The lesser-known history of lacrosse, a uniquely American sport

Transcript

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Nick Schifrin: Tomorrow, alongside Thanksgiving dinner, there is also the annual Thanksgiving football. But there is a lesser celebrated sport that is uniquely American.

We spoke with longtime sports reporter Scott Price about his new book on lacrosse, part of our series Race Matters.

Scott L. Price, Author: My name is Scott L. Price. I am the author of “The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse.”

Most people, their understanding of lacrosse is limited to the collegiate game, which really reaches its culmination of every Memorial Day with the NCAA Championships. What most people don’t understand is that for the Iroquois, the Haudenosaunee, the game has an incredible depth that goes far beyond recreation or exercise.

The game was created 1,000 years ago as recreation, as a way to settle boundary disputes and train warriors, but centrally as a way to entertain the creator, and not only that, but used as a way to heal the community. A stick-and-ball game was quite common among all the tribes. They had different variations.

Some played with two sticks, some had short sticks with a little — the head of it was kind of round and webbed, as opposed to the classic idea of a lacrosse stick. It’s a spiritual practice for the Haudenosaunee. They play a medicine game for healing in the community and for individuals. And then they’re playing for sovereignty and for a political mission.

In the late 1800s, the Mohawks especially were in Canada giving exhibitions and playing lacrosse. And a soon-to-be dentist named George Beers took it upon himself to sort of appropriate lacrosse from the Native Americans.

Narrator: Lacrosse was originally part of a red Indian’s training for war, but now it’s a civilized sport.

Scott L. Price: Originally, Canada, the U.S., England and Australia were lacrosse powers. And I will tell you, I did 370 interviews for this book. And even people who have no real connection to the spiritual Native American aspect of it get sort of this dreamy-eyed expression on their face.

Oren Lyons, Haudenosaunee Confederacy: This commemorates peace and friendship between the United States and the Haudenosaunee.

Scott L. Price: Oren Lyons is one of the great indigenous activists of the last 50 years. In 1983, Oren Lyons, along with a Tuscarora stick maker named Wes Patterson co-founded the Iroquois Nationals.

And he had been approached by Roy Simmons Jr., the then-coach of Syracuse. Roy Simmons Jr. said, Oren; “Let’s get together and play some field lacrosse, my team, the Syracuse Orangemen, and we will play a field game.”

And Oren Lyons said to him, famously to me, tragically to me: “We don’t really know how to play field anymore. We don’t have a field team.”

And for the originators of the game to say that, to me, has always struck me as just one of the sort of quietly tragic utterances in sports history. So he set about in 1983 to correct that, and began the Iroquois Nationals. Their first game against Syracuse was woeful. They played it in Baltimore and lost by like 23-7.

But ever since then, the team has improved, improved, improved and starting in 2014 they were the third-ranked team in the world. In 2023, lacrosse was accepted by the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, which is the governing body of the Olympics, as a host city sport at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

The IOC does not recognize the Haudenosaunee as a nation. They follow essentially the United Nations sort of qualifications for nationhood. And if the Haudenosaunee want to take part, they’re welcome to — essentially, they’re welcome to try out for the U.S. or Canadian teams.

Now, you can imagine, for a team and a people who have been traveling on their own passports and shown no compunction about pulling out of championships if their sovereignty is not recognized, you can imagine their feeling about playing for the U.S. or Canada. It’s not going to happen.

Lacrosse really reflects the culture of this continent and the experience and the history of this continent in the last 1,000 years more than any sport. Baseball and football were inherited — variations of games inherited from the English maybe 150, 200 years ago.

Lacrosse goes back 1,000 years and contains the experience of the Native Americans in a way that no other sport does. That includes the collision of white society with Native American cultures in society, the appropriation and some would say theft, obviously, of Native American lands, the genocide.

Lacrosse was appropriated from the Native Americans, and for a while the Native Americans were cut out of it. The sport and the country is imperfect, but it’s working toward a more perfect union and a more perfect sport.