Buck Ellison: Daughters

The Iroquois used strips of hide and boiled wood to create the netted sticks required for the sport. French missionaries were impressed by the sport, which they named la crosse, its sticks reminding them of a bishop’s crosier.

Buck Ellison’s ‘Daughters’ reveals how a Native American ritual ended up as a rule-ridden sport played predominantly by affluent, white New Englanders. Nicknamed the ‘little brother of war’, the game of lacrosse was originally played by the Iroquois Nation to practice combat.