![]() ![]() "It takes tremendous endurance and skill."Īccording to Rick Hill, Sr., a lacrosse stalwart and a professor of Native American studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, little is known about the two Smithsonian sticks. "Lacrosse is my favorite game," says Brown. A remarkable witness to the demands and fascinations of the game is football's legendary running back Jim Brown. It is still a game of hard knocks and bruises, played with fast-paced, passionate zeal by men and women. These days, of course, it is not lacrosse but professional football-with hockey as a close second-that people might reasonably describe as the "Little Brother of War." As played today, men's lacrosse involves ten players per team and lasts 60 minutes in a space roughly the size of a football field. (When the Czechs first took up the game in the late 1970s, they reportedly used as a guide George Catlin's famous 1834 painting of Choctaws playing the game.) Yet lacrosse remains a uniquely Indian sport, requiring fierce competitiveness, speed and endurance, remarkable dexterity and tolerance of pain. Year by year lacrosse grows more popular in North America (there are some 2,000 high school and more than 500 college teams in the United States alone) as well as in other parts of the globe from Japan to Germany and the Czech Republic. But they are symbols of triumph for a Native American culture that has otherwise been largely ignored, if not eradicated, by the modern white world. More than three feet long and weighing a couple of pounds, they would seem unwieldy to modern lacrosse players, who pass the ball around and whack at each other with 12-ounce sticks of plastic, titanium and nylon. They were made only a century or so ago by Tuscarora Iroquois craftsmen using hickory and rawhide, the wood for their curved heads steamed for hours, then bent around a crook-shaped block. ![]() This pair is part of the American Indian exhibit in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building. "Sticks" such as those at left were the principal weapons used in a semi-sacred ball sport variously known as "They Bump Hips" or the "Little Brother of War" that American Indians believe was given to them by the Creator sometime in ages past. ![]()
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