By Thomas Vennum Jr., Author of American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War

Lacrosse was one of many varieties of indigenous stickball games being played by American Indians at the time of European contact. Almost exclusively a male team sport, it is distinguished from the others, such as field hockey or shinny, by the use of a netted racquet with which to pick the ball off the ground, throw, catch and convey it into or past a goal to score a point. The cardinal rule in all varieties of lacrosse was that the ball, with few exceptions, must not be touched with the hands.

Early data on lacrosse, from missionaries such as French Jesuits in Huron country in the 1630s and English explorers, such as Jonathan Carver in the mid-eighteenth century Great Lakes area, are scant and often conflicting. They inform us mostly about team size, equipment used, the duration of games and length of playing fields but tell us almost nothing about stickhandling, game strategy, or the rules of play. The oldest surviving sticks date only from the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and the first detailed reports on Indian lacrosse are even later. George Beers provided good information on Mohawk playing techniques in his Lacrosse (1869), while James Mooney in the American Anthropologist (1890) described in detail the "[Eastern] Cherokee Ball-Play," including its legendary basis, elaborate rituals, and the rules and manner of play.

Given the paucity of early data, we shall probably never be able to reconstruct the history of the sport. Attempts to connect it to the rubber-ball games of Meso-America or to a perhaps older game using a single post surmounted by some animal effigy and played together by men and women remain speculative. As can best be determined, the distribution of lacrosse shows it to have been played throughout the eastern half of North America, mostly by tribes in the southeast, around the western Great Lakes, and in the St. Lawrence Valley area. Its presence today in Oklahoma and other states west of the Mississippi reflects tribal removals to those areas in the nineteenth century. Although isolated reports exist of some form of lacrosse among northern California and British Columbia tribes, their late date brings into question any widespread diffusion of the sport on the west coast.

On the basis of the equipment, the type of goal used and the stick-handling techniques, it is possible to discern three basic forms of lacrosse-the southeastern, Great Lakes, and Iroquoian. Among southeastern tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, Yuchi and others), a double-stick version of the game is still practiced. A two-and-a half foot stick is held in each hand, and the soft, small deerskin ball is retrieved and cupped between them. Great Lakes players (Ojibwe, Menominee, Potawatomi, Sauk, Fox, Miami, Winnebago, Santee Dakota and others) used a single three-foot stick. It terminates in a round, closed pocket about three to four inches in diameter, scarcely larger than the ball, which was usually made of wood, charred and scraped to shape. The northeastern stick, found among Iroquoian and New England tribes, is the progenitor of all present-day sticks, both in box as well as field lacrosse. The longest of the three-usually more than three feet-it was characterized by its shaft ending in a sort of crook and a large, flat triangular surface of webbing extending as much as two-thirds the length of the stick. Where the outermost string meets the shaft, it forms the pocket of the stick.

Lacrosse was given its name by early French settlers, using the generic term for any game played with a curved stick (crosse) and a ball. Native terminology, however, tends to describe more the technique (cf. Onondaga DEHUNTSHIGWA'ES, "men hit a rounded object") or, especially in the southeast, to underscore the game's aspects of war surrogacy ("little brother of war"). There is no evidence of non-Indians taking up the game until the mid-nineteenth century, when English-speaking Montrealers adopted the Mohawk game they were familiar with from Caughnawauga and Akwesasne, attempted to "civilize" the sport with a new set of rules and organize into amateur clubs. Once the game quickly grew in popularity in Canada, it began to be exported throughout the Commonwealth, as non-native teams travelled to Europe for exhibition matches against Iroquois players. Ironically, because Indians had to charge money in order to travel, they were excluded as "professionals" from international competition for more than a century. Only with the formation of the Iroquois Nationals in the 1980s did they successfully break this barrier and become eligible to compete in World Games.

