Lacrosse has its origins in a tribal game played by Plains Indians and Woodlands Natives in what is now the United States and Canada. It derives its name from the resemblance of its chief implement used, the curved netted stick, to a bishop's crozier. In original Native versions of the game, each team was made up of anywhere between 100 and 1,000 players on a field that  stretched from 500 yards to half a mile, or even sometimes several miles long with practically no side boundaries. A solemn dance proceeded the game, after which the ball was tossed into the air and the two sides rushed to catch it on "crosses", similar to those now in use.
Rather than using modern goals wherein the ball has to pass through the goal posts, many of the Native American teams used a large rock or tree as their goal. They would hit the deerskin-formed ball against the goal to earn points. The length of these games varied, lasting from sunup to sundown or for several days. Traditionally, the games were played to settle altercations between tribes and to toughen braves in preparation for combat.
The game became known to Westerners when a french missionary, Jean de Brébeuf, saw the Huron Indians play it in 1636. By the 1800s, lacrosse evolved to become more of an organized sport and less violent as French pioneers adopted the game. In 1867, W. George Beers, a Canadian dentist, codified the game. In his rules, he shortened the duration of the game and reduced the number of players to ten per team. By the 1900s, high schools, colleges and universities had begun to adopt lacrosse as a league sport. Lacrosse became an Olympic Game for the 1904 and 1908 Summer Olympics, but was then dropped as an official sport. |
The first women's lacrosse game was played in 1890 at the St. Leonard's School in Scotland. Although an attempt was made to start women's lacrosse at Sweet Briar College in Virginia in 1914, it was not until 1926 that Miss Rosabelle Sinclair established the first women's lacrosse team in the United States at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, Maryland.
 Men's and women's lacrosse were played under virtually the same rules, with no protective equipment, until the mid-1930s. At that time, men's lacrosse began evolving dramatically, while women's lacrosse continued to remain true to the game's original rules. Men's and women's lacrosse remain derivations of the same game today, but are played under different rules. Women's rules limit stick contact, prohibit body contact and, therefore, require little protective equipment. Men's lacrosse rules allow some degree of stick and body contact, although violence is neither condoned nor allowed.
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