A great number of North American tribes held various kinds of bowling tournaments. At one Cherokee-mound site in Georgia, archaeologists uncovered several twenty foot long bowling alleys constructed of hardened clay.
Indians of the Southwest rolled wooden balls at upright corncob targets. The Cherokee and their southeastern neighbors pitched stone balls at clay objects shaped like the Indian clubs we use today in tenpins and other bowling games.
The Caddo Indians of Louisiana and Arkansas had another kind of bowling contest. They drew a line on the ground with a stick dividing an area thirty feet wide by seventy feet long into two equal-sized courts. Six Indian clubs molded of clay, were placed at one end of each court. Each team occupied it's own court and had it's own seed filled , deerskin ball- about the size of a modern basketball. One team member opened the game by rolling a ball into the competing players' court in an attempt to knock over their clay targets. If one was knock down, it was left so, and the next player took over. The first team to topple all of their opponents' clubs won the game.

Tags: Bowling Cherokee