"Beaver" comes from Tsattine, "dwellers among the beaver." Today the people refer to themselves as Deneza or Dunne-za, "Real People." They were culturally similar to the Chipewyans and Sekanis. Traditional Beaver territory (in the mideighteenth century) is the prairies south of the Peace River and east of the Rocky Mountains and on the upper Peace River (present-day Alberta and British Columbia). They may once also have lived in the Lake Claire area and the upper parts of the Athapaska River. The Beaver population may have been between 1,000 and 1,500 in the seventeenth century. The Beaver people speak a Northern Athapaskan language.
A well-defined cosmology and mythology were intimately connected with vision quests. Young people fasted to acquire guardian spirits, mainly in dreams. Various food and behavioral taboos, as well as songs and medicine bundles, were associated with a particular animal spirit. The most important festival took place twice a year and involved the fire sacrifice of food to ensure continued bounty. Dreamers, or prophets—people in touch through dreams with the past and future—had special powers. Shamans were those who had acquired especially powerful guardian spirits. They cured by singing, blowing, and sucking illness-linked objects from the body.
Three or four independent bands had their own hunting areas and leaders. Leadership was based on skill and knowledge, which was in turn gained partly through experience and partly through dreaming. Bands were composed of hunting groups of roughly thirty people; the size and composition of the bands varied. Groups grew in size during the summer and broke into constituent parts in the winter and early spring.
Men might have more than one wife. Newlyweds lived with the woman's family and served her parents for a period of time, but descent was patriarchal. Corpses were placed on birchbark strips and buried in tree scaffolds or on platforms. Mourners gave away their possessions.
The typical dwelling was a three-pole conical moose or caribou skin teepee. Winter lodges of logs were covered with moss and earth. In the summer, people mainly lived in conical brush shelters or simple lean-tos.
The Beaver people were basically nomadic hunters of moose, caribou, beaver, and other animals. Men drove buffalo into enclosures as late as the early nineteenth century. Fish were not an important part of the diet except in emergencies. People also snared smaller animals, such as rabbits, and women gathered berries and other plant food.
Food was often hot-rock boiled in containers of spruce or birch bark or woven spruce roots. Bags were generally made of moose and caribou skins. Bark containers were important as well. Arrowheads were mostly flint, as were knife blades, although people also used moose horn or beaver teeth for this purpose. To encourage certain plants and animals, people regularly burned parts of the prairie.
Favorite trade locations included Vermilion and the mouth of the Smoky River. The relation of oral tradition was taken very seriously and considered a fine art. Women made most clothing from moose skin. Clothing consisted of shirts, leggings, fur-lined
Moccasins, and a knee-length coat. Men added breechclouts after being influenced by the Crees. Women sometimes wore a short apron. Clothing was decorated with porcupine quill embroidery. Women drew toboggans before the advent of dog power in the twentieth century. People traveled in spruce-bark and birchbark canoes as well as on snowshoes.
Ancestors of the Beavers were in their historical territory 10,000 years ago. The Beaver and Sekani people may once have been united. By the mideighteenth century, Crees, armed with guns, had confined the Beaver Indians to the Peace River basin. At that time, eastern Beaver groups joined the Crees, adopting many of their customs and habits, while western groups moved farther up the Peace River, toward the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. The Sarcees probably branched off from the Beaver Indians about that time as well.
In 1799, the leader Makenunatane (Swan Chief) sought to attract both missionaries and a trading post. The people became more and more involved in the fur trade during the nineteenth century. Most people had accepted Catholicism by about 1900, although many retained a core of their former religious ideas.
Although they had been obtaining arms and other items of non-Native manufacture for years, direct contact between the people and non-Native traders occurred only in 1876. New foods were introduced, and for the first time the people's subsistence activities were fundamentally altered. The Beavers signed Treaty 8 with Canada in 1899, under which the Indians accepted reserves but retained extensive subsistence rights. Canadian officials began appointing nominal chiefs after that.
In the early twentieth century, some Beaver people were raising horses and trapping for a living. By 1930, non-Native farmers had settled much of their territory. Construction of the Alaska Highway in the early 1940s disrupted the nomadic life of the last traditional Beaver bands, and in the 1950s and 1960s, oil and gas became major regional industries.
The ancient prophet tradition has waned in recent years, although dreamers' songs remain the basis for much ceremonialism as well as an important part of the summer gatherings known as Treaty 8 Days. The Alaska and Mackenzie Highway has separated the Beavers of Alberta and British Columbia from one another. Younger people are literate in English, although Beaver remains the first language for most.
Effective rule by Indian agents came to an end in the 1980s, when the people began to administer their own affairs through such organizations as the Treaty Eight Tribal Association. Children attend band and/or provincial and/or private schools. Most people have high school educations. In general, housing and social services are considered adequate.
See also Athapaskan Languages; Athapaskan
Peoples; Canada, Indian Policies of; Fur Trade.
