Lacrosse
Lacrosse is one of many varieties of stickball games being played by American Indians when Europeans began coming to America. Almost totally a male team sport, it is different from the others, like field hockey or roller hockey, by the use of a netted racquet with which to pick the ball off the ground, catch and 'throw' it into or past a goal to score a point. The rules of lacrosse are simply that the ball, with few exceptions, can not be touched with the hands.Early info on lacrosse, from missionaries like French Jesuits in Huron country, is vague and often different from source to source. Their information is mostly about team size, equipment used, and the length of games and length of playing fields but say very little about stick handling, game strategy, or the rules of play. The oldest sticks are 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 legend, rituals, and the rules and preparation for play.Given the little amount of info and vaguen
The northeastern stick, found in Iroquoian and New England tribes, is the progenitor of all present-day sticks, both in box as well as field lacrosse. Connecting it to the rubber-ball games of Meso-America or to an even older game using a single post covered by some animal hide and played together by men and women is likely, but not 100% positive. On the end is a round, closed pocket about three to four inches in diameter, not much larger than the ball, which was usually made of wood, charred and cut into shape. could u imagine getting smacked in the head with one of those wooden balls!?). When Oklahoma Choctaw began to attach lead weights to their sticks around 1900 to use them as skull-crackers, the game was outright banned. From the equipment, the type of goal used and the stick handling techniques, it is possible to figure three basic forms of lacrosse: the southeastern, Great Lakes, and Iroquoian. 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. While the Great Lakes traditional game died out by 1950, the Iroquois and southeastern tribes continue to play their own forms of lacrosse. In the past, lacrosse also served to 'vent' aggression, and territorial disputes between tribes were sometimes settled with a game, although not always fairly. Among southeastern tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, Yuchi and others (to many to type out)), a double-stick version of the game is still practiced. Where strings meet the shaft, it forms the pocket of the stick. Great Lakes players (Ojibwe, Menominee, Potawatomi, Sauk, Fox, Miami, Winnebago, Santee Dakota (again to many)) used a single three-foot stick.
Common topics in this essay:
Games Apart,
LOL Meanwhile,
Iroquoian England,
Cherokee Ball-Play,
Caughnawauga Akwesasne,
Indians Europeans,
Jesuits Huron,
British Columbia,
Santee Dakota,
Onondaga DEHUNTSHIGWA'ES,
nineteenth century,
indian culture,
forms lacrosse,
southeastern tribes,
field lacrosse,
stick handling,
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Acceptance Essays
