What America’s First Board Game Can Teach Us About the Aspirations of a Young Nation
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Matthew Wynn Sivils examines “The Travellers’ Tour Through the United States,” America’s first known board game printed in 1822 by the New York cartography firm F. & R. Lockwood. Discovered in 1991 at the American Antiquarian Society, this rare educational game featured a hand-colored map of the then-24 states and 139 numbered towns, with players using a teetotum (a dice alternative) to advance by reciting geographic facts from memory.
Beyond its historical significance as the first American-printed board game, the artifact reveals how early 19th-century America constructed its national identity. The game’s descriptions celebrate educational institutions, agricultural prosperity, and commercial success while conspicuously omitting any mention of slavery or the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples—offering historians insight into the sanitized self-image a young nation wished to project through popular entertainment and children’s education.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
A Forgotten First Discovery
The 1822 game remained unknown for nearly 170 years, with “The Mansion of Happiness” incorrectly holding the title of America’s first board game until 1991.
Educational Geography Game Format
Players used teetotums instead of dice to advance across a map, winning by memorizing geographic facts about 139 American towns and cities.
New Year’s Gift-Giving Market
In 1822, New Year’s rather than Christmas was the primary holiday for gifts, creating a market for educational games among middle and upper-class families.
Celebrating American Achievement
Town descriptions emphasized educational institutions, commercial prosperity, agricultural fertility, and cultural refinement to construct an idealized national identity.
Conspicuous Historical Omissions
The game completely avoided mentioning slavery or Indigenous genocide, revealing how popular culture sanitized America’s most troubling realities for young learners.
Modern Board Game Evolution
Today’s games like “Freedom: The Underground Railroad” and “Votes for Women” address the historical gaps that “The Travellers’ Tour” deliberately avoided.
Master Reading Comprehension
Practice with 365 curated articles and 2,400+ questions across 9 RC types.
Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Material Culture Reveals National Identity
The article demonstrates how a forgotten board game serves as a window into early American self-perception and nation-building. By examining what “The Travellers’ Tour” included and excluded, Sivils reveals how popular entertainment shaped—and was shaped by—the narratives a young country wanted to perpetuate. The game’s celebration of education and commerce alongside its silence about slavery and Indigenous genocide illustrates how cultural artifacts construct selective national identities. This analysis connects material history to broader questions about American mythology and historical memory.
Purpose
Educate Through Historical Discovery
Sivils aims to share his archival discovery with broader audiences while demonstrating how historians extract meaning from material objects. The article serves multiple purposes: documenting the game’s existence and mechanics, correcting the historical record about America’s first board game, and using this artifact as a lens for understanding early 19th-century American culture. By connecting past to present—noting how modern games address historical silences—he shows how entertainment media both reflects and shapes national consciousness across time.
Structure
Discovery Narrative → Historical Context → Critical Analysis
The article opens with contemporary board game industry statistics to establish relevance, then recounts the personal discovery experience at the American Antiquarian Society. It proceeds chronologically through the game’s history (its 1822 publication, misattribution to another game, 1991 rediscovery), before explaining gameplay mechanics and the cultural context of early American gift-giving. The final section shifts to critical analysis, examining what the game reveals about national self-image through its selective historical narrative. This structure moves readers from familiar present to unfamiliar past, building interpretive complexity.
Tone
Scholarly Yet Accessible & Measured
Sivils maintains an engaging, conversational tone while delivering serious historical analysis. He balances enthusiasm for archival discovery with critical examination of the game’s ideological content. The tone remains measured when discussing the game’s omissions—noting what’s absent without sensationalism or presentist judgment. References to contemporary games and industry statistics ground the historical material in familiar contexts, making 19th-century culture accessible to modern readers. The writing demonstrates how academic scholarship can engage general audiences without sacrificing intellectual rigor or oversimplifying complex historical questions.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
Click each card to reveal the definition
Build your vocabulary systematically
Each article in our course includes 8-12 vocabulary words with contextual usage.
Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
Tap each card to flip and see the definition
A small spinning top with numbered or lettered sides used as a substitute for dice in games, particularly when dice were associated with gambling.
