01-037: The Cree

By Dorthea CalverleySince Alexander Mackenzie’s time, the Cree have displaced the Athapaskan-speakers as the majority group in the Indian population of the Peace River Country. It is interesting to have Mackenzie’s observations about them. We must remember that at Fort Fork where Mackenzie observed them in 1792, the Cree and Beaver had been at peace with each other ever since the Peace of Unchagah. In that area there seems to have been a certain amount of inter-mixture of the two stocks. In the light of observations of other writers one may doubt the Beavers had adopted the language of the Crees to any extent other than what was necessary to carry on trade. Here is an excerpt from Alexander Mackenzie’s Fort Fork journal, 1792-3:

“Although they appear from their language to be of the same stock as the Chepewyans, they differ from them in appearance, manners, and customs, as they had adopted those of their former enemies, the Knisteneaux [Cree]; they speak their language, as well as cut their hair, paint, and dress like them, and possess their immoderate fondness for liquor and tobacco. This description, however, can be applied only to the men, as the women are less adorned even those of the Chepewyan tribes.”

Mackenzie’s account of the Knisteneaux [Cree] is very interesting but too lengthy to include here. Readers interested in it will find it about 90 pages into his introduction [a history of the fur trade] to hisVoyages from Montreal on the River St Laurence, through the continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans ….