The modern game of hockey finds its roots in two different cultures.
People
have been playing ball-and-stick games for thousands of years,
but ice hockey
as we now know it is a combination of two games:
the game of haqwai played by indigenous peoples in what is now Ontario,
Canada,
and Dust Up, a schoolboy game originating in Manchester, England
and
brought to the New World by colonists. Haqwai was played on a frozen
lake, using
branches to bat a moose hoof toward tent-like goals at either
end; Dust Up was
a popular schoolboy game of the day in which one player
would brush up against
another, or look him, or fail to look at him, or do
nothing whatsoever, at which
point the other player would punch him
repeatedly. The game created when those
two traditions met is still
played today in great hockey towns like Phoenix, Tampa
and Dallas.