“The instructions stipulate the game should be performed with a Tetotum, small top-like devices functioning as alternatives to dice.”
Relating to the study or collection of antiquities or rare old objects; someone who studies or collects things from the past.
“I visited the American Antiquarian Society in August 2023 to research its collection of early games.”
Large, imposing buildings, especially those that are grand or monumental in character and designed to impress.
“Savannah contains many splendid edifices according to the game’s description of the city.”
The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic, national, or cultural group through killing or other means.
“No mention is made of the ongoing dispossession and genocide of millions of Indigenous people.”
To follow a winding or indirect course; to wander aimlessly without a fixed direction or purpose.
“As the game pieces meander toward New Orleans, players learn about various cities’ characteristics.”
Regarded with approval and considered proper, acceptable, or worthy of regard; of good social standing or reputation.
“Philadelphia’s literary and benevolent institutions are numerous and respectable according to the game.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1“The Mansion of Happiness” was always recognized as the first American board game until the 1991 discovery.
2Why were teetotums used instead of dice in “The Travellers’ Tour”?
3Which sentence best captures the article’s main criticism of the game’s historical representation?
4Evaluate these statements about the game’s cultural context:
In 1822, New Year’s was the primary holiday for gift-giving rather than Christmas.
Only five institutional copies of “The Travellers’ Tour” are known to exist in library collections.
The game’s descriptions included detailed accounts of Indigenous peoples and their contributions to American society.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5What can be inferred about the author’s view of modern board games compared to “The Travellers’ Tour”?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
The American Antiquarian Society is a major research library and learned society founded in 1812 in Worcester, Massachusetts, dedicated to collecting and preserving materials documenting American history and culture through 1876. The organization houses extraordinary collections including the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in British America. “The Travellers’ Tour” naturally found its home there because the Society systematically collects early American printed materials, including ephemera like games, puzzles, and educational materials that reveal cultural values and daily life in early America.
Players spun a teetotum, which landed revealing a random number. They then looked ahead that many spaces on the map to identify a numbered town or city. If the player could recite from memory the name of that location, they moved their token (called a “traveler”) to that space. The first player to reach New Orleans won the game. This mechanic combined chance elements with memorization requirements, making it both entertaining and educational—players had to study the 139 town names beforehand to succeed, effectively gamifying geographic learning.
The game was printed in 1822, one year after Missouri became the 24th state in 1821. At that time, the United States consisted of only these 24 states—the nation was still relatively small compared to today’s 50 states. The western territories remained largely unmapped by American cartographers, and many areas were still controlled by Indigenous nations or claimed by other countries. The game’s map thus represented the complete United States as understood and recognized at that historical moment, offering insight into America’s geographic extent during the early 19th century.
Readlite provides curated articles with comprehensive analysis including summaries, key points, vocabulary building, and practice questions across 9 different RC question types. Our Ultimate Reading Course offers 365 articles with 2,400+ questions to systematically improve your reading comprehension skills.
This article is rated Intermediate because it requires readers to understand historical context, follow a narrative about archival discovery, and extract cultural significance from material artifacts. While the vocabulary is generally accessible and the writing style conversational, readers must grasp concepts like how physical objects reveal cultural values, understand historical timelines with multiple dates, and appreciate the significance of what’s absent from historical sources. Intermediate readers should be comfortable with academic subject matter presented in an engaging manner and able to connect specific historical details to broader themes about national identity formation.
Beyond chronological precedence, “The Travellers’ Tour” serves as a revealing artifact of American self-perception during the nation’s formative decades. The game’s selective geographic descriptions—celebrating educational institutions, commercial success, and cultural refinement while completely omitting slavery and Indigenous genocide—demonstrates how popular culture participated in constructing idealized national narratives. For historians, such everyday objects reveal what a society wanted to teach its children about national identity, making the game valuable evidence about early American ideology, values, and the deliberate construction of historical memory through educational media.
The Ultimate Reading Course covers 9 RC question types: Multiple Choice, True/False, Multi-Statement T/F, Text Highlight, Fill in the Blanks, Matching, Sequencing, Error Spotting, and Short Answer. This comprehensive coverage prepares you for any reading comprehension format you might encounter.