"Carrier" comes from the French Porteur and is originally from a Sekani word referring to the custom among certain bands for widows to carry their dead husbands' bones on their backs in a birchbark container. They called themselves Takulli ("People Who Go upon the Water") in the nineteenth century, apparently a word given to them from without. The people usually refer to themselves by the subtribe or band name.
The Carriers were strongly influenced by Northwest Coast tribes and were culturally similar to the Sekanis and the Chilcotins. Carrier territory is the region of Eutsuk, Francis, Babine, and Stuart Lakes and the upper Skeena and Fraser Rivers in north central British Columbia. Their population numbered approximately 8,500 in the late eighteenth century. Carriers spoke dialects (Lower, Central, and Upper) of a Northern Athapaskan language.
Traditional religious belief may have included recognition of a supreme deity in the sky. Of key importance were a host of supernatural beings, mostly animal based, with whom the people tried to communicate through fasting and dreams. Through their rituals, the people sought to gain the favor and power of these spiritual beings. The people also believed in life after death, perhaps in a land to the west. Some especially Tsimshian-influenced groups adopted a secret cannibal society.
Young men fasted and dreamed in remote places in an effort to attract a guardian spirit protector (optional in the southern regions). Those with special power became shamans, who could cure illness, although they themselves might be killed if a patient died. Shamans could also retrieve lost souls and forecast the future.
Each of roughly fifteen independent subtribes/ regional bands was composed of one or more villages/local bands. The subtribes were associated with specific subsistence areas. In the south, leaders were heads of extended families who acted as spokesmen and subsistence coordinators. Shamans were also politically important in the south.
The most important political unit in central and northern areas was the hereditary matrilineal clan, of which there were roughly twenty. They were divided into houses, which had hereditary chiefs who supervised subsistence areas, provided for the poor, and represented clan interests in councils.
Society was divided into ranked, hereditary social classes of nobles, commoners, and a few slaves. Depending on the specific location, descent could be through the mother's or father's line. Except on the Tsimshian border, commoners had the possibility of obtaining sufficient goods to give pot-latches and attain the noble rank. Crests were displayed on totem poles, houses, and regalia. Crests, titles, and honors were considered clan property and could usually be bought and sold.
Trespass was considered a serious offense, but chiefs could often work out an arrangement or decide on appropriate compensation. The extended family was the main social and economic unit. Potlatching occurred in the north. Feasts were given and presents distributed at important life cycle events. The installation of a new chief was considered the most important occasion of all, requiring numerous potlatches. The entire potlatch complex became especially important from the late eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries.
Women were responsible for most domestic tasks, such as carrying water and firewood, cooking, tanning skins, and sewing clothing. Men made houses, tools, and weapons; fought; and acquired animal foods. Women gave birth in a specially constructed hut assisted by their husbands and/or other women. Names were taken from a hereditary stock, if available, or from dreams if not.
At adolescence, boys were encouraged to increase their level of physical activity, whereas girls were secluded and their activity restricted for up to two years. Young women selected a mate with their parents' assistance. The couple was engaged after the man gave valuable items to his prospective mother-in-law, and married after the couple spent the night together at a later date. They lived with the woman's parents for up to a year while the new husband helped provide for his new in-laws.
Corpses were cremated. Widows were expected to hold their husband's burning body for as long as they could. In the east, women carried the charred bones of their husbands on their backs for several years.
Semipermanent villages served as bases for hunting and fishing expeditions. Rectangular winter houses were built of pole frames covered with spruce bark, whose gabled roofs extended to the ground. These houses held several families. Some southern groups built underground winter lodges similar to those of the Chilcotins and Shuswaps. Summer houses had low, plank walls and plank or bark gabled roofs. There were also specialty menstrual, fishing, sweat, and smoking structures.
Fish, especially salmon, was perhaps the most important item in the diet, although this was less true in the south. People fished through the ice for carp and other species. Before the snow fell, men hunted caribou, mountain goats, and bear as well as smaller game such as beaver, marmot, and hare. Women gathered a number of roots, bulbs, greens, and berries.
The Carriers imported woven baskets from the Bella Coolas, Chilcotins, and Shuswaps; Chilkat blankets, cedar boxes, and stone labrets from the Tsimshians; and wooden cooking boxes, eulachon (smelt) oil, shell ornaments, and copper bracelets from other coast tribes. There was also some intratribal trade. The people mainly exported prepared hides and furs.
Men made spruce - and birchbark canoes as well as cottonwood dugouts. Goods were carried overland with the help of a tumpline and backpack. Snowshoes and toboggans arrived with the nonNatives. Skin clothing consisted of robes, leggings, and moccasins, with fur caps and mittens added in cold weather. In warm weather, men sometimes went naked; women wore a knee-length apron. High-status men wore Chilkat blankets for special occasions, and similarly ranked northern women wore wooden labrets in their mouths. Other ornaments were made of dentalium, bone, and haliotis shell.
The Carriers may have originated east of the Rocky Mountains and were probably in their historic location for at least several centuries before contact with non-Natives. Major epidemics began in the late eighteenth century, about the time they met the Scotch trader and explorer Alexander Mackenzie (1793).
