Keywords: Franco-America
Item 33651
Reglements du Club de Raquettes La Gaiete, Lewiston, ca. 1925
Contributed by: Franco-American Collection, University of Southern Maine Libraries Date: circa 1925 Location: Lewiston Media: Ink on paper
Exhibit
In the early 1600s, French explorers and colonizers in the New World quickly adopted a Native American mode of transportation to get around during the harsh winter months: the snowshoe. Most Northern societies had some form of snowshoe, but the Native Americans turned it into a highly functional item. French settlers named snowshoes "raquettes" because they resembled the tennis racket then in use.
