Cree

Cree Politics

• Cree did not have a single tribal identity. Instead, they identified themselves by their local band and function independently during the fall, winter, and spring. Local bands would unite into larger bands to hunt and fish in the summer.

• Membership in local and regional bands was flexible and depended on various conditions, including the game's availability.

• The leader of a band, local or regional, was the most experienced man and most respected or believed to have supernatural power. If the performance of a headman declined, the band would replace him, or individuals from that band would join another more prosperous band.

• The Cree had a reputation for being skilled at war. Though few military conflicts occurred, the Cree knew their territory better than anybody and possessed rifles through trade with the Europeans, making them a strong adversary.

• The basic social unit of the Cree was the nuclear family; the Cree did not recognize lineages or descendants, as the Cree did not pass political power along family lines but through bilateral marriage.

• The division of labor was based strictly on sex:

  • Men hunted, fished, trapped, engaged in warfare, and manufactured all necessary tools for those tasks

  • Women performed domestic duties: set up and cared for children, collected firewood made clothing.

• The practice of infanticide was present, but only as a necessity based on the availability of food a mother's ability to nurse.

• As children grew up, they were expected to help adults learn their roles.

• Youths of both sexes went on Vision Quests by themselves, and in Cree tradition, children did not share the vision with anyone else as the vision showed their individual purpose in life.

• Parents often arranged marriages of their children, sometimes even before birth, and women often had little choice.

• The marriage did not involve a ceremony, just the exchange of gifts.

• Some men had more than one wife, usually the sisters of their first wife, although adultery in Cree society was a cause for divorce.

• The Cree practiced dispersing personal items after one's death through a verbal will.

• Most Cree bands subsisted primarily by hunting and fishing, and a successful hunter or fisherman would share his catch with the rest of the band.

• The moose was the primary prey.

• Fish were the most significant resource in the summer, as many lakes and basins would freeze over in the winter months.

• Trapping and fur trade was critical to the Cree economy, especially during the winter when furs were best. Over the centuries after trade began in earnest with the Europeans, the Cree shifted from subsistence hunting and fishing to an emphasis on trapping and using the profits to purchase food at trading posts.

• Group ceremonies did not exist with the Cree, as most religious activities were at the individual level and associated with the individual's spirit from their childhood vision quest.

• The Great Spirit was called Manitou, who could possess most beings and things.

• Illness, injury, or death was considered the result of evil forces or enemy shamans and required the expertise of a band's shaman.

• Shamans were always men who possessed considerable Manitou power.