Started a story yesterday about the first time the Iroquois Nation sent a team to play in a Lacrosse World Cup in 1990. I was playing for the US National Team and witnessed history being made. The Iroquois, who play more indoor box lacrosse than outdoor, play a rough and physical brand of Lacrosse. However, on that day in Sydney it looked like they were taking revenge for centuries of European colonization of North America and the exploitation of native land and people. Ironically, I, the only black man on the US team and I had not suited up for the game trying to give my tendinitis inflicted knees time to rest. Although we beat them easily on the score board, they bruised up some of our best players that day. At times the pounding on our players was so bad that it reminded me of a scene from Custard’s last stand. I’ve always wondered how they would have treated me if I had played that day? After all during the antebellum period, some African Americans escaped and found refuge among Native American communities. Others African Americans lived with Native Americans in multiethnic maroon communities. The history of black red relations is also a mixed one with records of Native Americans owning enslaved African Americans and or returning runaway black slaves to white masters in exchange for rewards. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 18656, Buffalo soldiers (black troops) helped the U. S. government repress and round up Native American societies forcing them onto reservations. So who knows what kind of treatment I would have received from the Iroquois Nationals that day in Sydney Australia in July of 1990.
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