Plains Cree (Kre), a division of the Cree Indians of central Canada. The name comes from the French Kristenaux, a corruption of a Cree self-designations. See also Cree (Chapter 9).
Location Early in the seventeenth century, Crees inhabited the forests between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, groups of Crees had moved into western Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta and south to northern Montana. These were the northernmost of the Plains Indians.
Population From an early-seventeenth-century total Cree population of about 15,000, there were roughly 4,000 Plains Cree in 1780. There are some 60,000 Cree today, mostly in Canada.
Language All nine Cree dialects belong to the central division of the Algonquian language family.
Historical Information
History The earliest Algonquians may have come north from the lower Mississippi Valley shortly after the last ice sheet retreated from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River regions. Their population grew until a large number of them lived north and west of the Great Lakes. Crees probably originated in central and northern Manitoba around 1100. By 1500 they were located at the forest’s edge along and south of the Saskatchewan River. Cree bands began acquiring guns and other goods from the French in the mid-seventeenth century, trading furs, especially beaver, for them. Hudson’s Bay Company opened a post in Cree territory in 1667.
During the period of the French fur trade, many Cree and French intermarried. Many voyageurs and coureurs de bois were mixed French and Cree, as were the mixed-blood Metis. During the later seventeenth century, the quest for furs, as well as their own growing population, pushed the Cree on toward the west until they stretched from near Labrador in the east to the Great Slave Lake and south to Alberta, northern Montana, and North Dakota in the west. During these migrations they displaced their ancient enemies to the west, the Athapaskans, and pushed Dakota bands westward as well.
Crees formed a close alliance with the Assiniboine in the late seventeenth century. They experienced severe smallpox epidemics in 1737 and 1781, particularly in the Lake Winnipeg area. By the early eighteenth century, the Cree were roughly divided into Woodland (eastern and western) and Plains divisions, having reached Lake Winnipeg and beyond. During this period they still retained much of their old Woodland culture.
Plains Crees acquired horses in the mid- to late eighteenth century and adopted much of classic nomadic Plains Indian culture, including warring, raiding, and using the buffalo for food, clothing, shelter, tools, equipment, and fuel. Some also intermarried with Mohawk Indians who were serving as guides for non-Indian fur trading companies, which the Cree were provisioning with buffalo meat. By the early nineteenth century, Plains Crees controlled the area north of the Missouri River and were pressuring the Blackfeet to the west and south.
A sharp decline set in during the 1850s, however, owing primarily to smallpox epidemics and warfare with the Blackfeet. Canadian officials created Cree reserves in the 1870s, on which Crees were theoretically encouraged to turn to the agricultural life. In fact, the Indians themselves were aware that the buffalo life was soon to end and wanted help in making the change to agriculture. Though they might well have adapted to this change, most were denied access to key resources, such as implements and livestock (both promised in treaties). Such items, if they were issued at all, were generally inappropriate and/or of poor quality.
From the Indian point of view, they had given up their land for empty promises. Privation and even starvation stalked Indian communities. Government officials tended to blame Indian farming failures on their presumed idleness. Of course, non-Indians also had problems farming the Plains during these years, but they were free to move at will and were not subject to discrimination or undue restrictions in marketing their yield or obtaining loans, credit, and basic supplies.
Despite these obstacles, some bands did make a relative success of farming, to the extent that non- Indian farmers were complaining toward the end of the 1880s about unfair competition from Native Americans. In 1890, the Canadian government turned to a policy of peasant farming, in which the reserves were subdivided. Land was allotted in severalty, "surplus" land was sold to non-Indians, and mechanized farm equipment was taken away. With this policy, Canadian officials succeeded in dramatically reducing total land under Indian cultivation as well as the number of Indian farmers and in maintaining the reserves in poverty. Indian protests were routinely ignored or repressed.
In 1885, Poundmaker and Big Bear led the Cree in the Second Riel Rebellion (Louis Riel was a Metis nationalist leader). They and the Metis joined forces to try to stem the flow of non-Indian settlers to the vicinity of the Canadian Pacific Railway line in Saskatchewan and to create a native state. The Cree were not defeated but surrendered shortly after their Metis allies did. One group of Cree became associated at that time with Little Shell’s band of Chippewas in Montana. Big Bear, a leader of the rebellion, escaped with 200 Cree to the United States, where they wandered for three decades in Montana until joining with a band of Chippewa under the leadership of Stone Child, or Rocky Boy. In 1916, the U.S. government created the Rocky Boy Reservation in the Bearpaw Mountains of Montana for these people. Little Shell’s band eventually settled in nearby towns and reservations.
Religion Adolescent boys undertook vision quests. Shamans used their spirit powers to cure illness. In midsummer, bands (either individually or collectively) celebrated the Sun Dance.
Government There were from 8 to 12 bands of fluid composition among the Plains Cree, each with a headman and a loosely defined hunting territory. The leadership position required excellent hunting and speaking skills as well as the traits of bravery and generosity and could be hereditary. Each band also had a warrior society.
Customs Newborn infants were dried with moss or soft wood and, after a few days, placed in a hide sack stuffed with moss. A baby later wore a small pouch containing the umbilical cord around the neck. Babies were named at a feast soon after birth by a same-sex relative. The child’s name was associated with the name-givers’ spirit vision. Most people also had nicknames. Names associated with supernatural power and with the dead were not commonly spoken.
Children were nursed for up to five years. Girls were secluded for four nights at the onset of puberty. During this time they performed various tasks, ate little, and scratched their heads with a stick. They also often acquired their spirit visions. A feast followed this initial period of seclusion. Married women also withdrew when menstruating. There were no male puberty ceremonies, except that boys were encouraged to fast and undertake a vision quest.
For marriage gifts, the bride’s family gave the couple a fully equipped tipi. The groom received a horse from his father-in-law as well as moccasins from his new wife. Plains Crees observed the mother-in-law taboo.
Corpses were dressed in their best clothing, and their faces were painted. They were taken out the side of the tipi, not the door, and buried in the ground, in log chambers, or in tree scaffolds. Some eastern bands built gabled-roof grave houses. A filled pipe and a container of grease were buried with the body. Close relatives sliced their limbs and wore their hair loose until the mourning period ended. Bundles containing ancestral locks of hair were considered extremely important and were carried by the women when the camp moved. The possessions of the dead were given away.
The early Cree practiced tattooing with needles and leather threads. Shinny was widely played. Both men and women used tobacco, obtained from traders and mixed with dried bearberry leaves, for ceremonial purposes.
Dwellings Plains Crees lived in buffalo-hide tipis with three-pole foundations.
Diet Buffalo was the staple food. Men hunted in small groups during the winter and communally in summer. Buffalo were driven into brush impoundments or, in winter, into marshes or deep snow. Men also hunted other large game.
Women snared a variety of small game, fished, and caught birds (and gathered their eggs). They also gathered roots (such as prairie turnip), berries (such as Saskatoon berries), fruits, and tubers. Most of these were dried and stored for winter. At least as early as the early nineteenth century, some Plains Crees maintained gardens and even kept cattle to help ensure a constant food supply.
Key Technology Plains Crees periodically burned the grasslands in autumn to encourage higher yield and earlier growth, thus helping to maintain the buffalo herd. They also used fire to drive a herd toward a particular area and to keep them away from key trade sites. In addition to the usual buffalo-based technology, Plains Crees fished using weirs, platforms, and spears.
Trade Crees acted as intermediaries between non-Indian traders and Indian tribes such as the Blackfeet in the late seventeenth century.
Notable Arts Like many Plains Indians, the Cree made beaded quillwork and painted hides.
Transportation Dogs carried extra goods with the help of a strap across the chest before the advent of the travois. Later, dog-drawn and, after about 1770, horse-drawn travois were used to transport goods. The Cree also used snowshoes and canoes, which they abandoned during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in favor of crude, temporary buffalo-hide rafts.
Dress In general, the upper body remained bare except for a robe or ceremonial garments. The people also wore one-piece moccasins as well as rawhide visors against the sun.
War and Weapons Each band had a warrior society. Early enemies included the Iroquois and Dakotas to the south as well as Athapaskan and Inuit tribes to the north. Later, they fought with the Blackfeet. Allies included the Ojibwa and the Assiniboine.
Unlike many Plains tribes, the Cree placed a high value on scalping. One customarily gave away much of the booty captured in a raid. Weapons included sinew-backed bows and war clubs consisting of a stone in a bag on the end of a stick.
Contemporary Information
Government/Reservations The Rocky Boy Chippewa-Cree Reservation (1,485 Indians in 1990) and Trust Lands (397 Indians in 1990) is located in Chouteau and Hill Counties, Montana. It was established in 1916 and contains 108,015 acres. The tribe is governed by the Chippewa-Cree Business Committee. Roughly half of the population lives off-reservation.
The Little Shell people, some of whom are of Cree descent, had a 1990 population of 3,300.
There are Cree reserves in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.
Economy Activities in Montana include cattle grazing, wheat and barley farming, some logging and mining, and recreation and tourism. Unemployment regularly approaches 75 percent.
Legal Status The Chippewa-Cree Indians of the Rocky Boy Reservation, Montana, are a federally recognized tribal entity.
The Little Shell people have been seeking federal recognition since the 1920s. Other Montana Cree, such as the people of Hill 57, also remain landless and unrecognized.
Daily Life The Chippewa-Crees opened Stone Child Community College in 1978. Crees along Lubicon Lake in Alberta, Canada, have had to contend with serious pollution caused by non-Indian oil drilling companies. Most children of landless Cree attend public schools. Many Chippewa-Crees are Christians. Many also participate in the Sun Dance, sweat lodge ceremonies, and the Native American Church. Cree is still spoken on the reservation and by some older people living off-reservation.
