Description
The Cree are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations. In Canada, over 350,000 people are Cree or have Cree ancestry. The major proportion of Cree in Canada live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Northwest Territories. In the United States, Cree people historically lived from Lake Superior westward. Today, they live mostly in Montana, where they share the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation with Ojibwe (Chippewa) people. The documented westward migration over time has been strongly associated with their roles as traders and hunters in the North American fur trade. The name Cree is a truncated form of Kristineaux, a French adaptation of the Ojibwa name for the James Bay band, Kinistino. Wars with the Dakota Sioux and Blackfoot and severe smallpox epidemics, notably in 1784 and 1838, reduced their numbers.
Language
Cree also known as Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi) is a dialect continuum of Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories to Alberta to Labrador.
Culture
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 snowshoes and toboggan in winter, living in cone- or dome-shaped lodges, covered in animal skins. Many Cree still consider hunting an important part of their culture and way of life; the hunting and trapping of moose, caribou, rabbit and other animals is fairly common in Cree communities. After the arrival of Europeans, participation in the fur trade pushed Swampy Cree west into the Plains. During this time, many Cree remained in the forest and the tundra area to the north, where a stable culture persisted.