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SLAHAL
GAMES OF THE FIRST NATIONS: SLAHAL
Slahal or Lahal (with slight spelling and pronunciation variations including Sla-hal, Slhahal, Lahall, and Lahalle), is a gambling game of the indigenous peoples of Cascadia, especially along the Salish Sea, which combines song, sacred ritual, intense competition and guesswork.
Known by titles such as โthe bone gameโ (from the playing pieces), โthe stick gameโ (from the scoring pieces), โhand gameโ, โgambling gameโ, or โbloodless war gameโ, it also has regionally specific names in different languages and dialects; in the area around the Burrard Inlet of British Columbia it is often called Slahal or Slhahal, as well as Skโakโeltx among the Squamish, while in the north of Vancouver Island, it is called A’la’xwa (sometimes rendered as Lahal) by the Kwakwaka’wakw, and in the eastern Chilcotin Plateau and the Cariboo Plateau it is known as Sllekmรฉw’es among the Secwepemc people.
HISTORY
Oral histories of the First Nations hold that Slahal is an ancient game, played since time immemorial. Among the Coast Salish oral tradition, The Creator gave โthe stick gameโ to humanity at the beginning of time as a way to settle disputes and serve as an alternative to war.
Another story holds that at the beginning of time humans and animals were in direct competition for dwindling food. The Creator gave humans and animals a game to play โ Slahal โ and decreed that whoever won the game could eat the other from then on. The two sides played against each other, but humans were gradually losing, down to their last stick, they beseeched the Creator to take pity on them. So the Great Spirit let humans win the game, but under the condition that they follow four laws โ to turn away from greed, lust, hate, and jealousy. In doing so, the Great Spirit gave the people a gift, to show them who they were, and from then on people have used the game to settle disputes through โbloodless war.โ
Physical evidence indicates that the game dates to before the end of the last Ice Age, with a set of 14,000-year-old bone playing pieces, the oldest found yet, discovered along with other cultural artifacts in Douglas County in the late 1980โs. Today these pieces reside with the Washington State Historical Society Museum in Tacoma.
The game serves multiple roles in culture of the First Nations, being a form of entertainment, a means of economic gain through gambling, and serving as a common way to engage with others in the community and with peoples across territorial boundaries in the exchange of goods, information and even lands and people. In addition to conflict resolution between groups, Slahal also played at many occasions, celebrations, and gatherings, serving as a way of healing and bringing people together.
In historic times, prizes played for could be valuables such as clothing, blankets, shawls, horses, buckskin, and trade items, though today prizes can be anything that is of special value, ranging from traditional craft items to money, televisions, game consoles, and many modern accouterments.