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the Carriers began to acquire iron and other items of non-Native manufacture. With the growing value of the pelts of interior animals (beaver, marten, and lynx), Carrier wealth increased with their ability to export these products. Carrier control of some local trade networks in the early nineteenth century allowed some chiefs to amass wealth and power. Some high-ranking people began to intermarry with Bella Coola and Gitksan families around this time, as Northwest Coast cultural influences became much more pronounced.
The first local trade fort (James) was built in 1806 at Stuart Lake. A quasi Christian prophet movement arose among the Carriers beginning in the 1830s. An entire band was exterminated by smallpox in 1837. Catholic missionaries arrived in the 1840s. Penetration by miners, farmers, and ranchers from the midnineteenth century on led to increased disease and general problems for the Indians.
Another ramification of increased contact was the decline of the potlatching complex. Retention of material goods became more important than status gained by giving them away. Also, there was a growing need to accumulate items of non-Native manufacture just to survive, so giving them away became difficult. The Catholic Church also worked to eliminate potlatching.
Wage work, such as on ranches, as guides, in canneries, in sawmills, and at construction sites, began to take the place of traditional subsistence activities. The Carriers were prevented by law from preempting land after 1866. The Canadian Pacific Railway, completed in 1885, bisected Carrier territory. Most reserves were created in the later nineteenth century, although additional ones were established in the early twentieth century. Subsistence activities were increasingly government regulated by then.
Another railway line, completed in 1914, led to an influx of settlers and speculators. Commercial mining and lumbering began in the early twentieth century. Lumbering, including clear-cutting, expanded sharply after World War II. In the 1970s, the Carriers began organizing politically over the chronically unresolved issues of Native land title and rights.
Most Carriers today live in individual houses. Many still speak Carrier. Clans exist today, especially among the northern and central groups, although they are vastly less important than they used to be. Potlatch privileges and responsibilities are rarely observed except among the groups nearest the Tsimshian people. Most people are Christian, at least nominally, although ancient beliefs linger as well, including the power of dreams and the efficacy of shamans. Children attend band and/or provincial and/or private schools.
Local anti-Indian sentiment remains deeply entrenched. Carrier bands along the Nechako River have strongly opposed the completion of a hydroelectric project, the initial stages of which created forced relocations and other hardships for the people beginning in the 1950s. Struggles also continue over issues such as land title and rights. One example is the development of the so-called Mackenzie Grease Trail, which continues against Indian wishes and portrays them (when they are not ignored entirely) as little more than tourist attractions.
See also Athapaskan Languages; Athapaskan
Peoples; Fur Trade; Canada, Indian Policies of; Potlatch.
"Chilcotin" means "Inhabitants of Young Man's River." The Chilcotins were culturally related to the Carriers, the Interior Salish tribes, the Bella Coolas, and the Kwakiutls. The territory of the Chilcotins is along the headwaters of the Chilcotin River and the Anahim Lake district and from the Coast Range to near the Fraser River, British Columbia.
The Chilcotin population stood at approximately 1,500 in the seventeenth century. It increased to possibly 3,500 in the late eighteenth century. Chilcotin is a Northern Athapaskan language.
Boys, and girls to some extent, went into seclusion at adolescence to acquire a guardian spirit. Spirits, which could be any natural phenomenon, gave the person songs and dances as well as protective power. A person who acquired many spirits might become a shaman and engage in curing and seeing what most people could not. Shamans could use their power for evil as well as good, although evil against an individual was generally considered to be practiced only for the general good. Illnesses that were not soul related were treated by medical specialists.
Three or four autonomous bands were each composed of camp groups. Bands were defined as
People sharing a wintering territory. There was no overall leadership, and the people never joined or acted together in any way.
Bands were divided into social classes of nobles, commoners, and slaves. Nobles and commoners were arranged into clans, the most powerful of which was Raven. Descent was bilateral. Although sharing was highly valued, some people accumulated more material goods than did others. In those cases, the surplus was generally given away—effectively exchanged for prestige—in feasts. High rank was obtained by giving pot-latches.
Early adolescence was a time for adult training. Boys focused on endurance and survival skills. Girls were isolated during their first menstrual period, at which time they observed several behavioral restrictions and performed domestic tasks. Marriage occurred shortly after this adult training. Most marriages were arranged by parents with input from the children.
Women generally did all the camp work; men were responsible for getting animal foods, fighting, and making tools. The dead were buried in the ground, cremated, or simply left under a pile of rocks or branches. Social control was largely internalized. Extreme violators were ostracized or, rarely, killed.
People generally lived in rectangular, poleframed, earth-covered lodges with bark or brush walls and gable roofs. An open space at the top served as a smoke hole. There were also small, subterranean winter houses and dome-shaped sweat houses.
Men hunted a variety of animals including caribou, elk, mountain goat, sheep, and sometimes bear. Small animals like marmots, beaver, and rabbits were trapped, as were fowl. Men and women caught fish such as trout, whitefish, and salmon. Women gathered camas and other roots as well as a variety of berries.
