What is shinny the game?

Answer 1

In its simplest form shinny is a very widespread game where the ball is struck by a club or bat - the ball may never be touched with the hand, although kicking was permitted. In many tribes shinny was a game played only by women (rackets being a man's game). In some tribes both men and women played; among the Crows, a team of men generally played shinny against a team of women.

The Arapaho version will serve as a typical example of the equipment and rules: the game was called gugahawat and each player had a 30 or 40 inch long stick with a slightly curved end; the ball was of painted deer hide, about 4 inches across and stuffed with buffalo hair. Two wooden posts were set up at each end of the playing area to act as goals several hundreds of yards apart; the object was to drive the ball into the opposing goal. There was no fixed number of players in each team and they could resemble small armies. Play could sometimes become extremely rough with the sticks used to club members of the opposing team, or to trip them at an opportune moment.