Blog – History of Men’s Lacrosse
What is the history of lacrosse?
Lacrosse is one of the oldest team sports in America. Lacrosse history goes back as early as 1100AD where it was played by Native Americans in North America. The origin of lacrosse has a rich history in the Native American cultures.
Who invented Lacrosse?
Todays lacrosse game is based on the games that were invented by Native Americans. It was referred to as “The Creator’s Game.” American Indian lacrosse had important connections to religious, cultural, and spiritual life. These games were big events and some of would last as long as several days. Lacrosse had many different purposes. Games were played to settle disputes, train in combat, recreation, parts of festivals, to settle bets, or religious reasons. Early lacrosse equipment was hand made. Balls were made from wood or deerskin stuffed with hair. Lacrosse sticks were made from wood carved to hold the ball or netting made from wattup or deer sinew.
Where did lacrosse originate? Where was lacrosse invented?
The origins of lacrosse can be traced back to North America. A French Jesuit missionary, Jean de Brébeuf saw it played in 1637 in present day Ontario and called the game la crosse, “the stick” in French. It became popular in Canada, United States, Australia, and New Zealand. In the 1800s and 1900s lacrosse was predominately played in the Mid-Atlantic states, especially New York and Maryland.
When did lacrosse start?
Lacrosse goes back as early as 1100AD where it was played by the Native Americans and Aboriginal Canadians. By 1900 there were many men’s clubs across the English speaking world. Women’s lacrosse was introduced in Scotland in 1890 and the first women’s club in the US was started at Bryn Mawr School (Maryland) in 1926.
National Lacrosse League
Newer versions of the game, like box lacrosse, background comes from the traditional games. Box lacrosse started in Canada in the 1930s with the formation of the first box lacrosse league. In 1986 the Major Indoor Lacrosse League was founded. It ran until 1997 when the league was reconstituted with a new name, the NLL, National Lacrosse League, is the men’s professional box lacrosse league. It now has teams across the United States and Canada. It now consists of 14 teams with three divisions, North, East, West. The Buffalo Bandits, Halifax Thunderbirds, Rochester Knighthawks, Toronto Rock make up the North. Georgia Swarm, New England Black Wolves, New York Riptide, Philadelphia Wings in the East. Calgary Roughnecks, Colorado Mammoth, San Diego Seals, Saskatchewan Rush, Vancouver Warriors. The newest team to join the league is the Panther City Lacrosse Club in Fort Worth, TX for the 2021 season.
Major League Lacrosse
The professional field game became popular with the founding of Major League Lacrosse, MLL, in 1999. Major League Lacrosse began play in 2001 consisting of six teams. Boston, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Long Island made up the American Division. Baltimore, New Jersey, and Rochester made up the National Division. In 2006 the MLL added four teams, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and San Francisco. In 2008 Los Angeles, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and San Francisco teams were shut down due to money and poor attendance. In 2011 North Carolina and Ohio added expansion teams. In 2014 the Hamilton Nationals folded and became the Florida Launch. Atlanta became the ninth team to join in 2016. In 2018 The Rattlers relocated to Dallas from New York. In 2019 the MLL announced that the Charlotte Hounds, Florida Launch, and Ohio Machine were not playing in the 2019 season. Although the MLL was one of the longest running and most famous field lacrosse leagues, most of the players in the league had to work multiple jobs. The salary range in the MLL was between $10,000 and $25,000 with no benefits. However, after newer competition in field lacrosse they stated the intent to raise the salary range by 51%.
Premier Lacrosse League
In 2018 Paul Rabil announced he would be starting a new professional league. The newest iteration of professional lacrosse began in 2019 with the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL). The PLL would be a direct field lacrosse competitor to Major League Lacrosse. The PLL promised its players salaries, health care, and league equity. Unlike the MLL, the PLL did not base its teams in specific cities across the country. Rather it employed a 14 week tour based schedule in 12 cities. All teams traveled and played in a new city during the weekend. The 2019 PLL season began with 6 teams. Archers Lacrosse Club, Atlas Lacrosse Club, Chaos Lacrosse Club, Chrome Lacrosse Club, Redwoods Lacrosse Club, and Whipsnakes Lacrosse Club. The 2019 PLL season ended with the Whipsnakes LC winning the Championship 12-11 (OT) against the Redwoods LC. In 2020 an expansion brought the Waterdogs Lacrosse Club into the PLL for the 2020 season. With the onset of COVID 19, the PLL shifted its season to a bubble format. The Whipsnakes LC eventually won the 2020 Championship 12-6 against the Chaos LC.
The Indigenous origins of lacrosse – The Varsity
JESSICA LAM/THE VARSITY
In 1994, lacrosse officially became Canada’s national summer sport. The sport of lacrosse does not originate from European colonizers. Rather, Indigenous peoples invented and played the sport, albeit with different rules, even before the arrival of Europeans to North America.
