Popular sports with Indigenous American roots (2024)

November is National Native American Heritage Month, which acknowledges the contributions of Native Americans throughout the history of the U.S.

Many sports have an Indigenous history that is often undermined or forgotten. In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, here are three popular sports in the U.S. that have received important contributions from Indigenous peoples.

Lacrosse

Lacrosse was invented by Indigenous tribes in North America and has since become a global sport. Originally called stickball, the Algonquian peoples in the St. Lawrence Valley were the first to play the game.

Unlike the confined playing fields and limited rosters of today’s game, original stickball games had no boundaries and could involve up to 100,000 people playing at the same time. Some Native Americans played to prepare their warriors for combat, and others just participated for religious reasons or recreation.

French missionaries in the 1630s coined the term “lacrosse” after being the first Europeans to witness Native Americans playing the game. Lacrosse rapidly grew in popularity, and by 1860, it was declared the national game of Canada.

Lacrosse remains a popular sport in Canada and the U.S., particularly among Indigenous peoples. The First Nations Lacrosse Association oversees men’s and women’s national teams, as well as sanctioned leagues that include teams representing various Indigenous tribes.

Basketball

Long before the first official game of basketball, Mesoamerican civilizations played what is known as the ball game. There were many variations of this game across different regions and time periods, but the objective was largely the same: to get a ball through a circular hoop.

This game was tied to mythology and religion, with legends recounting tales of gods and ancient kings competing in the game. In some cases, the captain of the losing team was subject to becoming a religious sacrifice.

The modern game of basketball also has roots in Indigenous history. James Naismith, a Canadian-American physical educator, invented basketball in 1891 and founded the basketball program at the University of Kansas. They frequently played against the nearby Haskell Indian Nations University, a public tribal university.

While playing against the University of Kansas, Haskell invented zone defense — a strategy that has become common at every level of the game.

Today, people on Native American reservations play a unique style of basketball called rezball, which goes at a much faster pace than the traditional game. Rezball has become a defining feature of reservation living and a way for Native Americans to maintain tribal identities.

Football

While Native Americans did not invent American football, they helped transform it into the sport it is today. At the turn of the 20th century when universities dominated American football, Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt started the Carlisle Indians football team as an attempt to "civilize" Native Americans.

The Native American players were small compared to the burly athletes from schools like Harvard and Yale, but their use of speed and trick plays allowed them to have success against the best football programs in the nation.

They introduced plays such as the overhand spiral and the forward pass, which were considered trick plays at the time but are now vital aspects of the game. The craftiness of the Carlisle Indians shaped the modern era of American football, moving it away from pure brute strength and toward a focus on strategy.

One of the Carlisle Indians’ stars, Jim Thorpe, went on to become one of the most accomplished athletes of all time. He played professional baseball, won the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Olympic Games and played professional American football from 1919-1926. Sportswriters named him the greatest American athlete of the first half of the 20th century.