America's Early Gambling History

The earliest games of chance presented to the New World were most likely played by sailors who manned Columbus' three ships.

The Portuguese and the Spanish, are included in delivering cards and dice with them to the Americas, also took horses with them and consequently, acquainted horse race betting. Several horses broke loose from restraint, and found their way eventually into the Great Plains.

Later on, their descendants became the Plains Indians' property - these Indians who were skilled riders and loved to gamble for herds of horses, even ponies.

Those who, unfortunately lost - attacked neighboring tribes which led to battles over the proprietorship of these animals. In addition, Indians gambled with dice that were made from plum pits and pear.

The early Americans adored gambling in one form or another; most likely a passion derived from some of their European predecessors.

The first colony of Virginia was funded most of the time by earnings from English lotteries. Accordingly, almost all county seat organized a lottery before the seventeenth century ended.

Profits generated from Lotteries were in part accountable for the establishment of numerous institutions of higher learning - Yale, Princeton, Harvard, William and Mary, Dartmouth, and Columbia - to name a few.

Aside from lotteries, other types of gambling caught on immediately. Cockfighting was in the list of most poplar gambling games, specifically in the southern communities, as were dogfighting and bear-baiting.

Dice and cards were imported by the English and Dutch. Horse racing caught on fast, but was widely limited to the more wealthy colonists.

Nearly each household in early America had decks of playing cards. Benjamin Franklin was a card player and marketed playing cards; so was George Washington, who was also a certified card player.

These decks of cards marketed sold really well that the British legitimated the rather infamous Stamp Act; the act, aside from imposing taxes on tea, also imposed a tariff on each sold packs of card.

Not all early Americans acknowledged gambling with such enthusiasm though. Colonists in New England viewed gambling a sin, and further regulated to pay fines, or getting punished in the physical sense on unfortunate lawbreakers.

This stance was seen in the anti-gambling partiality promulgated by the judicial system in the United States following the Revolutionary War. Gambling laws were mostly under each state's jurisdiction however, and most states acquired a live-and-let-live outlook about gambling.

This acknowledgment arose from economic need among the colonies, while they were still under control. Gambling was permitted for the intention of funding both private and public projects such as roads, hospitals, schools/colleges, buildings, churches, and dams.