An amazing thing happened at a swimming race in 1844. The American painter George Catlin had been so impressed by the swimming techniques of Indigenous Americans that he invited two Ojibwe people to a swimming exhibition at the British Swimming Society in London. Catlin had become interested in types of swimming strokes after his own brother drowned, and he wanted to share this amazing swimming technique with Europeans.
At this time, the British and much of Europe swam the breaststroke and backstroke. They generally kept their faces above water, but as swimming competitions were becoming more competitive during the 19th century, they were looking for ways to get faster.
Enter the two Ojibwe swimmers Sah-ma and We Nish Ka We Bee. They were there to demonstrate a stroke that most people had never seen before: what became known as the front crawl or what many of us call freestyle. This face-down swimming technique with alternating arms and a flutter kick was incredibly fast. Certainly faster than the breaststroke popular throughout Europe at the time!
But still, the British were horrified. Author Karen Eva Carr in Shifting Currents: A World History of Swimming includes a contemporary quote from The Times of London. “[The Ojibwa swimmers] lashed the water violently with their arms, like the sails of a windmill, and beat downward with their feet, blowing with force and forming grotesque antics.” In short, it was all much too splashy and unsophisticated! It would take several more decades for the front crawl to catch on in any meaningful way in Europe.
This wasn’t the first time that Europeans had encountered the front crawl however. Europeans had left many records about this Indigenous way of swimming that was so different from their own. American-born Englishman William Byrd II commented about Indigenous inhabitants of North Carolina in 1733:
“This being Sunday, we were glad to rest from our labors; and, to help restore our vigor, several of us plunged into the river, notwithstanding it was a frosty morning. One of our Indians went in along with us and taught us their way of swimming. They strike not out both hands together but alternately one after another, whereby they are able to swim both farther and faster than we do.”
In the 1870s, British swimmer John Arthur Trudgen created the trudgen stroke after observing Indigenous people swimming in Brazil. He combined elements of the windmilling arms with the English-preferred scissor kick.
It was only after Australian competitive swimmer Dick Cavill began swimming the front crawl, or Australian crawl as it was then known, that it really took off. But Cavill had learned it from Alick Wickman, a titled Solomon Islands swimmer who is widely credited for developing the modern front crawl.
Will you be swimming this summer or perhaps watching Olympic swimmers compete? When you do, think about the deep Indigenous history of the fastest swimming stroke!
Rebecca McCormick is a writer and editor based in Fairfax, Virginia. She has a passion for history education and holds an MA in History of Decorative Arts. Rebecca believes that hands-on history and interacting with objects help learning come alive for children and adults.