Location: The Cree lived across the north into the Canadian prairies and in Montana, the Dakotas and Minnesota. They lived as far east as the Hudson to the James Bay and as far west as Alberta and the Great Slave Lake.
Language: They spoke Cree, a language of the Algonquin family.
Daily Life: The Cree depended entirely on hunting and fishing, as well as gathering wild roots and fruits. They lived in buffalo skin tipis and traveled by birch bark canoes. Women would dress the skins after a hunt and were experts in using porcupine quills in their everyday needs to dress things up. Men often married two sisters at the same time. There is no evidence of a clan system. The most important religious ceremony was the Sun Dance. The Cree made sacrifices to their gods with Wisukatcak the most important spiritual entity. The dead were buried under a mound of stones with their belongings buried with them or they were destroyed by the grave.
History: During the 17th and 18th century, the Cree began to expand their territory. They did this for a number of reasons; one of the most important reasons was the demand for trading pelts by the English and the French. The Crees were divided into two divisions – the Woodland and the Plains. The Plains Cree moved from the forest into the plains following the buffalo. They acquired guns and horses from trading with the Europeans which were useful when raiding or when they were at wars with other tribes. The wars with the Blackfoot and the Sioux were leading causes, as was small pox, to the dwindling numbers of the Cree population. The Woodland Cree stayed in the forest. Both groups were made up of bands of related families. There were twelve different bands but there was only one military society. The Cree are the largest Indian tribe in Canada with most of the members living on reservations in Canada.
Best Known Feature: The northern Cree adopted a form of writing in syllabary. With the help of a Methodist Missionary, James Evans, the first hymnal was written in this syllabary in 1841. It was printed on paper of birch bark and the covers were made of elk hide. By the end of the 19th and into the 20th century, the Cree had one of the highest literacy rates in the world.
Current Problem: The Pimicikamak Cree Nation at Cross Lake is having a constant battle with Canada. The Manitoba Hydro Power Company produces electricity by the use of rivers. These rivers flow through a great deal of reservation land producing ecological damage. Manitoba Hydro distributes the electricity throughout Canada as well as the Midwest United States with 10% of the electricity used by Northern States Power (NSP) coming from Manitoba Hydro. The ecosystem that was in place for the Cree nation for hundreds of years is now being destroyed.
