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May 12, 2024 · The Plains Cree (Paskwâwiyiniwak) lived on the northern Great Plains; like other Plains peoples, their traditional economy focused on bison hunting and gathering wild plant foods. After acquiring horses and firearms, they were more militant than the Woodland Cree, raiding and warring against many other Plains peoples.
- Origin of The Term “Cree”
- Population and Territory
- Traditional Life
- Society
- Culture
- Religion and Spirituality
- Language
- Colonial History
- Contemporary Life
The name Cree originated with a group of Indigenous peoples near James Bay whose name was recorded by the French as Kiristinon and later contracted to Cri, spelled Cree in English. Most Cree use this name only when speaking or writing in English and have other, more localized names.
In the 2021 census, 223,745 people identified as having Cree ancestry. Cree live in areas from Alberta to Quebec in the Subarctic and Plains regions, a geographic distribution larger than that of any other Indigenous group in Canada. Moving from west to east, the main divisions of Cree, based on environment, language and dialect are Plains Cree (pa...
For thousands of years, the ancestors of the Cree were thinly spread over much of the woodland area that they still occupy. Known as the Ndooheenou (“nation of hunters”), the Cree followed seasonal animal migrations to obtain meat for food and animal hides and bones for the making of tools and clothing. They travelled by canoe in summer, and by sno...
Cree lived in small bands or hunting groups for most of the year, and gathered into larger groups in the summer for socializing, exchanges and ceremonies. They historically had cultural, trade and social relations with other Algonquian-speaking nations, most directly with the Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi), Algonquinand Ojibwa. Although the Cree strived...
The Cree participated in a variety of cultural ceremonies and rituals, including the Sun Dance (also known as the Thirst Dance, and particularly celebrated by the Plains Cree), powwows, vision quests, feasts, pipe ceremonies, sweat lodges and more. Many of such rituals were banned by the Indian Actuntil 1951; however, the traditions survive to this...
The Cree worldview describes the interconnectivity between people and nature; health and happiness was achieved by living a life in balance with nature. Religious life was based on relations with animal and other spirits which often revealed themselves in dreams. People tried to show respect for each other by an ideal ethic of non-interference, in ...
The Cree languagebelongs to the Algonquian language family, and is in itself a continuum or family of dialects. Depending on the region, some Cree peoples speak a slightly different version of the language than Cree peoples in another area. The closer the speakers’ communities are, the more likely they are to understand one another. For example, t...
Jesuit missionaries first mentioned contact with Cree groups in the area west of James Bay around 1640. Fur trading posts established after 1670 began a period of economically motivated migration, as bands attempted to make the most of the growing fur trade. For many years, European traders depended on Indigenous people for fresh meat. Gradually, a...
Government-backed corporate exploitation of natural resources in the 20th and 21st centuries has brought radical changes in many Cree communities. In the 1970s in Quebec, the James Bay Cree successfully negotiated theJames Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. The agreement was a response to the James Bay hydroelectric project, which had been undertak...
Those Cree who moved onto the Great Plains and adopted bison hunting, called the Plains Cree, were allied with the Assiniboine, the Metis Nation, and the Saulteaux in what was known as the "Iron Confederacy", which was a major force in the North American fur trade from the 1730s to the 1870s.
The Cree are indigenous people originally living in Manitoba, Canada. However, one branch later moved southwest to adopt a buffalo-hunting culture. This group, called the Plains Cree, lived from Lake Superior westward in northern Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana.
The Cree are one of the largest groups of First Nations in North America, with over 200,000 members living in Canada. The majority of Cree in Canada live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. About 38,000 live in Quebec. The Cree are divided into eight groups based on dialect ...
May 29, 2018 · Algonquian. Origins and group affiliations. For more than six thousand years the ancestors of the Cree lived near the Arctic Circle. Some Plains Cree intermarried with the French, creating the unique Métis culture (see next entry) of the Red River Valley.
The nêhiyawak began to move onto the prairies with the fur trade in 1740. The Cree in the south were part of the Iron Confederacy, an alliance with the Saulteaux and Assiniboine; they were middlemen in the Fur Trade, trading with the English and the French, as well as with other Indigenous groups.
