THEME

Amanda Smith: Today, a sport invented by American Indians, taken up by US colleges and English girls' schools, and once a rival to Aussie Rules football.

The sport is lacrosse, a game with an extraordinary history and heritage that we'll be tracing today.

Speaker: The game is called Tewaarathon by the Iroquois. The French called it lacrosse. For us, it was first a spiritual game, given to us by a game between the animals and the birds. The ball is the medicine, it's always been the medicine, and it is what determines which side wins or loses. It's a game that's a legacy from our people to yours.

Amanda Smith: Hi, I'm Amanda Smith, thanks for your company on The Sports Factor.

The Australian Lacrosse Championships get under way this weekend. Not a sport that many of us tend to know that much about, unless you happen to play it, but the Australian team is the number two country in the world at this sport, behind the US. Now, maybe the best way to describe lacrosse is as a kind of 'aerial hockey'. The players run around with a curved stick, with webbing attached to it, which is used to catch and throw the ball.

Doug Fox: The modern game is a field-based team game in its mainstream form. A rectangular defined field, in the men's game ten players on the field, in the women's game, twelve; a fast running game in which the ball is transferred quickly between team-mates by passing the thing from the stick to a player on your team, catching the ball, moving the ball quickly. Scores are made by getting the ball past the opponent and into the goal which is a net, in old terms, six feet by six feet, now 1.8 by 1.8 metres, which is positioned on the field. And this is a bit of a curiosity because play can go on behind the goal.

Man: Ooh, that was brutal!

Ed Burman: That's called the 'buddy pass', because the guy who passed that ball to him, passed it to him without looking at who was coming up in front of him. So basically he was trusting his man to have given him a pass and he could turn into the open, but when he turned, the fellow was waiting for him and knocked him square down. So that's called the buddy pass.

Amanda Smith: Some buddy! That's the modern game of lacrosse. But how old is it? Thomas Vennum is the author of a book that comprehensively documents the native American history of the game.

Tom Vennum: The earliest written mention of it is in the Jesuit Relations written by French missionaries in the area occupied by the Huron Indians at that point, sort of south-eastern Ontario. 1637 I think is the earliest actual use of that word to describe a game, although it's fairly clear that the game was quite ancient, even by that point, and we have no written records earlier than that to document it. So I would assume maybe a couple of centuries before the 17th century at least, if not longer.

IROQUOIS MUSIC

Tom Vennum: Now there were a number of Indian stick ball games, that went by different names, and played by different tribes. But I think the real telling criteria for whether something is lacrosse or not: number one, the stick that is used to propel the ball has to have some sort of a net or a webbing on it to convey the ball, or to pick it up; and that there is usually the cardinal rule that the ball may not be touched by human hands. That then cuts your list down and gets rid of a lot of similar games such as field hockey and so on, where sticks and balls are used.

But there are three principle varieties that I was able to discern: one which is probably known to most non-Indian people who play lacrosse, or have an interest in it, is sort of the Iroquoian variety of lacrosse which was being played certainly up and down the St Lawrence Valley at the time Europeans were settling there. And it's kept alive principally by Iroquoian tribes today.

Amanda Smith: The Iroquois are a confederacy of six native American tribes whose land is now in New York State, although around 50 tribes scattered throughout the United States and Canada played some form of what became lacrosse. So how did it get this name 'lacrosse'?

Doug Fox: French settlers in Canada watched the game and likened it to other ball games with a stick - le jeu de la crosse - and the cross, or the stick, appeared similar to the crosier carried by a bishop, and they made that connection and the games carried the name. So named by the French, not until recent years played by the French. But they're starting to play now.

Doug Fox: That's Doug Fox, president of the Australian Lacrosse Council and a former captain of the Australian Men's team. And we'll hear more from Doug later in the program.

So, this stick with the netting at the end looked like the bishop's crosier, the symbolic shepherd's crook. How difficult is it to play with? Here's Ed Burman, an Iroquois lacrosse player.

Ed Burman: If you start to play with one of these sticks, you realise how hard it is to catch and throw with it, just to catch and throw, let alone to run down the field, pass it, pinpointedly 30 yards into another player's stick that's only six inches across at the top. He's running as well; he catches it, then he shoots it to another player who hits the top corner of the goal at 65 miles an hour, right. So all this is happening with a guy on your arm slashing at you, trying to take the ball away from you. So you know, that's pretty impressive, a pretty impressive way to go.

