Cree Indians in Manitoba

The Cree are Algonquian language spoken by more than 45,000 people in Canada and Montana. They have major dialects. Some Cree consider them distinct dialects. The most divergent is eastern Cree. They are a close relative to Innu language and Naskapi. The3y can understnd their neighbors even though they have different dialects. The Cree dialects use shapes to represent consonants and rotate them in four directions to represent vowels.

The Cree are the largest native group in Canada, with 200,00 members. Cree comes from the French name for tribe or "Kristenaux". This word means Christian. The Cree call themselves Ayisiniwok meaning True Men. There are more than 100,000 people known as metis or mixed blood Cree and French.

Their history is so hard to synopsize because it spans a large territory from the Rocky Mountains to Atlantic Ocean. Their culture and language keep them together as a people. The Cree in Canada did not have a shared history with the anglos in Quebec and CANADA. Because they didn't share much with the anglos the Cree ddn't get much of teh European diseases. As they were a large tribe they had an affinity for intertribal marriage, as their oral history described earlier. The English tended to move indian groups further away from their villages. The French tried to engulf them. The result was metis - a race of mixed French -Cree folks. They lived happy together. Since Canada became a nation the Cree faced the same problem of self determination and land contributions that every aboriginal group has, but they are better equipped to face them. The Cree language is one of the few languages surviving into this century.

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