Shinney

Shinney is a traditional stick-and-ball game of North American Indigenous peoples, resembling modern hockey or lacrosse. Players use sticks to propel a ball, traditionally made from buffalo hair, sand, suede, and sinew, toward goals marked by tree branches, hurling or catching the ball over or under the goals, or, in the double-ball version of the game, wrapping the ball around the branch. Playing fields varied enormously in size, from about the length of three football fields up to goals set three miles apart. According to instructor Jeremy Red Eagle, games could involve as many as one hundred players on a side. Participation and conduct varied by community: among Salish people shinney was traditionally a game for women, while among other Montana tribes it was played inclusively across genders and ages, under rules such as that men could not get rough with women and women could not get rough with children. Red Eagle describes the game as another way of fighting without fighting, emphasizing controlled competition over violence.