Jeremy Red Eagle of Helena introduces some of the level 1 participants to shinney and double ball, which he describes as “another way of fighting without fighting.” The smallest fields were the length of three football fields, he tells the younger people getting ready to play, and the longest could go three miles. That was the distance between the goals, often tree branches, that competitors would travel while using sticks to try to hurl or catch a ball or balls over or under the goals or, in the case of double ball, wrap around the branch. In reality, however, the fields had no boundaries. There are stories, Red Eagle says, of teams with 100 players apiece, and while they are physical games, there were rules, he adds: “Men can’t get rough with women, and women can’t get rough with kids.” The game is most similar to modern dayhockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...orlacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively .... Many different types were played in different Native American tribes.
References
{{game-stub Interior Salish Indigenous peoples of North America