Here is a new game

Last night we were watching Annie Get Your Gun (of 'Oh, you can't get a man with a gun' fame) when I started thinking about all the Indian names I could list off the top of my head. 'Hey!' I told Michael. 'How many Indian tribes can you list off the top of your head?' We were on the I'm an Indian Too song, which gave us Chippewa, Iroquois, Omaha, and Sioux right there. 'Let's have a contest! I'm telling you now, so you can start thinking, which won't give me any unfair advantages.'

So as soon as the movie was done, we grabbed two sheets of scratch paper from the recycling bin, set the microwave timer for two minutes, and started scribbling furiously. It was tremendously fun, and Michael ended up with more names than I did! I fully expected to win, since I had thought of it first, but I gave him the option of picking another topic to even the score anyway. We played for states, which actually relies more on fast-writing skills, since there are a finite number of states and either you know them or you don't. It was spontaneous, creative, educational, and fun, and I want to do it again, except the problem is that we have to drop everything and play a round as soon as either of us thinks of a category or else that person gets an unfair advantage from having more time to mull it over.

Afterwards, Michael, ever the thorough one, hopped online to look up Indians of North America. There were far more than either of us had ever heard of. So many Indian tribes have names that I recognise now as places, and so many of the funny place names in Oregon and Washington (Puyallup, Luckiamutte, Molalla, Skagit, Umatilla, Umpqua, Walla Walla) as well as not funny, totally normal place names (Klamath, Alsea, Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Siuslaw, Tillamook) are Indian in origin!