Watch a lacrosse game today and you will see 10 players per team, all wearing protective gear and using sticks fitted with netting to catch and throw a rubber ball around a regulation-size floor or field. Although the basics remain the same, this modern version of lacrosse differs significantly from its forebearer, a ball game the indigenous people of eastern North America played. Over the last 200 years, lacrosse has become a far more regulated sport and gained popularity around the world.
Origins
One of the oldest known games in North America, lacrosse dates back some 500 years. Indigenous people in the southeast of Canada, around the western Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Valley all played the game, giving rise to three basic forms of lacrosse: Iroquoian, southeastern and Great Lakes. Indigenous people called lacrosse the Creator's Game, believing the Creator gave them the game to play for his entertainment. As the indigenous people played it, lacrosse was steeped in ritual and tradition and played to settle disputes, train warriors and influence healing of the sick. Teams sometimes had hundreds or even thousands of players with goals miles apart and games lasting for days.
Adoption by Settlers
Sometime in the 1600s, French Jesuit missionaries named the game lacrosse after the French term for a hooked bishop's staff, or crosier. By the mid-1800s, English speakers in Montreal began playing the game, trying to establish rules and set up clubs. In 1856, William George Beers formed the Montreal Lacrosse Club. He defined standard field dimensions, set a team size of 12, developed names for playing positions and introduced the use of a rubber ball.
Growing Popularity
In the late 1800s, lacrosse became Canada's most popular sport and by 1893 every province had several lacrosse clubs. Games in larger Canadian cities drew up to 10,000 fans. The game also started catching on around the British Commonwealth, and non-native and Iroquois teams traveled to Europe to hold exhibition matches with each other. Lacrosse was part of the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis and the 1908 Olympics in London.
Modern Developments
The 1930s brought the development of box lacrosse, or boxla, a combination of field lacrosse and hockey. The International Lacrosse Federation initiated the men's world championship tournament in 1967 and the women's world championship in 1969. In 1982, The World Cup tournament for women replaced the women's world championship. With the founding of the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse Program in 1983, a team of indigenous North American people was able to participate in the World Games for the first time.
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