Lacrosse was played by many different Indigenous communities who had their own versions of the game with varied names. The first Europeans who observed tewaarathon — a Mohawk term for the game that would later be known as lacrosse — reported that it did not resemble any sport they had seen before. Early versions of the sport are very different from how modern lacrosse is played. Much of the rules of modern lacrosse were invented later on by European settlers after they adopted lacrosse from Indigenous peoples.
In fact, European settlers’ initial observations — that lacrosse looked similar to war — might not be far from the truth. Indigenous peoples often used lacrosse games to settle disagreements between groups. During these games, entire valleys could be filled with hundreds of players for a single game. It was believed by the Haudenosaunee that the Creator would watch the game enthusiastically, soaking in the fun.
And since lacrosse was a gift from the Creator, playing lacrosse meant that the Haudenosaunee could show appreciation and give thanks toward the Creator for their gift. In conjunction with this tradition, the Haudenosaunee lacrosse games were also played before a medicine person who was looking for a way to treat a sick person, in hopes that the Creator would see the appreciation and in turn guide the medicine person to the right treatments for the sick.
Despite Indigenous cultures’ strong connections to the sport, why is it that people do not automatically associate the sport of lacrosse with Indigenous peoples? The answer, as with many things, is colonization. The erasure of the Indigenous histories of lacrosse is just one of the ways Indigenous cultures were stolen through colonization.
In 1860, the first iteration of modern lacrosse was created by the dentist and lacrosse enthusiast Dr. William George Beers. However, in the rulebooks that he wrote for the game, he included a rule forbidding Indigenous peoples from playing for white lacrosse clubs, “unless previously agreed upon.”
Additionally, in 1880, Indigenous players were barred from championship competitions when The National Lacrosse Association became an amateur organization. Despite the fact that they were the creators of the sport, it wasn’t until over one hundred years later that the Iroquois National Lacrosse Team was given membership in the Federation of International Lacrosse — now known as World Lacrosse — and allowed to compete in international competitions.
So the next time you come across a game of lacrosse on the back campus fields or catch a game on the television, you should remember that this sport has a rich history within Indigenous cultures — and it is up to all fans of the game to continually remind the world of this fact.
On August 20, 1619, the era of slavery began in North America
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On August 20, 1619, a Dutch ship delivered the first 20 Africans to America, who were sold into slavery to the inhabitants of the Jamestown settlement in Virginia. This event marked the beginning of the British and American transatlantic slave trade.
The system of slavery that developed in North America was based on economic reasons: rice, tobacco and other plantations needed laborers. As a labor force, they began to use dark-skinned slaves, who were forcibly taken out of Africa. Most of them were from the tribes of West Africa. Representatives of Central, North, South Africa and the island of Madagascar found themselves in the New World relatively infrequently. So, in the middle of the 19th century, the number of black slaves in the United States reached about 4 million people. Their exploitation played an important role in the development of American capitalism.
The mass importation of slaves to America began in the 17th century. James Town, founded in 1609, became the first permanent settlement of the colonists. In 1619, the colonists acquired the first batch of slaves of Angolan origin. De jure, Africans were not slaves, but only had long-term contracts without the right to terminate. And it is from these events in historiography that the beginning of slavery in America is counted. However, the contract system did not last long. The colonies began to pass laws that reduced blacks to the status of slaves: in Massachusetts, in 1641, the service life of Africans was replaced by life; in 1661, Virginia passed a law on the inheritance of slavery from mother to children. Similar laws were gradually adopted in other states.
In 1672, London introduced a state monopoly on the black slave trade. At the end of the 17th century, the English Parliament allowed private individuals to sell slaves, and at the beginning of the next century, Britain became one of the countries most actively involved in the slave trade. Gradually, trading posts began to appear along the entire western coast of Africa, trading in slaves. The British created an agency of slave traders in Africa. Tribal leaders sold their fellow tribesmen or raided neighboring tribes and traded captives. Soon the share of slaves in the population of some American colonies exceeded 40%. In the northern colonies, dark-skinned slaves were more often used as domestic servants or laborers, in the southern colonies they were forced to work on plantations, growing indigo, tobacco and rice. At the same time, United States law treated slaves as movable property and protected the rights of slave owners.
However, during the period from 1663 to 1863, over 250 uprisings and conspiracies of black people were recorded. Slave uprisings were brutally suppressed. Then they began to express their protest in other forms: damage to tools, murder of overseers and owners, suicide and escapes.
Slavery had a huge impact on all aspects of life in the United States and became the prerequisite for the Civil War in 1861-1865, one of the results of which was the abolition of the institution of slavery.