Playing the Creator’s Game on God’s Day: The Controversy of Sunday Lacrosse Games in Haudenosaunee Communities, 1916-24

During the late nineteenth century there was a growing movement in Canada led by Protestant denominations and their organization, the Lord’s Day Alliance, for the national observance of the Christian Sabbath. After several years, the Canadian government enacted the Lord’s Day Act in 1906, prohibiting non-essential activities on Sundays, including sports for financial gain. Sabbatarians across the Dominion attempted to enforce the Sunday law. In the Haudenosaunee communities of Ahkwesahsne and Six Nations, however, Sunday lacrosse games attracted thousands of paying non-Indigenous spectators and continued to take place “illegally” until the mid-1920s. The Lord’s Day Alliance, the attorney general of Ontario, and the Department of Indian Affairs attempted to enforce the law on the reserves. By examining the controversy surrounding the Sunday lacrosse games from 1916 to 1924, this essay demonstrates that the dispute was both a precursor to and a consequence of larger struggles over the future of self-determination in the communities. Furthermore, the struggle played into internal conflicts about Haudenosaunee governance and identity that were themselves triggered by assimilationist policies. It was hardly a coincidence that the dispute coincided with the Department of Indian Affairs’s forced removal of the hereditary council in Six Nations in 1924; rather, the lacrosse controversy was a significant incident in that series of events and provides valuable insights into the Haudenosaunee’s fight for sovereignty in the early 1920s.