Chilcotins acquired salmon from the Shuswaps and Bella Coolas. They also imported shell ornaments, cedar-bark headbands, wooden containers, and stone pestles from the Bella Coolas. They sent dried berries, paints, and furs to the Bella Coolas and furs, dentalium shells, and goat hair blankets woven by the Bella Coolas to other tribes. The people made fine coiled basketry with designs of humans and animals as well as geometric shapes. Although most travel was overland, men carved spruce-bark and dugout canoes, some with pointed prows like those of the interior Salish. Snowshoes were used for winter travel.
Dress generally consisted of moccasins, buckskin aprons, belts, and leggings. Cold weather gear included caps; robes of marmot, hare, or beaver; and woven wool and fur blankets. Men's hair was generally no longer than shoulder length, although women grew their hair long and often wore it in two braids. The people used a number of personal ornaments of bone, shell, teeth, and claws.
Trespass was a reason to fight, as were murder and feuding. Fighters wore red and black face paint. Ritual purification, including vomiting, took place after a raid. Those who had killed lived apart from others for a time.
Chilcotins first encountered non-Natives in either 1793 or 1815. Fort Alexandria, a trading post, was established in 1821. A gold strike around the Fraser River about 1860 led to the large-scale invasion of Indian lands and the widespread destruction of resources, with no compensation. Indian villages and even graves were looted by the newcomers.
There was a serious smallpox epidemic about 1862. Chilcotins sent out war parties to attack road builders. Several warriors, including Chiefs Tellot, Elexis, and Klatsassin, were captured and hanged. After the epidemics and the fighting, many survivors worked on non-Native-owned ranches, since Indians were explicitly excluded from preempting land, and much of their land was confiscated.
Missionaries helped establish villages that became reserves. They also significantly influenced the selection of chiefs, or headmen. Some groups merged with the Shuswaps and Carriers on the Fraser River at that time. Most were located on three reserves by 1900 and were largely acculturated. Stonies, or Stone Chilcotin bands, remained semitraditional in the western mountains. In the early twentieth century, most people hayed and/or sold a few head of cattle or some furs for a living. There was little contact with the outside world until the 1960s.
The westernmost people still cross the mountains to visit the Bella Coolas. Public lands containing natural resources from which Chilcotins traditionally derived subsistence have steadily decreased since the 1960s. Children attend various band and/or provincial and/or private schools.
See also Athapaskan Languages; Athapaskan
Peoples; Basketry; Canada, Indian Policies of; Potlatch.
"Chipewyan" meaning "pointed skins," comes from the Cree word chipwayanewok, referring to a style of drying beaver skins that left shirts pointed at the bottom. Their self-designation was Dene, "the People." Geographical divisions included the Athabaskans (Chipewyan proper), Desnedekenades, Ethaneldis (Caribou Eaters), and Thilanottines. The Yellowknifes (Tatsanottines) are sometimes considered to be a Chipewyan division. The people were known to the French as Montagnais, not to be confused with the people of eastern Canada.
There were probably between 4,000 and 5,000 Chipewyans in the seventeenth century. In the early eighteenth century, Chipewyans occupied a huge expanse north of the Churchill River between the Great Slave Lake and Hudson Bay, in the present-day Northwest Territories and northern Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Chipewyan land straddled the northernmost taiga and the southern tundra. The people spoke an Athapaskan language. The word "Athapascan" is taken from one of their divisions.
Communication with the spirit world through dreams and visions provided success in hunting and other activities. Owing to the harsh environment there were no herbal curers: All illness was considered a function of witchcraft, and shamans, by virtue of their spirit powers, acted as curers. After death, only good souls were said to inhabit an island full of game.
There were many autonomous bands of various sizes in each division. Regional bands (at least 200 to 400 people) came together during caribou migration periods and broke into smaller local bands (perhaps fifty or so people) at other times. Bands were associated with particular subsistence areas. Leaders had little or no authority beyond an immediate activity such as hunting or war.
Men were named after seasons, animals, or places, but women's names always included the word for "marten." In general, weaker men were at the mercy of the stronger, and women fared worst of all. Girls were separated from boys around late childhood, and women did most of the hardest work and were the first to go without food in lean times. Women were segregated during their first menstrual periods and, on subsequent occasions, were subjected to behavioral taboos. Women were married at the onset of adolescence, often to considerably older men.
Good hunters had more than one wife. Old and/or sick people were often abandoned to starve to death. The dead were generally left on the ground. When someone died, their property was destroyed. Widows cut off their hair and observed a year-long mourning period.
People lived in temporary encampments in open country in the summer and in the woods in the winter. Dwellings were conical caribou skin tents with a smoke hole at the top. Spruce boughs and caribou skins served as floors. The teepees were semi-insulated with snow around the base in winter.
The annual round of subsistence activities revolved around following the caribou, which was the main food for all Chipewyan groups. Caribou were driven into pounds, snared with ropes, and shot from canoes or by men on foot. Men also hunted buffalo, deer, bear, musk oxen, and moose. Some groups mixed dried meat with fat to make pemmican, which they stored in caribou intestines.
