LACROSSE: Michigan's First Team Sport

By Larry B. Massie

(as published in Michigan History Magazine, September/October 1997; Larry Massie is a frequent contributor to Michigan History Magazine. His most recent book is Haven, Harbor and Heritage: The Holland, Michigan, Story (1996))

Life in present-day Detroit bears little resemblance to that at the tiny French fort established by Cadillac nearly three centuries ago. Surprisingly, some things have remained unchanged. For example, on any given glorious Michigan midsummer day in the early eighteenth century most women of Detroit area households might have been busily intent on the domestic drudgery that was their lot. But for the men, young and old, the focus of their attention was sports-a ball game in particular. Centuries before baseball, basketball and football dominated the nation's athletic interests, the original American team sport-lacrosse-claimed a similar following among Michigan's native peoples.

Monsieur de Sabrevois, commandant of Fort Pontchartrain, penned a description of the region in 1718. Referring to the Potawatomi village located near the fort, he wrote:

In summer they play a great deal at la crosse, twenty or more on each side. Their bat [crosse] is a sort of small racket, and the ball with which they Play is of very Heavy wood, a little larger than the balls we use in Tennis. When they Play, they are entirely naked; they have only a breech-clout, and Shoes of deer-skin. Their bodies are painted all over with all Kinds of colors. There are some who paint their bodies with white clay, applying it to resemble silver lace sewed on all the seams of a coat; and, at a distance, one would take for silver lace.

They Play for large Sums, and often The prize amounts to more than 800 Livres. They set up two goals and begin their game midway between; one party drives The ball one way, and the other in the opposite direction, and those who can drive it to the goal are the winners. All this is very diverting and interesting to behold. Often one Village Plays against another, the poux [Potawatomi] against the outaouacs [Ottawa] or the hurons, for very considerable prizes. The French frequently take part in these games.

The game described by Sabrevois, called baggattaway by the Chippewa, was named lacrosse by early French observers. It is commonly assumed that the name stems from the French term crosse for the shepherd's crooklike crosier carried by bishops as a symbol of office. Pieffe Francois Xavier de Charlevoix noted the resemblance between the crosier and the shape of the racket stick in 1719. However, the term crosse, which also translates as bat, was applied to the Indian playing stick by the Jesuit fathers nearly a century before.

Aboriginal tribes across the North American continent avidly played lacrosse as a form of recreation and as training for the art of war. Rules of the game differed from tribe to tribe. In some tribal contests each player carried a single three-foot-long stick; in others participants wielded a stick in each hand. Tribal customs determined the exact size and shape of the racket. The balls varied from wooden cores wrapped with rawhide to leather bags stuffed with deer hair. The Miami tribesmen, in particular, drilled holes in theirs to produce a whistling sound when thrown. Distances between goals ranged from a few hundred yards to several miles. Teams might number a dozen or so or entire villages of several hundred braves. Matches varied from a half hour in length to several days as combatants attempted to hurl the ball against the goal, a pole or a natural object such as a rock or between two uprights. Lacrosse was solely a man's game, but less violent-versions known as shinny and double-ball were played by women. Tribal shamans usually served as game officials. Rules were few, the play itself rough and injuries frequent.

Numerous French explorers, priests and fur traders who first described the land that became Michigan recorded eyewitness accounts of the game as played by the Potawatomi, Ottawa, Chippewa, Menominee, Miami, Masouten, Sauk, Fox and Huron athletes who dwelt in the peninsulas during the first century of European contact. Probably the first such description was penned by Father Jean de Brebeuf in the Jesuit Relation of 1636. At his mission to the Hurons, approximately two hundred miles northeast of Detroit, near the south shore of Georgian Bay, he found the reputed therapeutic effects of the game little to his liking:

There is a poor sick man, fevered of body and almost dying, and a miserable sorcerer will order for him, as a cooling remedy, a game of crosse. Or the sick man himself, sometimes, will have dreamed that he must die unless the whole country shall play crosse for his health; and no matter how little may be his credit, you will see them in a beautiful field, village contending against village as to who will play crosse the better and betting against one another beaver robes and porcelain collars, so as to excite greater interest. Sometimes, also, one of these jugglers will say that the whole country is sick, and he asks a game of crosse to heal it; no more needs to be said, it is published immediately everywhere; and all the captains of each village give orders that all the young men do their duty in this respect, otherwise some great misfortune would befall the whole country.