Apart from its recreational function, lacrosse traditionally played a more serious role in Indian culture. Its origins are rooted in legend, and the game continues to be used for curative purposes and surrounded with ceremony. Game equipment and players are still ritually prepared by conjurers, and team selection and victory are often considered supernaturally controlled. In the past, lacrosse also served to vent aggression, and territorial disputes between tribes were sometimes settled with a game, although not always amicably. A Creek versus Choctaw game around 1790 to determine rights over a beaver pond broke out into a violent battle when the Creeks were declared winners. Still, while the majority of the games ended peaceably, much of the ceremonialism surrounding their preparations and the rituals required of the players were identical to those practiced before departing on the warpath.

A number of factors led to the demise of lacrosse in many areas by the late nineteenth century. Wagering on games had always been integral to an Indian community's involvement, but when betting and violence saw an increase as traditional Indian culture was eroding, it sparked opposition to lacrosse from government officials and missionaries. The games were felt to interfere with church attendance and the wagering to have an impoverishing effect on the Indians. When Oklahoma Choctaw began to attach lead weights to their sticks around 1900 to use them as skull-crackers, the game was outright banned.

Meanwhile, the spread of non-native lacrosse from the Montreal area eventually led to its position today worldwide as one of the fastest growing sports (more than half a million players), controlled by official regulations and played with manufactured rather than hand-made equipment-the aluminum shafted stick with its plastic head, for example. While the Great Lakes traditional game died out by 1950, the Iroquois and southeastern tribes continue to play their own forms of lacrosse. Ironically, the field lacrosse game of non-native women today most closely resembles the Indian game of the past, retaining the wooden stick, lacking the protective gear and demarcated sidelines of the men's game, and tending towards mass attack rather than field positions and offsides.

Bibliography:

Culin, Stewart. "Games of the North American Indians." In Twenty fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1902-1903, pp. 1-840. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907.

Fogelson, Raymond. "The Cherokee Ball Game: A Study in Southeastern Ethnology." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1962.

Vennum, Thomas Jr. American India Lacrosse: Little Brother of War. Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.

By Larry B. Massie, (as published in Michigan History Magazine, September/October 1997; Larry Massie is a frequent contributor to Michigan History Magazine.

His most recent book is Haven, Harbor and Heritage: The Holland, Michigan, Story (1996). Life in present-day Detroit bears little resemblance to that at the tiny French fort established by Cadillac nearly three centuries ago. Surprisingly, some things have remained unchanged. For example, on any given glorious Michigan midsummer day in the early eighteenth century most women of Detroit area households might have been busily intent on the domestic drudgery that was their lot. But for the men, young and old, the focus of their attention was sports-a ball game in particular. Centuries before baseball, basketball and football dominated the nation's athletic interests, the original American team sport-lacrosse-claimed a similar following among Michigan's native peoples.

Monsieur de Sabrevois, commandant of Fort Pontchartrain, penned a description of the region in 1718. Referring to the Potawatomi village located near the fort, he wrote:

In summer they play a great deal at lacrosse, twenty or more on each side. Their bat [crosse] is a sort of small racket, and the ball with which they Play is of very Heavy wood, a little larger than the balls we use in Tennis.

When they Play, they are entirely naked; they have only a breech-clout, and Shoes of deer-skin. Their bodies are painted all over with all Kinds of colors. There are some who paint their bodies with white clay, applying it to resemble silver lace sewed on all the seams of a coat; and, at a distance, one would take for silver lace.

They Play for large Sums, and often The prize amounts to more than 800 Livres. They set up two goals and begin their game midway between; one party drives The ball one way, and the other in the opposite direction, and those who can drive it to the goal are the winners. All this is very diverting and interesting to behold. Often one Village Plays against another, the poux [Potawatomi] against the outaouacs [Ottawa] or the hurons, for very considerable prizes. The French frequently take part in these games.

The game described by Sabrevois, called baggattaway by the Chippewa, was named lacrosse by early French observers. It is commonly assumed that the name stems from the French term crosse for the shepherd's crooklike crosier carried by bishops as a symbol of office. Pieffe Francois Xavier de Charlevoix noted the resemblance between the crosier and the shape of the racket stick in 1719. However, the term crosse, which also translates as bat, was applied to the Indian playing stick by the Jesuit fathers nearly a century before.

Aboriginal tribes across the North American continent avidly played lacrosse as a form of recreation and as training for the art of war. Rules of the game differed from tribe to tribe. In some tribal contests each player carried a single three-foot-long stick; in others participants wielded a stick in each hand. Tribal customs determined the exact size and shape of the racket. The balls varied from wooden cores wrapped with rawhide to leather bags stuffed with deer hair. The Miami tribesmen, in particular, drilled holes in theirs to produce a whistling sound when thrown. Distances between goals ranged from a few hundred yards to several miles. Teams might number a dozen or so or entire villages of several hundred braves. Matches varied from a half hour in length to several days as combatants attempted to hurl the ball against the goal, a pole or a natural object such as a rock or between two uprights. Lacrosse was solely a man's game, but less violent-versions known as shinny and double-ball were played by women. Tribal shamans usually served as game officials. Rules were few, the play itself rough and injuries frequent.

Numerous French explorers, priests and fur traders who first described the land that became Michigan recorded eyewitness accounts of the game as played by

the Potawatomi, Ottawa, Chippewa, Menominee, Miami, Masouten, Sauk, Fox and Huron athletes who dwelt in the peninsulas during the first century of European contact. Probably the first such description was penned by Father Jean de Brebeuf in the Jesuit Relation of 1636.

At his mission to the Hurons, approximately two hundred miles northeast of Detroit, near the south shore of Georgian Bay, he found the reputed therapeutic effects of the game little to his liking:
There is a poor sick man, fevered of body and almost dying, and a miserable sorcerer will order for him, as a cooling remedy, a game of crosse. Or the sick man himself, sometimes, will have dreamed that he must die unless the whole country shall play crosse for his health; and no matter how little may be his credit, you will see them in a beautiful field, village contending against village as to who will play crosse the better and betting against one another beaver robes and porcelain collars, so as to excite greater interest. Sometimes, also, one of these jugglers will say that the whole country is sick, and he asks a game of crosse to heal it; no more needs to be said, it is published immediately everywhere; and all the captains of each village give orders that all the young men do their duty in this respect, otherwise some great misfortune would befall the whole country.

While such epic matches may have preserved the health of the country according to Huron belief the sport was often unhealthy for individual participants. Nicholas Peffot, whose memoirs preserved his many experiences as an explorer, fur trader and government official among the northern lake tribes from 1665-1701, described the rough play among the Huron:
At the appointed time they gather in a crowd in the center of the field, and one of the two captains, having the ball in his hand, tosses it up in the air, each player trying to send it in the proper direction. If the ball falls to the ground, they try to pull it toward themselves with their bats, and should it fall outside the crowd of players the most active of them win distinction by following closely after it. They make a great noise striking one against another when they try to parry strokes in order to drive the ball in the proper direction. If a player keeps the ball between his feet and is unwilling to let it go, he must guard against the blows his adversaries continually aim at his feet; if he happens to be wounded, it is his own fault. Legs and arms are sometimes broken, and it has happened that a player has been killed. It is quite common to see someone crippled for the rest of his life who would not have had this misfortune but for his own obstinancy. When these accidents happen the unlucky victim quickly withdraws from the game, if he is in a condition to do so, but if his injury will not permit this, his relatives carry him home, and the game goes on till it is finished, as if nothing had occurred.

Baron Louis Lahontan echoed Perrot's observations on the dangerous aspect of lacrosse in his New Voyages to North America (London, 1703): "This game is so violent that they tear their skins and break their legs very often in striving to raise the ball." Michigan Indian agent and ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft quoted a witness who had seen a player nearly killed during a match, "He stood in front of the player that was going to throw the ball, who threw with great force and aimed too low. The ball struck the other in the side, and knocked him senseless for some time."