The people also snared and trapped small game and fowl. They fished for trout, whitefish, and pike. Most fish were smoked or sun dried. There were also some plant foods, such as moss and lichen (the latter generally eaten fermented in an animal's stomach).
Most tools were of stone and bone. The use of copper for tools such as hatchets, awls, knives, and arrow and spearheads probably came from the Yellowknife people. Water could be stone boiled in birchbark and caribou skin pots. Moss was used for baby diapers. The people also made drums.
Birchbark items were acquired from the Crees. The people also imported shell, including dental-ium, mainly for decorative purposes. There was some trade in copper in the late prehistoric period. Trade chiefs (captains) emerged in the mideighteenth century. Birchbark and spruce-bark canoes served as river transport. Snowshoes made from summer tent poles featured right and left sides. Women dragged heavy toboggans in the winter and served as pack animals in the summer, carrying goods, food, and skins on their backs. Dogs were not widely used as pack animals until the twentieth century.
Well-tanned caribou skin clothing consisted of shirts, leggings (sometimes joined to moccasins), breechclouts (for men), dresses (for women), caps, and mittens. Caribou robes were hooded and trimmed with fur. The hair on the hides was shaved off in the summer but left on and worn on the inside in the winter. Children wore body suits of rabbit skin.
The Chipewyans may have originated in the Rocky Mountains. The Hudson's Bay Company forced an uneasy truce between Chipewyans and Crees to their south in 1715, although fighting remained intermittent for another forty-five years. In 1717, the Hudson's Bay Company established a post at Churchill in Chipewyan territory.
The Chipewyans acquired firearms soon after contact with non-Natives, and they then expanded northward at the expense of the coast Inuits. They also harassed the Dogribs and the Yellowknifes by excluding them from the fort, cheating them of goods, and kidnapping their women. Chipewyans generally served as intermediaries in the fur trade between the British and the Yellowknifes and Dogribs until their monopoly was ended in the late eighteenth century. Chipewyans, such as the guides Thanadelther and Matonabbee, helped non-Natives explore the northland.
The people suffered a mortality rate of up to 90 percent in a 1781 smallpox epidemic. Survivors continued to trade at Fort Chipewyan, a closer North West Company fort, after 1788. Some groups moved into the boreal forest, where there were more furbearing animals, but in so doing they gave up their traditional dependence on the caribou.
Their subsequent lives were characterized by dependence on non-Native goods and poor health caused by malnutrition and disease. Missionaries worked among them from the midnineteenth century. They accepted reserves and $5 per-capita annuities in treaties signed from 1876 through 1906. Log cabin settlements were established in the 1920s. The post-World War II era saw increased school attendance, better health care, and the spread of social services among the people. In the 1960s, forcible relocation brought severe disruption to the most traditional group, the Caribou Eaters.
Hunting, fishing, and trapping remain important activities, although the bands live in permanent villages of log or frame houses. Most people are at least nominal Christians. Most people still speak Chipewyan as their first language. Some groups have moved from the more settled communities they were forced to inhabit back to more traditional areas, mainly to be closer to caribou.
See also Athapaskan Languages; Athapaskan
Peoples; Basketry; Canada, Indian Policies of; Canoes; Hudson's Bay Company; North West Company.
"Cree" comes from from Kristeneaux, a French word for the name (possibly Kenistenoag) of a small Cree band. The self-designation is either Ininiw ("person"), Nehiyawak (among the Woodland Crees, "those who speak the same language"), Atheneuwuck ("People"), or Sackawee-thinyoowuk ("Bush People"). Crees are commonly divided into Woodland (or Western Woods) Crees (west) and Muskegon (from Omaskekow), Swampy, or West Main Crees (east). Another division, the Plains Cree, is described elsewhere. The Eastern Crees, who live just east of James Bay, are generally regarded as being a division of the Naskapi/Montagnais (Innu). Cree speakers whose territory included land northwest of Quebec and Trois Rivieres are known as Tete-de-Boules, or Attikameks. It should be noted, however, that all such labels are spurious and that originally such groups consisted of autonomous groups or "nations."
Three divisions make up the Woodland Crees: Rocky Crees, Western Swampy Crees, and Strong-woods Crees. Information about the traditional lives of these people should be considered sketchy and incomplete. There may also have been a fourth group, the Athabaska-Crees. Traditional Swampy Cree bands include the Abitibi, Albany, Attawapiskat, Monsoni, Moose River (Mousousip-iou), Nipigon, Piscotagami, Severn, Winisk, and Winnipeg Indians.
Around 1700, the Crees lived from south of James Bay westward into eastern Alberta, north to around Fort Churchill and Lake Athabaska, and south to a line running roughly from just north of Lake of the Woods to the Lesser Slave Lake. Swampy Cree land was roughly the easternmost 330 kilometers of this territory, including a considerable portion of coastline along James and Hudson Bays. There were at least 20,000 Crees in the sixteenth century. Crees spoke dialects of a Central Algonquin language.