LACROSSE ATMOS

Ed Burman: It's a game that someone who's really fast and quick, and very skilled with their stick, can more than over-compensate for someone who weighs 220 lbs and has a lot of muscle. So it is a game that you have certain advantage to by being fast, being quick, being skilled. You can continue to improve your understanding, your knowledge of the game, and you can continue to be reimbursed by the spiritual value of the game. So it has a lot to it.

Amanda Smith: And how different is modern lacrosse from the native American, Iroquois game?

Ed Burman: It would look a lot different because essentially most of the Indian players, the young players, want to play a different styled game, that is usually only using the right or left hand, whichever's favourable. The current condition of the collegian game is that you have to be ambidextrous. But the Iroquois players grew up either using their left strong or the right strong, and learning to play around that, similar to the way the Canadians play the game; or the Canadians play the game similar to the Iroquois. There's lot of under-handed technique as opposed to the overhand stuff that you'll see here. There's a lot of behind the back, or what most people call 'hot-dogging'. There's a lot more of that, there's a lot less emphasis on defence and a lot more emphasis on offence.

As the game has evolved and become more westernised, the game has been concentrated more on strategies that are relevant or prevalent in other western games, such as defence, hitting, this sort of thing. Not to say that, you know, there are reported deaths during games and there's tribes against tribes and there certainly was probably some violence, but as in any other indigenous sort of confrontational activity, violence was not the emphasis.

IROQUOIS MUSIC

Tom Vennum: Well it's fairly clear that Indian people considered it more than just a game. There is so much ritual surrounding the game, ceremonial aspects to it, even today there are tribes in the United States that play lacrosse not as a game so much as a means of honouring the great spirit.

Lacrosse is sometimes played to honour a famous lacrosse player, now dead. Or particularly it had curing functions. If someone were sick, a game would be played on his behalf, and the belief was that by playing the game the players were giving back to the great spirit who gave them the game in the first place; they were doing this to please him, that some sort of efficacy would lie in the actual performance of the game itself.

Amanda Smith: But has the ritual and healing element disappeared from modern lacrosse?

Ed Burman: I don't think it's disappeared. I think it's probably disappeared on an obvious level for the kids right here. I think if they go home and the mothers see how much they're bruised, and their fathers, and whacked up and cut, then they probably don't think that it's doing much for their physical nature, but it's doing a lot for their spirits. It's doing a lot for their spiritual nature and I think that that's where it still does a lot for our people. I mean we're able to compete on an international level with powerful countries and stand out in the field and throw our whacks. Of course we don't usually win the games against the larger players, but we're out there playing, and that's what's important. So that part of our culture is still surviving and it's still being carried out by the seventh generation, which is, you know, the seventh generation from our ancestors, and we'll have a seventh generation that will continue to play the game from our point of view. That's what's important, that's the healing part of the game. There are still medicine games played as part of the condolence ceremony, which is a mourning period, I guess you would call it a time when you're recognising someone's death.

Amanda Smith: And what is this spiritual and healing meaning in lacrosse?

Tom Vennum: Well there's still a residue of strong belief in the medicinal properties, or the medical properties, potency, of the game, in that games are still played for people who are ailing. Along those lines, I was interested in reading the history of the Iroquoian tribes. And Handsome Lake, who was the great Seneca prophet, was dying in 1814 I believe, at Onondaga in upstate New York. And it was said that the people around him put together a lacrosse game and brought him out on his bed so he could see it. The common perception there was that it was something to cheer him up. And I interpreted it that it was a desperate attempt to save his life.

Amanda Smith: But there wasn't only a healing aspect to this game. The Iroquois name for lacrosse translates as 'little brother of war'. Here's Tom Vennum again, on the battle significance of this American Indian lacrosse.

Tom Vennum: Well the more I began to research this, the more it was evident to me that particularly with many of the south-eastern tribes, that the preparations for getting into a game involved many of the same rituals, with incantations and taboos and all sorts of prescriptions given to the players, that were almost identical to the preparations for the warpath, particularly among the Cherokee. There are some superb manuscripts dating from the 18th century that describe war parties going out and in terms of the types of things that they carried, amulets and so forth, these all found their way into the ball game as well. And in some of those tribes, the colloquial terms for lacrosse, or the ball games, stick ball games, means 'little brother of war', or 'little war', and in some slang expressions, it was said that certain teams were going to have a little warfare. So it's tied into the language as well.

Amanda Smith: So does that mean it's a surrogate for war, or it is an actual enactment of a battle?

