Dedicated to sharing, teaching, respecting the rich "Native American History and Tradition of Lacrosse"

The history of lacrosse is unique in that it carries deep Native American roots. Originating with the Aboriginal tribes of Canada (Huron and Iroquois), the sport was often part of religious ritual, played to resolve conflicts, heal the sick, develop strong men and prepare for war. Legend tells of games with more than 100 players from different tribes taking turns to play. As early as the 12th century, teams consisted of 100 to 1000 men on a field that stretched from 500 yards to a couple miles long. Games lasted all day for 2-3 days straight. The games were said to be played “for the Creator”. Current players give homage to the game’s Native American roots in many ways. I wish I could go back in time and witness the intense game the Native Americans started. It would be almost like a baseball connoisseur traveling back to the 1920s and watching Babe Ruth call his shot. The only difference is the 800 years that separate the eras.

Aztlan is the mythical place of origin of the Aztec peoples. In their language (Nahuatl), the roots of Aztlan are the two words: aztatl tlan(tli) meaning "heron" and "place of," respectively. 'Tlantli' proper means tooth, and as a characteristic of a good tooth is that it is firmly rooted in place, and does not move, the prefix of this word is commonly used in Nahuatl to denote settlements, or place names, e.g. Mazatlan (place of deer), Papalotlan (place of butterflies) or Tepoztlan (place of metal). The Nahuatl language is often said to include three levels of meaning for its words or expressions: literal, syncretic and connotative. The connotative meaning of Aztlan, due to the plumage of herons, is "Place of Whiteness." The mythical descriptions of Aztlan would have it to be an island. In the origin myths of the Aztecs, they emerged originally from the bowels of the earth through seven caves (Chicomostoc) and settled in Aztlan, from which they subsequently undertook a migration southward in search of a sign that would indicate that they should settle once more. The exact physical location of Aztlan is unknown, other than it must have been located near estuaries or on the coast of northwestern Mexico, though some archaeologists have gone so far as to locate the present town of San Felipe Aztlan, Nayarit, as the exact place.

In Chicano folklore, Aztlan is often appropriated as the name for that portion of Mexico that was taken over by the United States after the Mexican-American War of 1846, on the belief that this greater area represents the point of parting of the Aztec migrations. In broad interpretation, there is some truth to this in the sense that all of the groups that would subsequently become the various Nahuatl-speaking peoples of central Mexico passed through this region in a prehistoric epoch, as attested by the existence of linguistically related groups of people distributed throughout the US Pacific Intermountain region, the US southwest and northern Mexico, known as the Uto-Aztecan-Tanoan group, and including such peoples as the Paiute, Shoshoni, Hopi, Pima, Yaqui, Tepehuan, Rarámuri (Tarahumara), Kiowas and Mayas.