Woodland Crees believed in the ubiquitous presence of Manitou, the great spirit power. Some coastal people also believed in a number of powerful creatures such as dwarfs and cannibalistic giants (Windigo). Some groups may have had the Midewi-win (Medicine Dance), which they probably borrowed from the Anishinabe.
Adolescents fasted and secluded themselves to obtain dream visions; the guardian spirits that they
Interior of a Cree tent, ca. 1822. (Historical Picture Archive/Corbis)
Obtained in these visions were said to provide luck. Secret religious societies were dedicated to propitiating animal spirits. Shamans, or conjurers, wielded much authority, in part because of the general fear that they would use their powers for evil purposes (sorcery). Their legitimate functions were to divine the future and cure illness. The latter activity was often associated with a "shaking tent" ritual. Both men and women could become shamans. (Herbalists also cured illness.)
Small local bands, consisting of several extended families, were the basic political units. Bands remained separated except during the summer season, at which time they united on lake shores for ceremonies and councils. Band membership was fluid, and the bands probably had no clearly defined hunting territories. During the summer gatherings, temporary regional bands were led by chiefs, whose authority was based on merit as well as the possession of spiritual power.
In the west, local band chiefs might have as many as seven wives. Parents had a great deal of influence regarding their childrens' mates. Girls were often married before they reached puberty. Newly married men worked for their wives' parents for a period of time. Among the eastern people, divorce was easily obtained. Men might temporarily exchange their wives with others and/or "lend" them to strangers as an act of hospitality, although adultery by the wife was severely punished.
Both twins were not permitted to live. If twins of both sexes were born, the girl was killed (infant girls may have been killed under other circumstances as well). Children were generally raised with great affection and without physical punishment. Girls were subjected to isolation and a number of behavioral restrictions during and immediately following their first menstrual periods; a feast was held when a young man killed his first big game.
Widows and orphans were protected by the group. Death was not generally feared, and the very old or sick were often abandoned or killed. Corpses were wrapped in bark and buried in the ground or
On a scaffold. The people held an annual feast of the dead.
Murder was avenged by relatives. Crees were forced into cannibalism during periods of starvation. They learned tobacco smoking from the people of the Saint Lawrence Valley, and this custom became important among some groups. All groups held numerous athletic contests and games of skill. Singing and dancing occurred both socially and for luck (as in hunting).
Toward the south, the people lived in conical or dome-shaped birchbark wigwams with a three-pole foundation. Farther north and west, the lodges were covered with pine bark or caribou, elk, or moose skin. These structures sheltered extended families of ten or more people. There were also sweat lodges (used in curing and for cleanliness), menstrual lodges, and various caches and ceremonial pavilions.
Cree men were considered superb hunters. They targeted caribou, elk, moose, and beaver. They killed bear when they could get them, and hare when they could not. Some southern groups also hunted buffalo. There were many behavioral taboos and customs designed to mollify spirits related to the hunt. Every hunter carried his personal medicine pouch, and hides were often painted with red stripes and dots.
Fowl were plentiful, especially in certain areas. Woodland people fished only out of necessity, but Swampy Crees relied on fish such as lake trout, pike, whitefish, and pickerel. People on the coast occasionally ate seals and beluga whales, spearing them with harpoons. Seal fat was often added to meat and fish in the east.
The people made birchbark cooking vessels, except in the east, where woven spruce-root pots or soapstone pots (around James Bay) were used. Some vessels were also made of clay. Some groups used an Inuit-style curved knife for scraping hides, although farther west the women used a Plains-style tool shaped more like a chisel. A balancing stick was used while walking on snowshoes or pulling toboggans. Fire was generally kept alive as coals in a birchbark container.
People made birchbark canoes, toboggans (of juniper in the west), and elongated birch-frame snowshoes.
Artistic expression took the forms of fine moose hair, bird feather, and porcupine quill embroidery, of carved wood items, and of face and body tattooing and painting. Clothing generally contained painted geometric patterns and, later, beaded floral designs. There was some rock painting of both realistic and stylized animals, people, and mythological personages.
Moose, caribou, or elk skin clothing was often fringed. Clothing generally consisted of breech-clouts (belted in the east), shirts, dresses, belts, moccasins (extended in the winter), and long leggings. Winter gear included beaver and caribou robes, socks, mittens, and hats as well as woven hare skin coats and blankets and caribou coats. Women generally tattooed the corners of their mouths and men their entire bodies. Eastern men and women plucked facial hair, and head hair was often braided.
The Crees and Anishinabes probably share a common origin. Crees have been in their known aboriginal territory for at least 4,000 years. They first encountered non-Natives when the Henry Hudson exploration arrived in 1610.
The first trade forts were founded among the Swampy Crees beginning around 1670 and in the west from the mideighteenth century on. Crees serving as guides and trappers increased their importance to local fur trade companies. French and Scottish trappers and traders regularly intermarried with Cree Indians. The mixed-race offspring, known as Metis, eventually developed their own culture. Some fought two wars with Canada in the mid - to late nineteenth century over the issues of land rights and sovereignty.