Tom Vennum: Well I see it as a surrogate for warfare. I mean there certainly is evidence enough to suggest that Indian people, particularly when tribe was against tribe in territorial disputes, very often settled these by playing a game rather than actually going to battle. So that it mattered not whether it was a large parcel of territory or whether it might be just some pond where the beaver were particularly populous, but they would be fighting over territories, and would send their delegates to arrange for a lacrosse game to play instead of actually becoming combative.

Amanda Smith: I guess there's a number of sports that have been seen as a metaphor for war, but in the case of this game, winning or losing wasn't the key thing.

Tom Vennum: It didn't really matter what the score was, and even today the Iroquois reservations where you find perhaps the Longhouse playing against the Mudhouse, it doesn't matter how many people are on each side, or what the score is. The efficacy is in the actual playing of it, going out there and doing it.

Amanda Smith: Well, does anything of this philosophy remain in the modern adaptation of lacrosse? And what else has changed from the indigenous game? Iroquois player Ed Burman again.

Ed Burman: Obviously the technology of the game has changed quite a bit: from wooden sticks and no equipment, to plastic heads and wooden or aluminium shafts, helmets, face-guards, shoulder-pads, elbow-pads, gloves and the goalie wearing a chest protector. All these are state-of-the-art technology from year to year that the two major lacrosse manufacturers keep bringing in to the game. So that's the large difference.

The other difference I think is the emphasis on it being a win or lose game, as opposed to it being just played for either the medicine of the game, or the two tribes coming together to settle whatever differences they had by playing it. So it's more of a competition in this way in many regards.

Amanda Smith: And does Ed Burman regret these changes to the game invented by his ancestors?

Ed Burman: I grew up playing this game, I didn't grow up playing the same game as my grandfather played, and he didn't grow up playing the same game that his grandfather played. And I think that you can't fix any sort of game or society in one place in history, I think it evolves. I mean I just see this game as evolved. You know, how much credit we give for the game all in all, that's the controversial part. I mean half these kids playing don't know where this game originated. So that's problematic, I mean there hopefully will be a better education on where the game came from, so that they would understand some of the more philosophical and deeper meanings of the game besides it being 'you score more goals, you win'.

Amanda Smith: But how did this game transfer from American Indians to European settlers?

Tom Vennum: We find that lacrosse was picked up by gentlemen professionals who formed the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association. And it was simply added to the list of other activities which were quite distinctly native in origin, such as tobogganing. But the whole amateur athletic push at that point really was appealing, and the fact that they would find things like sledding and tobogganing, and snow-shoeing, which were listed as sports, and these were being picked up by the upper classes in Montreal as a sort of elite amateur things. They had a strong feeling that they were civilising these things. Now they really not only civilised lacrosse, they deliberately wrote rules into it to prevent Indians from partaking in it, as far as international competition goes, all the way up until recently, within the last decade.

Amanda Smith: As Tom Vennum says, lacrosse was really appropriated by white North Americans, you could say as part of a more general disenfranchisement of the original inhabitants of the continent.

Ed Burman: The downfall of Iroquois lacrosse around the 1800s is when we were becoming less a part of the players. I think that it's kind of ironic that the game has probably survived through elite institutions. The English kept it alive through very elite women's organisations playing women's lacrosse; the teams that were around when my grandfather played were Johns Hopkins, Syracuse University, Harvard, Princeton, all elite academic institutions in this country that kept the game alive.

Amanda Smith: Lacrosse headquarters in the United States is Baltimore, Maryland, which is where the Hall of Fame Museum is located. This museum commemorates mainly the white game, since it was formalised in the 1860s.

For The Sports Factor, Nick Rushworth visited the museum. So let's go on a wander with him around there. Our tour guide is Steve Stenersen, the executive director of the U.S. Lacrosse Foundation.

Steve Stenersen: Here is a uniform from the 1932 Olympic games. Fritz Studi [sic], a member of the US team at that time wore this. He crossed the country back in 1932 to go to Los Angeles and plan an exhibition series which the US won, and here's a collection of not only his uniform and gloves and things, but also his certificates and tickets to the games, and Olympic certificate of identification.

Nick Rushworth: And there's some protective wear as well, is that right?

Steve Stenersen: Yes, Fritz was a goalie, and you can't see it on radio, but you can see that the protection they wore back then is nowhere near what they wear in modern day. So Fritz had a pretty tight ribcage to be able to withstand some of the balls that hit him.

Nick Rushworth: Over here, I think you wanted to point out Dr William George Beers?

Steve Stenersen: As you said, Dr Beers is pictured here. He was a Canadian dentist. In 1869 he wrote the first rules for the game that were ever written. The game was, prior to then, adapted from the Native American play and no real set rules, they kind of did what they wanted to, but Dr Beers took a liking to the game and wrote the first rules, and he's a pretty famous guy in the history of the game.