When such accidents occurred, little ill will was nurtured. Indian interpreter John Long's 1791 description of the Chippewa version of lacrosse noted "The Indians play with great good humor, and even when one of them happens, in the heat of the game, to strike another with his stick, it is not resented." In at least one famous episode the dangers of lacrosse were not restricted to participants. Alexander Henry's oft-quoted eyewitness account of the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac in June 1763, in which the spectators of that lacrosse game fared most unfortunate, springs to mind.

Far more typical of the lacrosse games enjoyed by the northern tribes is the account of the Sault Ste. Marie area Chippewa event penned in 1804 by Peter Grant, a fur trader who began his career with the North West Company in 1784:

Everything being prepared, a level plain about half a mile long is chosen, with proper barriers or goals at each end. Having previouslyforined into two equal parties, they assemble in the very middle of the field, and the game begins by throwing up the ball perpendicularly in the air, when, instantly, both parties form a singular group of naked men, painted in different colors and in the most comical attitudes imaginable, gaping with their hurdles [rackets] elevated in the air to catch the ball. Such a scene would make a scene worthy of a Hogarth or a Poussin.

Whoever is so fortunate as to catch the ball in his hurdle, runs with it towards the barrier with all his might, supported by his party, while his opponents pursue him and endeavor to strike it out. He who succeeds in doing so, runs in the same manner towards the opposite barrier and is of course, pursued in his turn. If in danger of being overtaken, he may throw it with his hurdle towards any of his associates who may happen to be nearer the barrier than himself. They have a particular knack of throwing it to a great distance in this manner, so that the best runners have not always the advantage, and, by a peculiar way of working their hands and arms while running, the ball never drops out of their hurdle.

If the ball dropped to the ground, various tribes observed different rules. Among the Hurons, a wild melee resulted as everyone attempted to whack the ball or each other's limbs. But among the Miami, as recorded by Charlevoix during a visit to a village on the St. Joseph River, near the present-day site of Niles in 1721, different procedures prevailed. If a player touched the ball with his hand or dropped it to the ground "the game is lost, unless he who has committed the mistake repairs it by driving the ball with one stroke to the bound, which is often impossible."

Indian players who accomplished great feats of play gained a celebrity status not unlike modem day sports heros. Johann G. Kohl, a German tourist traversing Lake Superior in 1854, observed: "Great ball players, who can send the ball so high it is out of sight, attain the same renown among the Indians as celebrated runners, hunters or warriors." While at the Apostle Islands, Kohl asked the local Chippewa to stage a game. "Though the chiefs were ready enough, and all were cutting their racquets and balls in the bushes, the chief American authorities forbade this innocent amusement." Bureaucratic spoilsports aside, by the mid-nineteenth century white men had begun playing lacrosse.

Ironically, W. George Beers, a Montreal physician, is considered the father of lacrosse because of his pioneering efforts to popularize the game among Canadians during the late 1850s. As lacrosse became Canada's official national sport and clubs were organized in America, chiefly in eastern cities and colleges, the rules of the game as played by whites became more refined, the size of the field and number of players reduced and a square goal replaced the original poles. Native Americans continued to enjoy their version of the game, often perfom-iing at state and county fairs and their own social gatherings.

In 1902 ethnologist William Jones observed a game of lacrosse played between two clans of the Fox tribe at Tama, Iowa. The match began with a declaration by an elder to the players: "We obtained this ball game from the manitou. It was given to us long ago in the past. Our ancestors played it as the manitou taught them in the same way we have always played it, and in the same way we have always played it, and in the same way as all our people continue to play it." The old man then offered some words of wisdom relevant to all who continue to enjoy the allure of athletic endeavor: "Play hard, but play fair. Don't lose your heads and get angry."

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