North America's Indian peoples have always viewed competitive sport as
something more than a pastime. The northeastern Indians' ball-and-stick
game that would become lacrosse served both symbolic and practical
functions-preparing young men for war, providing an arena for tribes to
strengthen alliances or settle disputes, and reinforcing religious
beliefs and cultural cohesion. Today a multimillion-dollar industry,
lacrosse is played by colleges and high schools, amateur clubs, and two
professional leagues. In Lacrosse: A History of the Game, Donald M.
Fisher traces the evolution of the sport from the pre-colonial era to
the founding in 2001 of a professional outdoor league-Major League
Lacrosse-told through the stories of the people behind each step in
lacrosse's development: Canadian dentist George Beers, the father of the
modern game; Rosabelle Sinclair, who played a large role in the 1950s
reinforcing the feminine qualities of the women's game; "Father Bill"
Schmeisser, the Johns Hopkins University coach who worked tirelessly to
popularize lacrosse in Baltimore; Syracuse coach Laurie Cox, who was to
lacrosse what Yale's Walter Camp was to football; 1960s Indian star
Gaylord Powless, who endured racist taunts both on and off the field;
Oren Lyons and Wes Patterson, who founded the inter-reservation Iroquois
Nationals in 1983; and Gary and Paul Gait, the Canadian twins who were
All-Americans at Syracuse University and have dominated the sport for
the past decade. Throughout, Fisher focuses on lacrosse as contested
ground. Competing cultural interests, he explains, have clashed since
English settlers in mid-nineteenth-century Canada first appropriated and
transformed the "primitive" Mohawk game of tewaarathon, eventually
turning it into a respectable "gentleman's" sport. Drawing on extensive
primary research, he shows how amateurs and professionals, elite
collegians and working-class athletes, field- and box-lacrosse players,
Canadians and Americans, men and women, and Indians and whites have
assigned multiple and often conflicting meanings to North America's
first-and fastest growing-team sport.
