 The first Europeans to observe it were French Jesuit missionaries in the St. Lawrence Valley, in the 1630s. The name "lacrosse" comes from their reports, which described the players'sticks as like a bishop's crosier — la crosse in French. The Native American tribes used various names: in the Onondaga language it was called dehuntshigwa 'es ("they bump hips" or "men hit a rounded object"); da-nah-wah'uwsdi ("little war") to the Eastern Cherokee; in Mohawk, tewaarathon ("little brother of war"); and baggataway in Ojibwe. Variations in the game were not limited to the name. In the Great Lakes region, players used an entirely wooden stick, while the Iroquois stick was longer and was laced with string, and the Southeastern tribes played with two shorter sticks, one in each hand.
