“It’s always best to start at the beginning.” -Glinda The Good Witch
Before we can get to the history of lacrosse as we know it, we must first look at the origins of stick and ball games in North America. Indigenous people have played a variety of ball games throughout the continent long before Europeans even set foot in the Western Hemisphere. Across the continent, there were many traditional games that involved using a stick for the hitting, carrying, or throwing of a ball. The stick and ball games that would later evolve into modern lacrosse, however, were played by the Indigenous peoples of Eastern North America.
Life for the Indigenous peoples of Eastern North America was concentrated around a massive river drainage system arranged around the Mississippi river. Other waterways, such as the Ohio, Arkansas, and Missouri Rivers and the many creeks feeding into them, facilitated the movement of peoples, crops, and ideas over many hundreds of miles. Consequently, the many tribes occupying eastern North American had much in common culturally. The similarity of the ball games throughout the settlements of the Mississippi drainage system shows the importance and prevalence of long-distance economic and cultural exchange among Native American peoples. All ball games took place on irregular playing surfaces, and fields could sometimes be several kilometers long. Each of these games involved the carrying and throwing of a ball using a stringed pocket mounted on a stick towards an opponent’s goal. Notably, while all sticks possessed stringed pockets, the sizes and shapes of the sticks reflected at least three main variations on the game. In the Northeast, Haudenosaunee tribes, especially the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, played a ball game using a single stick that was four to five feet long and possessed an unenclosed pocket in which to carry the ball. Around the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi region, Algonquian and Sioux tribes also used a single stick, though theirs was two to three feet long with an enclosed wooden pocket. Finally, in the Southeast, nations such as the Chickasaw and Choctaw, as well as the Cherokee, played using a pair of sticks that were one to two feet long, each with enclosed pockets. Even though each variation possessed unique features, there are striking similarities in the ball and stick tradition in Eastern North America. Across the board, these games served practical and symbolic purposes, such as promoting spiritual continuity, developing military prowess as well as facilitating diplomatic conciliation.
There was a distinct spiritual element to ball games amongst indigenous peoples. According to the oral traditions of many tribes, ball games were a gift given to them by the Creator. Though these oral traditions vary, they all served to reinforce each nation’s unique relationship to the Creator and embodied Man’s relationship with Nature. Ceremonial and spiritual ball games often featured intratribal competition. These games would have fewer players than intertribal games and deemphasized rough play. Tribal spiritual leaders would call for the playing of a ritual ball game to alter the weather, cure the sick, honour the dead, or to please the Creator.
One of the main purposes of ball games was to keep a tribe’s men healthy and strong for both war and hunting. Ball games required constant running, deft hands, as well as mental and physical toughness, which made them great for conditioning men for combat.
While ball games were used to train for war, they also served as a means to avert it. Ball games were typically played by nations that had achieved a significant level of popular and extratribal affiliation, therefore games allowed tribes to reinforce political ties while solving territorial disputes within the context of an alliance. Confederacies allowed individual tribes to protect one another’s interests and project their collective might against enemies; playing a ball game facilitated and reinforced these bonds.
Bearing in mind the connection between ball games and military as well as diplomatic prowess, it is unsurprising that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a nation with a rich tradition of ball play, became a major power during the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century. Their prominence in the Northeast would lead to close relations with Europeans- relations that would expose Europeans to the Haudenosaunee variation on the stick and ball game. Consequently, it would be their variation of the stick and ball game that would evolve into modern lacrosse.
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