Cree - Tribes

Tribes

The Cree Nation is generally divided into eight groups (some political, others cultural):

• Naskapi (Innu) and

• Montagnais (Innu) are inhabitants of an area they refer to as Nitassinan. Their territories comprise most of the present-day political jurisdictions of eastern Quebec and Labrador. Their cultures are differentiated, as the Naskapi are still caribou hunters and more nomadic than the Montagnais, but the Montagnais have more settlements. The total population of the two groups in 2003 was about 18,000 people, of which 15,000 lived in Quebec. Their dialects and languages are the most distinct from the Cree spoken by the groups west of Lake Superior.

• Attikamekw are inhabitants of the area they refer to as Nitaskinan (Our Land), in the upper St. Maurice River valley of Quebec (about 300 km north of Montreal). Their population is around 4,500.

• James Bay Cree - Grand Council of the Crees; approximately 16,357 Cree (Iyyu in Coastal Dialect / Iynu in Inland Dialect) of the James Bay and Nunavik regions of Northern Quebec.

• Moose Cree - Moose Factory in the Cochrane District, Ontario; this group lives on Moose Factory Island, near the mouth of the Moose River, at the southern end of James Bay.

• Swampy Cree - this group lives in northern Manitoba along the Hudson Bay coast and adjacent inland areas to the south and west, and in Ontario along the coast of Hudson Bay and James Bay. Some also in eastern Saskatchewan around Cumberland House. It has 4,500 speakers.

• Woods Cree group in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

• Plains Cree 34,000 people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Montana.

Collectively the Cree used the autonym Nēhilawē (those who speak our language). They used "Cree" to refer to their people only when speaking the languages of the European colonists, French or English.

Skilled American bison hunters and horsemen, the Plains Cree were allied with the Assiniboine and the Saulteaux before they encountered French settlers in the 18th century.