American Indians invented the game of baseball—at least according to Ezol Day, a time-traveling Native American woman.
“Base-and-ball” was played by Natives all over North and South America long before white people ever arrived in the New World, says Ezol, a character in the novel Miko Kings. Their ancient ball fields “had two intersecting lines that crossed at the mound where the pitcher stood.”
Miko Kings, a novel written by LAS American Indian studies and English professor LeAnne Howe, is a story about intersections: the intersection of lines at a pitcher’s mound, as well as the intersection between American Indians and African Americans—an often-ignored subject. This intersection is one reason why Howe’s novel was selected for the Read-In program held annually at Hampton University in Virginia.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hampton University was a point of intersection for Native and African American students. Historically, Hampton is a black school, but over 100 years ago the government paid the university to educate Indians. Miko Kings is partly set at Hampton, and it features a love story between a Choctaw pitcher and a black teaching assistant.
“Until the last 10 years, the relationship between blacks and Indians was a hidden history,” says Howe, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and one of only a dozen full professor Native American women in the United States. “This might be one of the first novels about a love affair between a black and an Indian.”
LaRose Davis, a Hampton graduate who does research on the connections between African Americans and Native Americans, was the one who first proposed that Miko Kings be selected for the Read-In program.
“Having been immersed in the culture of Hampton University, I felt we needed to be more reflective of the history of the Indian School on campus,” says Davis, a visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota.
Indian imagery is scattered across the campus, but she says that as students walk by these markers, it’s easy to gloss over the school’s Indian history. Miko Kings can help change that by encouraging students and faculty to have meaningful conversations about this history.
Howe is the first Native American writer to be selected for the Read-In, says John Alewynse, chair of Hampton’s English department. According to Alewynse, the Read-In dates back to 1988 and has featured the most acclaimed African American writers in the country, including Walter Mosley and Pulitzer Prize-winning Alice Walker.
The Read-In extends throughout the semester, and all students are encouraged to read the book. In addition, a special three-day event in March featured a variety of activities, including a standing room-only talk by Howe.
“I would be hard-pressed to think of any who have connected with the faculty and students in a more genuine fashion than LeAnne has,” Alewynse says. “There is something about her.”
Howe spoke about “race and erasure”—attempts to erase American Indian cultures. At Hampton, for instance, the school’s founder promoted the saying, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” In other words: Turn Indians into model American citizens. It’s a fate that Indians and blacks share in common, because a lot of African culture has been similarly killed off, Howe says.
Indians and blacks were segregated in the Hampton facilities 100 years ago; but Davis discovered in her research that there was a lot more interaction between blacks and Indians than is often assumed. Also, despite attempts to erase Indian and African cultures, the “Hampton Method” at that time had a seemingly contradictory goal. Howe says the school put Indians and blacks together in the hopes that their cultures would rub off on each other.
“How our different cultures inspire each other was the theme of my lecture at Hampton, and that is the question I explore in Miko Kings,” Howe says. “Instead of arguing over cultural differences, why don’t we just play baseball together? What a great idea.”
Howe is currently working on a nonfiction book, tracing the origins of baseball to the “root games” played by Native Americans. She also sees baseball as a powerful metaphor for the Native American experience.
“Baseball has no time limit like other sports,” she says. “The game isn’t over until it’s over. In the same way, Native Americans are not dead and dying and going away. Everything that could be done to us has been done. But it’s not over till it’s over. We’re still playing.”
