The French Jesuit missionaries were the first westerners who encountered lacrosse when in the St. Lawrence Valley observing the Huron Indians during the 1630s. At first, they condemned the game because they thought that it was too violent, involved betting, and was part of the religion that they disliked. Jean de Brebeuf was the first person to write about lacrosse and therefore gave it its name. He derived the word from the French term for field hockey, le jeu de la crosse.
Even though the Jesuits did not encourage the game, other Europeans were very interested by lacrosse. Betting became common as many French colonists were picking up the game around 1740, though they could never match the impressive skills of the Native Americans. A team of Caughnawaga Native Americans introduced the game of lacrosse in Montreal in 1834. Interest in the sport gradually grew in Canada as it gathered much attention.
It's so weird that lacrosse became somewhat wide known in the 1700s, but it still isn't considered to be one of the big sports in the US. You don't hear much about professional lacrosse nowadays. So were the Native Americans technically then the ones to first create the sport? How long did it take for us to start to disregard the violence and let people play the sport? I never knew that lacrosse had so much history to it!
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