Fields of Dreams

I became intrigued with lacrosse in childhood when I was told the story of how a group of Ojibwa and Sauk congregated by a British fort during Pontiac’s Rebellion in the 1760s and staged a lacrosse game for the soldiers stationed there. The soldiers watched this wild contest with fascination: half-naked, brown-skinned men with curved, netted sticks in pursuit of the player who happened to be in possession of a small ball.

At one point, an Ojibwa launched the ball too hard, sending it sailing over the wall of the fort in present-day Michigan. The British, hungry for the game to continue, opened the gate of the stockade for the thrower to retrieve the ball. And that’s when the Ojibwa and the Sauk sprang into action, pouring into the stronghold and quickly overtaking the men inside. I wonder what the British felt as they were overwhelmed by a trick as ingenious as that of the Trojan Horse.

Originally called tewaarathon by the Mohawks of the Iroquois Confederacy, the early form of lacrosse must have been a rowdy affair. Matches could include whole tribes with teams involving dozens or even hundreds of players, the goals at times said to be spread kilometres apart, the competitions sometimes lasting for days. The game was so popular among different tribes, including the Potawatomi, the Huron and the Cherokee, that it was often used to settle disputes – a much more civilized alternative to full-out warfare. 

No wonder the Cherokee called lacrosse the Little Brother of War. The game offered groups at odds with one another a chance to not only settle differences but also to come together to reaffirm ties. If the ancient Greeks had the Olympic Games, created for much the same purpose – not only to test physicality but also to unite divergent peoples – the Native peoples of eastern North America had tewaarathon.

Like countless Canadian kids, I loved playing hockey, but my skill set never quite matched my dreams of the NHL. Fortunately, I was introduced to box lacrosse, that explosive, superquick game where scores often end up in the double digits. As opposed to traditional field lacrosse, this contemporary version is played in a hockey arena, minus the ice, and your lacrosse stick is used as much to punish your opponents as it is to catch the Indian rubber ball flying at high speed toward your head. I was a natural from the get-go, quickly becoming my team’s high scorer in my first season of play.

Today there’s a booming professional league, and, once in a while, there’s even talk of including lacrosse as an Olympic summer event (it was an official sport back in 1904 and 1908). And although hockey has eclipsed lacrosse as Canada’s national obsession, the spirit of our original game remains vital, a brilliant example of how sport can supplant hostility and bring different cultures together. Of course, my mind should be on hockey now that the Olympic Winter Games have arrived, but I can’t help but think about my first true sporting love, especially since this will be the first time in history where Canada’s First Nations people are partners in the Games.

A car accident when I was 16 derailed my goal of professional lacrosse, but I remain a fan, watching my nephews – who have far greater skill than I ever had – pick up that torch of a dream to take this sport to the next level. They tell me that their toughest opponents are the Iroquois Six Nations teams. I think to myself, Of course they are. There’s something poetic in that.

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Joseph Boyden is a Canadian Novelist and a short story writer. He is the recipient of the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize.