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Cree

 
Dictionary: Cree   (krē) pronunciation
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n., pl., Cree, or Crees.
    1. A Native American people inhabiting a large area from eastern Canada west to Alberta and the Great Slave Lake. Formerly located in central Canada, the Cree expanded westward and eastward in the 17th and 18th centuries, the western Cree adopting the Plains Indian life and the eastern Cree retaining their woodland culture.
    2. A member of this people.
  2. The Algonquian language of the Cree.

[French Cris, shortening of Cristineaux, name of a 17th-century Cree band, from Ojibwa (Old Algonquin) kirištino·, from Cree.]


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Cree
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One of the major Algonquian-speaking Indian peoples of Canada, living mainly in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The name is a truncated form of the name Kristineaux, the French traders' version of the self-name of the James Bay band. The Cree formerly occupied an immense area from western Quebec to eastern Alberta. They acquired firearms and engaged in the fur trade with Europeans beginning in the 17th century. There were two major divisions: the Woodland Cree and the Plains Cree, both of which were typical representatives of American Subarctic peoples. Social organization in both groups was based on local bands. Among the Woodland Cree, rituals and taboos relating to the spirits of game animals were pervasive, as was fear of witchcraft. Among the more militant Plains Cree, rites intended to foster success in warfare and the bison hunt were common. Cree descendants numbered some 90,000 in the early 21st century.

For more information on Cree, visit Britannica.com.

US History Encyclopedia: Cree
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The Crees are a tribe with a long history in the United States and Canada. Their current territory ranges from the eastern shores of James Bay, down through northern Ontario, across the Prairie Provinces of Canada to the Rocky Mountains, north to the Northwest Territories, and south to the states of Montana and the Dakotas.

Traditionally the Crees were adept at selecting from other cultures those things they saw as useful while ignoring the rest. This trait was especially evident during the fur trade, when they were known as middlemen. The Crees' trade practices in Prince Rupert's Land involved holding the prime locations around Hudson Bay Company posts. The trade goods they received were paid for with furs that came from other Crees in the northwest. The Crees near the posts would use the goods for a time and then pass them on to other Crees. Eventually, these used goods, especially firearms, would be traded to other tribes, such as the Blackfeet, for horses. In turn, the Blackfeet would use the guns to protect themselves from other warlike tribes and, in the process, protect the Crees from these same people. Using trade goods to arm a buffer tribe between themselves and their enemies is a good example of the Crees' astute use of an economic power in the political arena.

In the modern era, the Crees have been major players in the political activities of Aboriginal people in Canada. They successfully negotiated a modern treaty in the James Bay area (1975) and are often found as political leaders in tribal organizations. Despite their history of economic and political astuteness, many Crees are located on isolated reserves and suffer from extreme poverty. Land claims and other claims for past mismanagement and abuse are now seen as the basis for re-creating the Crees' economic system. From their historic leader Big Bear in the 1880s and his dream of a collective of tribes living in western Canada to the Crees' modern political leaders, the object remains the same: the establishment and protection of a self-reliant nation of Crees.

Bibliography

Mandelbaum, David G. The Plains Cree: An Ethnographic, Historical, and Comparative Study. Regina, Saskatchewan: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina, 1979. Originally published in 1940, it is one of the best sources for Cree cultural practice in the Plains area. Despite its age, there is no other work currently available that describes in such detail the Crees' spiritual, cultural, and social activity, with attention to specific practice and its development in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.

Milloy, John S. The Plains Cree: Trade, Diplomacy, and War, 1790– 1870. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1990. A telling description of the Crees' use of fur trade economics for their political requirements. The descriptions of why and how the Plains Crees used trade as a political tool should be required reading for anyone who assumes that First Nations were unable to manage the fur trade for their own purposes.

Richardson, Boyce. Strangers Devour the Land. Vancouver, British Columbia: Douglas and McIntyre, 1991. One of the better descriptions of a modern treaty-making process and the Crees' determination not to be disadvantaged by hydroelectric development. Combined with the two texts mentioned above, this work should provide the reader with an excellent overview of the reality of the Crees, historically and in the modern era.

—Fred Shore

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Cree
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Cree, Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Algonquian branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). They formerly inhabited the area S of Hudson Bay and James Bay in what is now Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba S of the Churchill River. Members of one branch of the Cree, allying themselves with the Siouan Assiniboin, moved southwestward into buffalo territory and became the Plains Cree. It is probable that they introduced the method of hunting buffalo by driving them into enclosures, since the Woodland Cree used this method in hunting deer. The traditional culture and language of the Woodland Cree greatly resembles that of the Ojibwa.

A warlike tribe, the Cree were nevertheless friendly toward French and English fur traders, and their history is closely connected with the activities of the Hudson's Bay and the North West companies. They were powerful in the late 18th cent. until smallpox drastically reduced their population. In 1884 they were involved in the second Riel Rebellion (see Riel, Louis), in Saskatchewan.

About 200,000 Cree live in 135 bands in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. They have the largest population and are spread over the largest geographic area of any aboriginal group in Canada. In the 1990s, Cree living in N Quebec waged strong opposition to the province's planned massive James Bay hydroelectric project, but in 2002 they negotiated an agreement with Quebec that permitted partial hydroelectric development, mining, and logging in exchange for jobs and $3.5 billion in financing (over 50 years). The agreement also recognized the autonomy of the Cree as a native nation. In 1990 there were over 8,000 Cree in the United States, some of them sharing a reservation in Montana with the Ojibwa.

Bibliography

See L. Mason, The Swampy Cree (1967); E. T. Denig, Five Indians Tribes of the Upper Missouri (1975).

The Dream Encyclopedia: Cree
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The Mistassini Cree are a sub-Arctic people living in northern Quebec who attempt to carry on a lifestyle and culture that was traditionally built around hunting and trapping. The Cree have made some partial compromises with Canadian society by spending the summers at government outposts, but in the winters they live much as they did more than three hundred years ago, when Europeans first entered the area.

Particularly during the winter, the Cree are most interested in divinatory dreams as they relate to the hunt. Such divinatory dreams are not straightforward, in the sense that they most often require interpretation. For example, one of the most common rules of interpretation is that meeting a stranger of the opposite sex in a dream indicates a game animal. Events in the dream then serve as metaphors for what will happen during the hunt. For instance, in a study of the Mistassini Cree, Adrian Tanner includes the account of a man who dreamed he met an Eskimo woman who invited him to live with her. The man refused the invitation and later while hunting sighted a caribou, which he shot at but missed, and it got away.

The Cree also regard dreams as sources of creative inspiration and spiritual guidance. Tanner observes, for instance, that "power … is sometimes thought to arrive in dreams, in the form of formulae for songs, or shamanistic techniques, or ideas for the decoration of clothing or other objects".

Thus, according to Tanner, dreams serve to connect ordinary daily activities with a spirit realm, giving one's life a larger significance in the cosmic view of things.

Wikipedia: Cree
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For other uses, see Cree (disambiguation).
Cree
Nēhilawē
CreeCamp1871.jpg
Nēhiyaw camp near Vermilion, Alberta
Total population
over 200,000
Regions with significant populations
Canada, United States
Languages

Cree, English, French
Related ethnic groups

Métis, Oji-Cree, Ojibwe, Innu
Not to be confused with the Creek people.

Cree is one of the largest group of First Nations/Aboriginals in North America, located mainly across Canada.[1] In the United States, this Algonquian-speaking people lived historically from Minnesota westward. Today they live mostly in Montana.[2]

The Cree are generally divided into 8 major groups: Naskapi, Montagnais, Attikamekw, James Bay Cree, Moose Cree, Swampy Cree, Woods Cree and Plains Cree. However, the Cree referred to themselves collectively as Nēhilawē[3] (those who speak our language). They called themselves "Cree" only when speaking English or French.[4]

Skilled American bison hunters and horsemen, the Plains Cree were allied with the Assiniboine and the Saulteaux before encountering English, Scots (especially Orcadian) and French settlers in the 16th century.

Contents

Name

Cree camp south of Vermilion, Alberta, September 1871

The name "Cree" is an exonym derived from the French Christenaux (also as Knistenaux, Cristeneaux and many other variations) that is commonly shortened to "Cri",[5] after their village of Kenisteniwak.[6] However, among the Cree, depending on the community, they may call themselves the Nehiyaw, Nehithaw, Nehilaw, Nehinaw, Ininiw, Ililiw, Iynu or Iyyu. These peoples can be divided into two major groups: those who identify themselves using a derivative of their historical appellation Nēhilawē (meaning "[those who] speak our Nation's language") and those identifying themselves using a derivative of their historical appellation Iliniw (meaning "person" or "man").[7]

Both groups share a common ancestry but are now divided mainly along linguistic lines. Those residing west of the Ontario border to the Rocky Mountains tend to call themselves the first name, Nehilaw. The second group includes the Rocky Cree sub-group of the Swampy Cree and one group residing in Quebec, who are mistakenly called Attikamek but who self-identify as Nehiraw, plus all the groups east of James Bay, who tend to call themselves Iliniw, the term for man.[citation needed]

Language

Main article: Cree language
Linguistic divisions in Canada

The Cree language (also known as Cree-Montagnais, Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi) is the name for a group of closely related Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories to Labrador, making it the most widely spoken aboriginal language in Canada.[8] Despite numerous speakers within this wide area, the only region where Cree has official status is in the Northwest Territories alongside eight other aboriginal languages.[9][10]

The aforementioned two major groups speak a mutually intelligible Cree dialect continuum, which can be divided by many criteria. In a dialect continuum, "It is not so much a language, as a chain of dialects, where speakers from one community can very easily understand their neighbours, but a Plains Cree speaker from Alberta would find a Québec Cree speaker difficult to speak to without practice."[11]

One major division between the groups is that the Eastern group palatalizes the sound /k/ to either /ts/ (c) or to /tʃ/ (č) when it precedes front vowels. There is also a major difference in grammatical vocabulary (particles) between the groups. Within both groups, another set of variations has arisen around the pronunciation of the Proto-Algonquian phoneme *l, which can be realized as /l/, /r/, /y/, /n/ or /ð/ (th) by different groups. Yet in other dialects, the distinction between /e:/ (ē) and /i:/ (ī) has been lost, merging to the latter. In more western dialects, the distinction between /s/ and /ʃ/ (š) has been lost, both merging to the former.

If you compare the consonants /p/ /t/ /c/ and /k/*[12] to their English counterparts, it is noticeable that there is little distinction of voicing. In English, voicing marks the difference of meaning in words such as bin : pin. Since there is not distinction of voicing in Cree, it is common for variants of /t/ to sound more like /d/ without any difference in meaning. [13]

In Canada

Nehiyaw Girl (1928).

The Cree are the largest group of First Nations in Canada, with over 200,000 members and 135 registered bands.[14] This population may be due to the Cree's traditional openness to inter-tribal marriage. Together, their reserve lands are the largest of any First Nations group in the country.[14] The largest Cree band and the second largest First Nations Band in Canada after the Six Nations Iroquois is the Lac La Ronge Band in northern Saskatchewan.

The Métis (from French Métis - any person of mixed ancestry) are people of mixed ancestry, such as Nehiyaw (or Anishinaabe) and French, English, or Scottish heritage. According to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, the Métis were historically the children of French fur traders and Nehiyaw women or, from unions of English or Scottish traders and northern Dene women (Anglo-Métis). Generally in academic circles, the term Métis can be used to refer to any combination of persons of mixed Native American and European heritage, although historical definitions for Métis remain. Canada's Indian and Northern Affairs broadly define Métis as those persons of mixed First Nation and European ancestry.

In the United States

Though at one time located in northern Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, today the Cree population in the United States can be found as part of the Chippewa Cree tribe, located on the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation in Montana. The reservation is shared with the Pembina Band of Chippewa Indians who form the "Chippewa" half of the Chippewa Cree tribe. Traditionally, the southern limits of the Cree Territory in the United States were the Missouri River and the Milk River in Montana.

Cree First Nations

A Nehiyaw woman (right)
Northern James Bay Cree (Iyiyiw)
  • Cree Nation of Chisasibi
  • Eastmain First Nation (also Southern James Bay Cree)
  • Cree Nation of Wemindji
  • Cree Nation of Whapmagoostui
Naskapi (Iyiyiw and Innu)
Southern James Bay Cree (Iyniw (inland) and Iyyiw (coastal))
  • Eastmain First Nation (also Northern James Bay Cree)
  • Cree Nation of Mistissini
  • Cree Nation of Nemaska
  • Oujé-Bougoumou First Nation – Oujé-Bougoumou, Quebec
  • The Crees of the Waskaganish First Nation
  • Waswanipi Cree First Nation
Moose Cree (Mōsonī / ililī)
Swampy Cree (Maškēkowak / nēhinawak)
Woods Cree (Sakāwithiniwak / nīhithawak)
Atikamekw (Nehiraw)
  • Obedjiwan
  • Manawan
  • Wemontaci
Western Montagnais (Nehilaw and Ilniw)
Eastern Montagnais (Innu)
Rocky Cree (Asinīskāwiyiniwak)
Plains Cree (Paskwāwiyiniwak / nēhiyawak)

Notable Cree

Mähsette Kuiuab, chief of the Cree indians

See: Cree people

See also

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cree

References

 This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (March 2007)
  1. ^ "Culture Areas Index". the Canadian Museum of Civilization. http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/ethno/etb0170e.shtml. 
  2. ^ "Gateway to Aboriginal Heritage". Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation. http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/ethno/etb0000e.shtml. 
  3. ^ "[T]heir native name", see David Thompson, Travels in Western North America 1784-1812
  4. ^ David Pentland, "Synonymy", in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 6, June Helm, ed., Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1981, p. 227.
  5. ^ David Thompson recorded "The French Canadians...call them 'Krees', a name which none of the Indians can pronounce...", "Life with the Nahathaways", in David Thompson: Travels in Western North America 1784-1812, Victor G. Hopwood, ed., Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1971, p. 109.
  6. ^ Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian - Uncorrected OCR Text for volume 18
  7. ^ David H. Pentland, "Synonymy", in "West Main Cree", in Handbook of North American Indians, June Helm, ed., Smithsonian Institution 1981, Washington, D.C., v. 6, p. 227.
  8. ^ Statistics Canada: 2006 Census
  9. ^ Northwest Territories Official Languages Act, 1988 (as amended 1988, 1991-1992, 2003)
  10. ^ The western group of languages includes Swampy Cree, Woods Cree and Plains Cree. The eastern language is called Moose Cree. See "Languages of Canada", Ethnologue: Languages of the World, http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=canada, accessed 21 September 2008.
  11. ^ "Cree", Language Geek, accessed 21 September 2008.
  12. ^ * Most dialects have these consonants.
  13. ^ Wolfart, H. C., and Janet F. Carroll. Meet Cree: A Guide to the Language : Second Edition, New York: University of Alberta, 1981
  14. ^ a b Source: Canadian Geographic
  15. ^ Moose Cree First Nation community profile

Sacred Legends of the Sandy Lake Cree. James R. Stevens, McClelland and Stewart Ltd, 1971

External links


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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
The Dream Encyclopedia. The Dream Encyclopedia. 1995 ©Visible Ink Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cree".  Read more