Cree

CREE

CREE. 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

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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

See also Fur Trade and Trapping ; Tribes: Great Plains .