Producer unknown to us
Stickball necklace
Americas, Oklahoma
19th/20th century
Dyed horse hair, tissue
Collection context unknown to us
Handed over to Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden from Museum Burg Mylau in 1976
60862
These necklaces, worn at the stickball game, were used by some Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw communities into the 21st century to distinguish players from opposing teams (probably similar to today’s sports jerseys). Initially made of woolen cloth, some are also made of felt today. This piece also contains dyed horse hair.
The stickball game, now known as Lacrosse, probably originated in Central America in the 12th century as part of a ritual. By the time of first contact with Europeans, the sport had become common among fifty nations in eastern North America, for example, under the name “Little Brother of War.” In the late 19th century elite universities in the United States developed lacrosse into a modern school and professional sport.
Today, the Iroquois Nationals sports team uses the sport tradition to assert the status of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois League) as a sovereign nation.
Lacrosse, by the way, is a popular sport in the Czech Republic that goes back to Indianist (“hobbyist”) groups there. While the GDR’s Indian hobbyism was mainly organized in “Customs and Folk Dance Groups” that were officially registered with the Cultural Association of the GDR, the same was not possible in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (short: ČSSR). These hobbyist groups formed lacrosse teams and created their own grassroots sports league as a pretext for their movement.
This necklace came to Dresden in 1976 as part of the GDR’s museum profiling after Museum Burg Mylau and Heimatmuseum Reichenbach/Vogtland had offered to hand over their ethnographic objects.
Frank Usbeck