You can see here some of the sticks are very, very different from what today's athletes play with. Although virtually all men today play with synthetic plastic, double-walled sticks, about half of the women still play with the wooden stick, but it's nothing like these sticks here. As you can see the pocket is long, probably two to two-and-a-half feet long.

Nick Rushworth: Why so long, because you'd think it would give less ball control, is that right?

Steve Stenersen: Well that is right, but these were modified again after the Native American sticks. There was much less ball control than there was ball swatting, and it was a game that was much more akin to tennis in those days than it really was of lacrosse today, where the ball was really swatted and pushed forward --

Nick Rushworth: So, less running?

Steve Stenersen: Well, there was a lot of running. You just followed the ball rather than carried it, as you kicked it and swatted it up the field. But you can see, it was very difficult to control the ball with pockets that long and that narrow.

Amanda Smith: And to digress for a moment from lacrosse in North America, another interesting thing about this game is how early it was played in Australia: 1874 is the first recorded game, only a few years after the Canadian dentist, Dr Beers, codified the rules. And it was immediately very popular in Australia. Doug Fox from the Australian Lacrosse Council explains why.

Doug Fox: Well I think it's the beauty of the game itself. It's obviously a fast running, skilful game, a contact game. It compared very favourably obviously with whatever else was around, and if you read some of the early history and go into the newspapers, there are not too many other sports that are playing. So by the scribes of the day, it was suggested that this game really looks like it will rival Australian football and certainly be one of the key amateur games. And I guess it was at the turn of the century.

Amanda Smith: Well it certainly was, as you say, regarded as an alternative and even a threat to Australian Rules football. That seems extraordinary, looking back now. What was the appeal at the time?

Doug Fox: I think the fact that it had this international connection. An extraordinary thing happened in 1907, probably one of the world's most amazing sporting tours that ever took place. A group of young Canadians who set sail - obviously this had been well-planned in advance and at the invitation of Australians - brought a team here, travelled by ship, it was probably three or four months total. They spent five-and-a-half weeks in this country, 14 men, 12 on the field, two reserves, played 16 games. It's sort of a game every two days, travelling by train and playing in every capital city: Ballarat, Bendigo, the Western Australian goldfields. I don't know what the League footballers would be thinking about a schedule like that today. And they won 15 or their 16 games.

Amanda Smith: And what sort of crowds did they attract?

Doug Fox: Well in 1907 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, reportedly 18,000 to 20,000 people attended that game. And consistently around the capital cities they were drawing significant crowds of people, which at that time was something of well, extraordinary dimensions I think.

Amanda Smith: Well, that early popularity in Australia waned somewhat. But even in countries where it remains a mainstream sport (it's Canada's national summer game) lacrosse hasn't taken up professionalism like other sports that came along after it.

Back at the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, Steve Stenersen.

Steve Stenersen: Professional sports basically all started because somebody with money had interests in making money off of them and promoting them as pastimes. Lacrosse has never benefited from having a very rich individual or persons get behind the game, and I think that's probably it. If we had somebody who poured millions and millions into professional teams, and marketing, I think lacrosse would be very popular. Because one of the things we say, and one of the reasons lacrosse has grown so dramatically in the States and abroad, is once you see it, you love it, because it's got so many aspects of different sports. There is some contact, although it's not as strong as American football. It's very fast, it's very high scoring, it's a lot of finesse, it's a team game, but individuals can shine, and it's got something that no other sport has: the heritage, the Native American heritage centuries old.

So, the other side of the coin is do we want it to be professional? Do we want it to be as big as basketball? And maybe we don't. We want it to grow dramatically, but certainly professional sports bring different challenges with them. And I think, certainly in the States, I'm not sure about Australia or elsewhere, but certainly in the States, the average sports fan has in the last five to ten years, has really I think looked at professional sports with a little bit of disdain, with the millions and millions that these athletes are making. So I think the way lacrosse is growing, we'd like to be more popular, and that's our goal, but popular as professional football and with the money involved and the professionalism? I don't know if we really want that. Not sure.

Nick Rushworth: Let's go back to our historical tour here. Where did we end up?

Steve Stenersen: I think we were over here looking at one of the first helmets, which really looks not like a helmet at all, it looks more like a cricket cap maybe, would that be correct?

Nick Rushworth: Kind of like a cricket cap, with a sort of an elongated back, almost like a French Foreign Legion style cap, but with padding. Now this was to protect the ears and the back of the head, is that right? Were injuries commonplace?

