Lacrosse, America’s oldest team sport, dates back to 1100, when it was played by HaudenosauneeOr Iroquois peoplein what is now New York and areas of Canada bordering the state.
Early versions of lacrosse games played by Native American nations included 100 to 1,000 or more men using wooden sticks, sometimes with attached baskets or mesh pockets, and small balls wrapped in deer skin. The sinews of the deer formed nets. Borderless fields could stretch for miles and games could last several days.
“Lacrosse was an integral part of Native American culture,” explains Joe Finn, archivist at the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Museum. “It was played to prepare them for war, and it was also a social event where tribes came together for trade and sport. It was sometimes used to settle disputes. »
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Native American oral traditions cite the first lacrosse match played between birds and mammals. Some Native Americans believe the sport was a gift from the Creator intended to be used for pleasure and as medicine.
Neal Powless, a member of the Onondaga Nation, former professional player on the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team and three-time collegiate All-American, says the sport is part of the Haudenosaunee creation story.
Powless evokes an original version of “repatriation” in which a young woman and a leader, living in the Sky World, or a multiverse space, must marry to save their universe from destruction. But her attention is drawn to a lacrosse player who later dives into a ripped hole in the multiverse to save her, and they mate before she lands on Earth.
“Lacrosse is part of the story of our creation, of our identity, of who we are,” Powless said. “So when we play the game, we always say that there is a simultaneous game in Sky World and our ancestors are playing with us.”
The influence of Europeans on lacrosse
In the 1600s in Quebec, French missionaries first saw Native Americans playing the game, according to Finn. “It was given the name crosier because the missionaries thought the sticks resembled the bishop’s cross worn during religious ceremonies,” he explains.
Early Native Americans played the game barefoot, with no equipment and a vague set of rules. European settlers established stricter rules for the sport.
Lacrosse evolved in Canada, where it was named the national sport in 1859. In 1867, Georges Beers, a Montreal dentist, wrote the first rule book for the sport. “One day he took a team of white and indigenous lacrosse players to England and played in front of Queen Victoria,” Finn says.
“The match… very nice to watch”, the queen wrote in her diary after the game between the Iroquois and the Canadians, according to the National Lacrosse Museum and Hall of Fame. “It’s played with a ball and there’s a lot of running.”
Lacrosse as Medicine for Native Americans
Ceremonial medicine games are still practiced in Haudenosaunee communities to heal the sick, according to Powless. The Onodaga play a spring game each year with male participants of all ages.
“The players will show up without pads or equipment, just with their wooden stick,” he said, adding that teams are determined by clan, house or age. “And the ages are those who can walk. You’re going to have 7 year olds running with 80 year old men on the same field.
Each community has its own rules and variations, he adds, and matches are often played without a timekeeper, penalties or referees.
“Lacrosse is not just a game, it’s medicine, it’s healing,” Powless said. “We hear all the time how the spirit of sport itself has healed people because they believe it is a medicine that speaks to the mind and the soul.”
Lacrosse Today and Other Facts
Canadian John Flannery, who founded the US National Amateur Lacrosse Association in 1879, established lacrosse in the United States when he was transferred to Brooklyn by his employer, Finn says.
Contemporary lacrosse, nicknamed “the fastest game on two feet» in 1921 by a Baltimore Sunshine sportswriter, takes place on a field with players using sticks with a net attached to one end to catch, carry, pass and shoot a small rubber ball into the opposing team’s goal.
The first women’s lacrosse game took place in Scotland in 1890, and the first American women’s team was formed in 1926 at a Baltimore high school. Lacrosse was played in the 1904 and 1908 Olympic Games, and as an exhibition sport in 1928, 1936 and 1948. In 2021, the International Olympic Committee granted full recognition to the sport, paving the way for an eventual return to the Olympic Games in 2028.
Finn says the development of mass-produced plastic and metal sticks, lighter and easier to handle, in the late 1960s and early 1970s made the game faster and increased scores.
But it is the spirit of the game that remains most important to Powless. It refers to the Thompson brothersNotable professional lacrosse players and members of the Onondaga Nation.
“They will say we don’t play for the name on the back of our jersey or the name on the front,” he says. “We are playing for Creator and we will have a good game and whatever the score will be, it will be and we will do our best.”