In the early trade days (seventeenth century in the east and mideighteenth to early nineteenth centuries in the west), the Indians prospered in part by playing the French and British against each other. Their acquisition of firearms from the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as the completion of an alliance with the Assiniboines, precipitated a tremendous expansion almost to the Arctic Sea, the Rocky Mountains, and the Red River region. Groups of Crees arriving on the Great Plains, near the end of the seventeenth century, adopted many elements of classic Plains culture, especially including dependence on the buffalo.
Jesuit missionaries began working among the Swampy Crees for a short time in the late seventeenth century. The region was devoid of missionaries, however, from then until 1823, when the Church of England established a presence. By 1717, the Swampy Crees had become dependent on nonNative traders for necessities such as cloth, blankets,
And even food, in addition to trade goods. New foods included sugar and flour; alcohol and tobacco were also valued. Many traditional customs changed or disappeared during the trade period.
The people were devastated by smallpox in the early 1780s. Survivors succumbed to alcohol and were often attacked by enemies, including the Blackfeet Confederacy. Furthermore, the Crees' strong trade position led to overtrapping as well as the depletion of the moose and caribou herds by the early nineteenth century. Although the effects were partially offset by the Indians' growing dependence on items of non-Native manufacture, these trends combined to shrink the Indians' land base. Also about that time, western Crees, now using an iron chisel and moving on dogsleds, began taking more of an interest in fishing.
When the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company merged in 1821, many Crees began to abandon their traditional nomadic lives in favor of settlement at or near trade posts. Eventually, all-Indian communities arose in these areas. There was a second devastating smallpox epidemic in 1838. The people never fully recovered from this event. Severe tuberculosis and influenza epidemics struck in the early twentieth century as well.
Heavy missionary activity began in the midnineteenth century. Most Indians were at least nominally Christian by the midtwentieth century, although many western groups retained a core of traditional beliefs and practices. In the midnineteenth century, northern and eastern groups adopted a missionary-devised syllabary that soon gained wide acceptance. Parallel to this development was the elimination of practically all traditional religion in favor of the Churches of Rome and England.
The treaty and reserve period began in the 1870s. People began slowly to settle into all-Native log cabin communities, and the election of chiefs was made mandatory in the 1920s. Although their land and resources were being gradually but steadily whittled away, Crees were able to use their land in at least a semitraditional way well into the twentieth century.
After World War II, however, many Swampy Crees, their land essentially trapped out, began working in local cities and towns such as Moosonee and Churchill. Many Woodland Crees altered their lives fundamentally for the first time, attending school, using non-Native medicine, accepting government financial assistance, and becoming connected to the outside world via road and air links. The advent of relatively extensive roads and rail lines in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the expansion of the forestry industry, greatly increased pollution. At the same time there was a dramatic reduction in game animals. In 1975, the Eastern Crees and Inuits ceded over 640,000 square kilometers of land to the James Bay Hydroelectric Project, in exchange for promises of hundreds of millions of dollars and various other provisions.
In recent years, Crees have attained greater control over local services and resources and the ability to maintain legal pressure on non-Native governments. The Cree school system in Quebec is under Native control. Perhaps half of all Crees speak their Native language. Yet the people face several crises, including the destruction of natural resources, the need for appropriate economic development, and the need to forge a viable relationship with provincial and national governments. Crees still face severe morale problems stemming from over a century of chronic disease, ill treatment at the hands of non-Natives, and a diminished capability to pursue their traditional way of life. Clear - and overcutting of forests have also negatively affected Cree hunting and trapping lands.
The Lubicon band of Treaty 8 area never received the reserve promised them in 1939. The region around Lubicon Lake, in northern Alberta, is rich in oil. In the 1970s, the band unsuccessfully fought to prevent road construction into the drilling site. By the early 1980s there were hundreds of oil wells in and near the community, creating dangerous levels of pollution.
The band is pressing for compensation for "irreparable damage to their way of life." Once a self-sustaining hunting community, its people now depend on welfare to survive. However, two subgroups have settled with the government. The newly created Woodland Cree band (unrecognized by treaty chiefs) received a reserve of 142 square kilometers and a financial settlement of almost $50 million. The Loon Lake people are negotiating for a $30 million settlement.
See also Buffalo; Canada, Indian Policies of; Canoes; Coon Come, Matthew; Cree-Naskapi Act; James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement; Metis Nation Accord; Husdon's Bay Company; Trade.
"Dogrib," from their self-designation Thlingchadinne ("Dog Flank People"), signifies their legendary descent from a dog. The people also call themselves Done, "Men" or "People." They are culturally related to the Slaveys. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Dogribs lived between Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes, Northwest Territories, an area that included both forest and tundra. There were perhaps 1,250 Dogribs in the late seventeenth century. Dogrib is a Northeastern Athapaskan language.
