Shinney is a game from

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

. "For Salish Indians, shinney was a game for women." A shinney ball is made of "buffalo hair, sand, suede and sinew." For other

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...

tribes, everyone played, according to the International Traditional Games Society in East Glacier.

Jeremy Red Eagle of
Helena Helena may refer to: People *Helena (given name), a given name (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Katri Helena (born 1945), Finnish singer *Helena, mother of Constantine I Places Greece * Helena (island) Guyana * H ...
introduces some of the level 1 participants to shinney and double ball, which he describes as “another way of fighting without fighting.” The smallest fields were the length of three football fields, he tells the younger people getting ready to play, and the longest could go three miles. That was the distance between the goals, often tree branches, that competitors would travel while using sticks to try to hurl or catch a ball or balls over or under the goals or, in the case of double ball, wrap around the branch. In reality, however, the fields had no boundaries. There are stories, Red Eagle says, of teams with 100 players apiece, and while they are physical games, there were rules, he adds: “Men can’t get rough with women, and women can’t get rough with kids.” The game is most similar to modern day
hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...
or
lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensiv ...
. Many different types were played in different Native American tribes.

References

{{game-stub Interior Salish Indigenous peoples of North America