While such epic matches may have preserved the health of the country according to Huron belief the sport was often unhealthy for individual participants. Nicholas Peffot, whose memoirs preserved his many experiences as an explorer, fur trader and government official among the northern lake tribes from 1665-1701, described the rough play among the Huron:

At the appointed time they gather in a crowd in the center of the field, and one of the two captains, having the ball in his hand, tosses it up in the air, each player trying to send it in the proper direction. If the ball falls to the ground, they try to pull it toward themselves with their bats, and should it fall outside the crowd of players the most active of them win distinction by following closely after it. They make a great noise striking one against another when they try to parry strokes in order to drive the ball in the proper direction. If a player keeps the ball between his feet and is unwilling to let it go, he must guard against the blows his adversaries continually aim at his feet; if he happens to be wounded, it is his own fault. Legs and arms are sometimes broken, and it has happened that a player has been killed. It is quite common to see someone crippled for the rest of his life who would not have had this misfortune but for his own obstinancy. When these accidents happen the unlucky victim quickly withdraws from the game, if he is in a condition to do so, but if his injury will not permit this, his relatives carry him home, and the game goes on till it is finished, as if nothing had occurred.

Baron Louis Lahontan echoed Perrot's observations on the dangerous aspect of lacrosse in his New Voyages to North America (London, 1703): "This game is so violent that they tear their skins and break their legs very often in striving to raise the ball." Michigan Indian agent and ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft quoted a witness who had seen a player nearly killed during a match, "He stood in front of the player that was going to throw the ball, who threw with great force and aimed too low. The ball struck the other in the side, and knocked him senseless for some time."

When such accidents occurred, little ill will was nurtured. Indian interpreter John Long's 1791 description of the Chippewa version of lacrosse noted "The Indians play with great good humor, and even when one of them happens, in the heat of the game, to strike another with his stick, it is not resented." In at least one famous episode the dangers of lacrosse were not restricted to participants. Alexander Henry's oft-quoted eyewitness account of the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac in June 1763, in which the spectators of that lacrosse game fared most unfortunate, springs to mind.

Far more typical of the lacrosse games enjoyed by the northern tribes is the account of the Sault Ste. Marie area Chippewa event penned in 1804 by Peter Grant, a fur trader who began his career with the North West Company in 1784:

Everything being prepared, a level plain about half a mile long is chosen, with proper barriers or goals at each end. Having previouslyforined into two equal parties, they assemble in the very middle of the field, and the game begins by throwing up the ball perpendicularly in the air, when, instantly, both parties form a singular group of naked men, painted in different colors and in the most comical attitudes imaginable, gaping with their hurdles [rackets] elevated in the air to catch the ball. Such a scene would make a scene worthy of a Hogarth or a Poussin.

Whoever is so fortunate as to catch the ball in his hurdle, runs with it towards the barrier with all his might, supported by his party, while his opponents pursue him and endeavor to strike it out.

He who succeeds in doing so, runs in the same manner towards the opposite barrier and is of course, pursued in his turn. If in danger of being overtaken, he may throw it with his hurdle towards any of his associates who may happen to be nearer the barrier than himself. They have a particular knack of throwing it to a great distance in this manner, so that the best runners have not always the advantage, and, by a peculiar way of working their hands and arms while running, the ball never drops out of their hurdle.

If the ball dropped to the ground, various tribes observed different rules. Among the Hurons, a wild melee resulted as everyone attempted to whack the ball or each other's limbs. But among the Miami, as recorded by Charlevoix during a visit to a village on the St. Joseph River, near the present-day site of Niles in 1721, different procedures prevailed. If a player touched the ball with his hand or dropped it to the ground "the game is lost, unless he who has committed the mistake repairs it by driving the ball with one stroke to the bound, which is often impossible."

Indian players who accomplished great feats of play gained a celebrity status not unlike modem day sports heros. Johann G. Kohl, a German tourist traversing Lake Superior in 1854, observed: "Great ball players, who can send the ball so high it is out of sight, attain the same renown among the Indians as celebrated runners, hunters or warriors." While at the Apostle Islands, Kohl asked the local Chippewa to stage a game. "Though the chiefs were ready enough, and all were cutting their racquets and balls in the bushes, the chief American authorities forbade this innocent amusement." Bureaucratic spoilsports aside, by the mid-nineteenth century white men had begun playing lacrosse.

Ironically, W. George Beers, a Montreal physician, is considered the father of lacrosse because of his pioneering efforts to popularize the game among Canadians during the late 1850s. As lacrosse became Canada's official national sport and clubs were organized in America, chiefly in eastern cities and colleges, the rules of the game as played by whites became more refined, the size of the field and number of players reduced and a square goal replaced the original poles. Native Americans continued to enjoy their version of the game, often perfom-iing at state and county fairs and their own social gatherings.

In 1902 ethnologist William Jones observed a game of lacrosse played between two clans of the Fox tribe at Tama, Iowa. The match began with a declaration by an elder to the players: "We obtained this ball game from the manitou. It was given to us long ago in the past. Our ancestors played it as the manitou taught them in the same way we have always played it, and in the same way we have always played it, and in the same way as all our people continue to play it." The old man then offered some words of wisdom relevant to all who continue to enjoy the allure of athletic endeavor: "Play hard, but play fair. Don't lose your heads and get angry."