gave the game to the women of the Nation shortly after creating the various tribes around the world from the shadows of the Schuk Toak - today, known as Rocky Point, a mountain located in Puerto Penasco, a town located in the Mexican state of Sonora. Women walking through the desert to crop fields or water sources played it to pass the time during the day, and female teams continue to compete to this very day.Īccording to tribal legend, the game of tóka was given to the Tohono Oodham by the Elder Brother, known in the Nation as I'itoi. The official history of American field hockey places the start of the sport at around 1905, corresponding with the arrival of Constance Applebee at Radcliffe College.īut the Tohono O'odham Nation in southern Arizona might beg to disagree.įor as long as anyone can remember, women in the tribe have gotten together ourdoors on shimmering afternoons, smacking an ola made out of two oblong pieces of wood tied together with the usaga, a curved stick with no flat surface at the end, very reminicent of the stick used in the game of ringette.