Indigenous North American stickball

Indigenous North American stickball

Stickball tournament on the Kullihoma Grounds
First played	Before 18th century
Characteristics
Type	Team sports, stick sport, ball sport
Presence
Country or region	North America
World Championships	Choctaw Indian Fair World Series

Indigenous North American stickball^[1] is a team sport typically played on an open field where teams of players with two sticks each attempt to control and shoot a ball at the opposing team's goal.^[2] It shares similarities to the game of lacrosse. In Choctaw Stickball, "Opposing teams use handcrafted sticks, or kabocca, and a woven leather ball, or towa. Each team tries to advance the ball down the field to the other team's goalpost using only their sticks, never touching or throwing the ball with their hands. Points are scored when a player hits the opposing team's goalpost with the ball."^[3]

Several Native American tribes such as the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, Seminole and Yuchi play the sport.^[2] Tribe elders organized games of stickball to settle disputes nonviolently.^[2]

The game of lacrosse is a tradition belonging to tribes of the Northern United States and Canada; stickball, on the other hand, continues in Oklahoma and parts of the Southeastern U.S. where the game originated.^[4] Although the first recorded writing on the topic of stickball was not until the mid-18th century,^{[citation needed]} there is evidence that the game had been developed and played hundreds of years before that.^{[citation needed]}