Word: baggataway
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Strategic Scalping. In the days when they still could call their land their own, American Indians got their exercise from a game called baggataway. It involved as many players as happened to be available, a field of any convenient size, a small ball, and long sticks looped with a rawhide mesh. Running up a score came second to the thrill of rapping an opponent over the scalp with "accidental" blows from the baggataway stick. Any brave who shirked his duty could count on a beating from the switch-equipped squaws who ranged the sidelines...
Then French Canadians adopted baggataway and softened it up a little. But what the Canucks called lacrosse (because the stick looked like a bishop's crosier) was still mayhem on the lawn. Today, in its ultimate refinement, lacrasse is played by ten-men teams on fields 110 yards long. Modern players are not too proud to protect themselves with helmets, shoulder pads, arm pads and long, ribbed gloves. Almost anything goes in the effort to move downfield and toss an India rubber ball into a netted goal, 6 ft. square. The ball can be carried, thrown or batted with...
...named by French explorers, after a fancied resemblance between a baggataway stick and a bishop's crosier...
...Iroquois game of baggataway was a brutal pastime with one main object: to get the braves toughened up for the warpath. Squaws standing on the sidelines with switches whipped any laggards into mauling activity. Nowadays, with a few genteel refinements such as padded gloves and helmets, the Iroquois' old game is known as lacrosse...
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