[Lexicog] Re: Naming the Beautiful Game: Football or Soccer?

[Jimrem at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 6/18/2006 7:08:06 A.M. Central Daylight Time,  
lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com writes:

For  the rest of us, it is football - the beautiful  game.




Interesting to read about football/soccer.  In looking for the history  of 
these on the Net they seem to be fairly recent, at least in modern  form.  Could 
the idea for either of these have been learned from Native  Americans on the 
East Coast  in the 1600's?  Here is a portion of an  article I wrote about 
that game.  The full text is found at 
_http://www.delawaretribeofindians.nsn.us/football.html_ (http://www.delawaretribeofindians.nsn.us/football.html) .
  
Pahsahëman - The Lenape Indian Football Game 
Introduction 
The Lenape Indians have long played a version of football which differs  
markedly from the football game known to non-Indians. In the Lenape football  
game, men are pitted against the women in a very rough-and-tumble game.  
We are giving the rules of the game which were written out by the late Nora  
Thompson Dean (Touching Leaves Woman).   
History of the Game 
Various forms of football were played along the northeast coast of America.  
Flannery (1939:187) regards football as one of "forty-three traits [which] may 
 be due to independent invention in the coastal Algonquian region, since they 
are  not characteristic of the Iroquoian, Southeastern, or Northern 
Algonquian  areas." Football games were also recorded for the Micmac, Abnaki, Malecite, 
 Massachusetts, and Narragansett (Flannery ibid.). Swanton (1928:707) also 
says  it is "apparently a coastal Algonquian game, not found in the Southeast 
except  among the Creeks."  
Some forms of football were played men-against-men as among the Massachuset  
in 1634, reported by William Wood (Culin 1901:698). In a number of cases the  
text does not indicate whether the teams were composed of men only, or  
men-versus-women. A good example is the following brief account by Roger  Williams 
who wrote about "pasuckquakohowauog," which he translates as "they meet  to 
foot-ball." He says:  
"They have great meetings of foot-balle playing, only in summer, town against 
 town, upon some broad sandy shore, free from stone, or upon some soft 
heathie  plot, because of their naked feet, at which they have great stakings, but 
seldom  quarrel." (Williams 1643: 146)  
In 1656, Daniel Denton wrote, "Their Recreations are chiefly Foot-ball and  
Cards, at which they will play away all they have, excepting a Flap to cover  
their nakedness." (Denton 1670:7).  
Unfortunately Denton uses the term "Indians" to describe any and all tribes  
he met in the area, so we cannot be certain whether the game was used by 
groups  of the Munsee Delawares, or Montauk farther east on Long Island, or both.  
However, this does tell us that a form of a football game was being played by  
Delawares or closely related tribes living just north and east of the main 
body  of Lenape at least as early as 1656.  
At the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, we find an account of the football  
game by Henry Spelman. He was captured and raised by the Indians for two years 
 (1609-1610) and later served as interpreter for the colony. In his account 
of  the game, he says:  
They [the Virginia Indians] use beside football play, which wemen and young  
boyes doe much play at. The men never. They make ther Gooles as ours only they 
 never fight nor pull one another doune (Arber 1910: CXIV). [His comment, 
"The  men never," frequently applies to the game today as most of the male 
players are  older boys and young men.]  
Another account written about 1610 from the same area reads:  
Likewise they have the exercise of football, in which they only forcibly  
encounter with the foot to carry the ball the one from the other, and spurned it  
to the goal with a kind of dexterity and swift footmanship, which is the 
honour  of it; but they never strike up one another's heels, as we do, not 
accompting  that praiseworthy to purchase a goal by such as advantage (Strachey:77).  
Jim Rementer

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