Steve Stenersen: Injuries were commonplace in that game, and that was in a day when nobody really cared if they got injured. Today, especially in the United States, it's a real litigious society, so that law suits would be the norm, and they are, that's why protective equipment in the States and elsewhere is so significant, to protect people. But in this particular case, this is a helmet from the '20s, and this was a helmet that was optional. Most players, as you can see from some of these photographs, wore no helmets.

Nick Rushworth: If you actually watch a game, it's not uncommon for a defensive player to actually hit the attacking player in an attempt to dislodge the ball, and they actually sort of swat at the body right and left.

Steve Stenersen: Well that's true. I mean you cannot use your stick to strike the opponent in the head or shoulders or anywhere, but yes, there is incidental contact that may occur if they're trying to dislodge the ball.

Nick Rushworth: All these guys in this old photo here from the US Naval Academy Lacrosse Team in 1919, if they were to open their mouths, a few missing teeth?

Steve Stenersen: Well I think most certainly, that was before the days of the mouth guards, and as you can see there was no absolutely no facial protection whatsoever. So I think probably those were badges of courage in those days, missing a tooth, or having a nice scar across the nose.

Amanda Smith: So what does this game of lacrosse mean to contemporary American Indians, whose game was until recently overtaken by non-indigenous players?

Ed Burman: Lacrosse is an entire community at home, I mean everyone's involved. I mean the women are involved at a certain aspect, the children are involved, I mean everyone goes to the game, everyone participates at a certain level. Great lacrosse players in a family means a lot of prestige for your family. It brings to you a lot more than financial reward, it brings to you respect from the community, it brings to you admiration from other large families. So the game is larger than 'we won by this many goals' sort of orientation, it has a lot of influence on how our communities develop.

Amanda Smith: Funnily enough, Australia was in fact the site for the re-establishment of lacrosse as a source of pride and cultural identity for Native Americans. In 1990, Perth, WA, hosted the World Championships, where one of the countries represented was the Iroquois, an American Indian team playing as a nation distinct from the USA. How important was that seen to be at the time?

Doug Fox: I think very important. It was a decision made by the International Lacrosse Federation to allow the American Indian tribal groups, if you like, to play at an international level in the game that they gave to the world, and that had great significance. It put over the World Championships, it cast a new mantle. It said 'This game, beyond having international appeal for the countries playing it, has an historical significance about ball games and their place in recreation, substitutes for warfare, international relations in a way that is exactly the same way that the Indians used the game'.

Amanda Smith: Well it seems that that World Cup in 1990 in Perth was in some ways a defining moment for indigenous Americans, in perhaps a similar way to when Cathy Freeman displayed both the Aboriginal and Australian flags at the Commonwealth Games in Canada in 1994? That was an indigenous Australian athlete making a statement about pride and identity on North American soil. And what we're talking about is indigenous American athletes doing a similar thing in Australia?

Doug Fox: I think that's a really good analogy. I guess the world wasn't aware of it in the same way. Certainly the American Indians were. I think that many of the Native American people have had great elevation in a modern world through lacrosse. They get Ivy League sports scholarships in America because lacrosse is part of their upbringing, and they're good at it. I think it was a very significant thing.

Amanda Smith: And an Iroquois team will once again be one of the 11 national teams competing at the World Lacrosse Championships, which are held every four years. They're on in July this year, in Baltimore, USA.

And so the final word on lacrosse goes to Ed Burman, as to the significance of this Iroquois national team to his people.

Ed Burman: Yes it has a galvanising effect because it becomes a way for the Iroquois national team competing in the World Games, travelling abroad to assert the sovereignty of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, the Iroquois people, which is a non-confrontational political statement asserting one nation's sovereignty. And it's been recognised by other nations, the passport has been stamped and recognised by other nations, so the game sort of epitomises the sovereignty of the Iroquois and the different nations that make up the Iroquois. And so at that point the game galvanises but also becomes larger than life, it becomes political, in a sense. It becomes a statement, as I say, without any kind of confrontation, no tanks on the borders, no police, no gunfire, it's just a bunch of young men playing a game that our great-great-great-great grandparents have played from time immemorial to now.

IROQUOIS MUSIC

Amanda Smith: And that's the lacrosse story. And Tom Vennum's book is called 'American Indian Lacrosse - Little Brother of War'.

I'm Amanda Smith and I hope you'll join me for The Sports Factor again next Friday.

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The Sports Factor can be heard on Radio National, 8.30am Fridays (Repeated Friday evenings at 8.30pm).