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NAME AND ADDRESS DATE
THE ROLE OF RECREATION IN OHIOAGO FROM 1803
TO 1848 AS REVEALED IN LITERATURE AVAIL
ABLE IN THE METROPOLITAN AREA
<A Dissertation
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of Sociology
Northwestern University
In Partial Fulfillment
>of the Requirements for the Degree
of Doctor of Philosophy
by
Viola Van Zee
April 194&
ProQuest Number: 10102078
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FORWARD
This study is concerned with play and recreation
of the pioneers of Chicago in the period between 1803
and 1848 and with the relation of these social activities
to wide-spread culture patterns.
The historical method has been employed in examin
ing both original sources such as newspapers, letters,
diaries, manuscripts, and museum materials, and secondary
sources such as histories#
Quotations both from primary and secondary sources
have been recorded in their original form. Misspelled
words, faulty capitalization, grammatical and other errors
have been retained, since as such, they are significant
of the general culture of the people of the period cover
ed by the study#
In making the study I am indebted to members of
the graduate seminar of the Sociology Department of
Northwestern University and especially to Professor
Arthur J. Todd, Miss Neva L. Boyd and Mrs. Charlotte B.
Chorpenning for their help in selecting and organizing
the material constituting the body of the study.
I am also indebted to the staffs of the Newberry
and Chicago Historical Society Libraries for their coopera
tion in making materials available#
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction......... i
I* Brief Historical Sketch...... 1
II. Cultural Background as Related to Chicago.... 15
III. Facilities for Public, Especially Recreation
al and Amusement Gatherings.............. £9
IV. Sports and Games...... 51
V. The Theatre................... 85
VI. The Development of Art........................ 120
r VII# Music............................ 133
VIII.Literature and Literary Societies...........163
IX. Organizations Including Recreation in Their
Activities........ 210
X. Holiday Celebrations.................. 233
XI. The Circus.................... 251
XII. Dancing......................................... 258
XIII.Marginal Forms of Recreation.................. 271
XIV. Miscellaneous Recreational Occasions......... 284
XV. Conclusions...... 291
INTRODUCTION
This study is concerned with play and recreation
of the pioneers of Chicago in the period between 1803 and
1848 and with the relation of these social activities to
wide-spread culture patterns#
Unfortunately anthropologists have given only in
cidental attention to play and yet available sources-*- In
dicate not only that play-behavior is universal in human
society, but that it has resulted in markedly similar
culture patterns in primitive and civilized societies.
Games, sports, dancing, music, art, and drama are found
in some form in both primitive and civilized groups through
out the world.
What was the function of play and of what we call
recreation in the lives of early Chicagoan*s? This ques
tion the present study attempts to answer#
The first English settlers who established colonies
R# Davies, Some Arab Games and Puzzles, Sudan Notes
and Records, Volume VIII, pp# 137-152; Dudley Kidd, The
Essential Kafir, pp. 330-340; Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood,
H.S# St annus, wThe Wayo of Nyasaland,** Harvard African Studies,
Volume III, pp. 357-364, 360—362; J.H. Weeks, Among Congo
Cannibals, pp# 149—150; tT#H# Weeks, **Notes on Some Customs
of Lower Congo People,** Folk Lore, Volume XX, pp. 457-462.
iiii
in America, In spite of hardships, moralist precepts,
taboos, and a very busy life, were not by any means with
out their own characteristic forms of recreation. While
the prohibition of the theatre was attempted in early New
England, It still survived; and dancing persisted in spite
of the fact that the Massachusetts General Court, upon
learning that dancing was going on in the community, flat
ly decreed there should be no more of it.^ Puritanism with
or without the desire to do so, failed to eradicate the
American's desire to play.
Chicago has run true to this American culture pat
tern. The theatre in early Chicago was frowned upon as a
necessary evil; card playing was participated in only by
those not accepted In wfashionable society,w and even then
games were played only at nights and behind drawn curtains.
When waltzing first made its appearance In the town, there
was great opposition on the part of the clergy and more
conservative element, who believed it to be immoral; yet
the opposition to these forms of recreation was not suffic
ient to stifle them.
Even though attempts were made to prohibit many
formso f play in Chicago as well as in other parts of the
United States, they persisted in very diversified form,
for they are inherent in the relation of the organism to
Records of the Governor.•.of Massachusetts Bay,
Volume III, p. 224, taken from Foster Dulles, America
Learns to Play, p. 6.
the environment* Games, sports, dancing, art, and drama
are world wide formalized behavior patterns. These be
havior patterns become formalized and are a culture source
of expression for all human beings. According to C.M. Child
in his Physiological Foundations of Behavior, there are two
aspects to every situation, the functioning of the organism
and its environment. Behavior is partly determined by the
organism and partly by the situation in which it functions!
The only possible conclusion seems to be that the in
dividual organism as a pattern, an order, a physio
logical whole, originates in a reaction of a specific
protoplasm to certain environmental factors.^
Two persons may have similar native artistic capac
ities, but under different environmental influences one
may become an artist while the other may reveal little of
his inherent capacity. Likewise a primitive artist might
express his artistic urge by scratching figures on a cave
wall, while a modern artist with similar capacities might
paint a beautiful landscape on canvas; depending on the
cultural resources upon which he is able to draw. The
capacities of the two organisms might be very similar but
due to differences in the power of stimulation involved
in two environments, one may develop on a low level only
while the other might surge to great heights. Likewise
I •
any given person within this general organic pattern may
turn to one art or the other. The tendency toward artistic
g
C.M. Child, Physiological Foundations of Behavior,
p. £12.
expression is not specific, hence, depending on environmen
tal stimulation, the person may* develop along any of several
different channels. It is a matter of common observation
that a person in one art often dabbles in others.
Regardless of the channel in which this artistic
ability developes, rhythm is one characteristic which is
common to all. The very hature of the functioning of the
organism in relation to stimulation is rhythmic* This
rhythm pervades all art, dancing, music and games. Wundt
pointed out long ago that "the earliest aesthetic stimuli
are symmetry and rhythm. We learn this even from the most
4
primitive of all arts, the dance.11
The delight in rhythmical movement for its own sake
is undoubtedly the fundamental factor in the dance,
music, and in poetry, if not in all forms of art,
and one that appears very early. There are many pro
ductions of young children that bear the indubitable
stamp of artistic creation.
The persistence of this play-behavior which finds
expression in such forms as games and dancing is of great
interest to sociologists, anthropologists and social psychol
ogists. One of the earliest theories was that of Herbert
Spencer who accounts for play in terms of "surplus energy."
Among the "inferior animals," he asserts that all energy
is devoted to fulfilling functions necessary for the main
tenance of lifej but among the higher animals time and
4
E. Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology, p. 103.
^Herbert S. Langfeld, The Aesthetic Attitude, p. 136.