People acquired guardian spirits in dreams. They also made offerings to spirits that inhabited bodies of water. Shamans caused and cured disease and foretold the future.
There were traditionally four autonomous bands, or divisions (Lintchanres, Takfwelottines, Tsantieottines, and Tseottines). Band leadership was informal; a chief hunter had helpful spiritual power but little authority. Bands were composed of local hunting groups. Membership in all groups was fluid. When a young man killed his first game, his peers would strip him and wish him continued good luck. Only indirect address was considered polite. The people enjoyed games and dancing, the latter often accompanied by group male singing.
People's names often changed at the birth of their children. Brothers and sisters remained reserved with each other, as did a man with his brother-in-law and father-in-law. Men might have more than one wife, but they were required to serve their new in-laws for a period of time after the marriage. There may have been a practice of wrestling for wives as well as some female infanticide.
The elderly or ill were often abandoned. Streamers attached to burial scaffolds were meant to placate the spirits of the dead. Mourners destroyed most of their own property, and the women slashed their bodies. A memorial feast was held a year following the death.
Dogribs lived in conical teepees covered with as many as forty caribou skins sewn together with sinew or babiche. The sides were covered with snow in the winter. There were also some rectangular pole-and-brush winter huts. In the coldest weather, people often slept outside in skin bags to avoid the interior drafts.
Men hunted mainly caribou, which they snared in pounds and speared in lakes, in the forests, and on short trips onto the tundra. They also hunted musk ox, moose, hare and other small game, fowl,
A Dogrib man carries home meat after a successful caribou hunt in the late 1990s. (Lowell Georgia/Corbis)
And birds. There was some fishing; later, with decreasing game in the nineteenth century, fish gradually assumed a greater importance in the diet. Women gathered some berries and other plant foods as well as poplar sap. Food taboos included the weasel, wolf, skunk, and dog.
The people exported Native copper to the Slaveys and Yellowknifes, among other groups. They also traded in caribou skins, flint, chert, and pyrites as well as Inuit bone and ivory knives. They exported moose and fish products. Women decorated a number of items, such as moccasins, shirts, and bags, with woven quillwork or moose hair. Musical instruments included drums and caribou hoof rattles. Most transportation was overland using sleds and snowshoes. Birchbark canoes were caulked with spruce gum. Typical clothing included a tailored skin shirt, breechclout, leggings, and moc-
Casins. Winter items included moose hide blankets, fur robes, hats, and mittens.
The people may have come to their historic location from the south and east. They first encountered non-Natives in either 1744 or 1771. The first trade posts were built in the 1790s.
The fur trade and provisioning were the dominant economic activities throughout the nineteenth century, during which time the people gradually began settling around trade posts. Fort Rae (1852) marked the first permanent local post and the beginning of extensive contact for most Dogribs with nonNatives. Fur trading became much more important at that time, especially after 1900 and the end of the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly. In addition to the usual fur-bearing animals, musk ox robes were also in demand.
The people suffered severe epidemics from 1859 onward. Most Dogribs had been baptized Catholic by 1870. The first treaty with Canada was signed in 1900. In 1920, the Dogribs stopped accepting government payments as a protest against hunting and fishing restrictions. This issue was resolved when they accepted a special designation, but the signed agreement was later lost.
As part of a 1921 treaty, the leader Monphwi became a "government chief," and band leaders formed an official council. There was a brief local gold rush, at Great Bear Lake, in 1930. The people were largely monolingual and semitraditional through the 1940s.
Band membership is still recognized and considered important. Although the language is still in use, there is a high degree of acculturation among the people. Modern housing, non-Native education, welfare eligibility, and medical services date from the 1960s. Their lands are being rapidly developed, mainly by mineral extraction industries, without Dogrib input. This had led to a decision to negotiate a land claim settlement with the Canadian government in an effort to gain some control over development.
See also Athapaskan Languages; Athapaskan
People; Canada, Indian Policies of; Fur Trade; Hudson's Bay Company.
"Gwich'in" means "People." The Gwich'ins were a group of tribes or bands who called themselves by various names, each having the suffix "-kutchin."
The name of one band—lukkuth, or "People of the Slanting Eyes"—was translated by the French to Loucheux, a name now commonly used to designate the Gwich'in people. Their self-designation is Dind-jie, "Person." They were culturally related to the Hans, Tutchones, and Tananas and were culturally influenced by the Inuits as well as the Tlingits.
Gwich'in territory is the Peel River Basin to its junction with the Mackenzie River as well as the Yukon River drainage (Alaska and Yukon). The Gwich'in population was between 3,000 and 5,000 in the eighteenth century. Gwich'ins spoke dialects of Kutchin, a Northern Athapaskan language.
Shamans acquired spiritual power through fasting and dreaming. They could foretell the future, cure illness, and control the weather. They were quite powerful in the west but less so in the east. In general, most people seldom came in "official" contact with the shamans.
Spirits inhabiting nature were mollified with offerings of beads. Hunters prayed to moon-related deities, offering pieces of caribou fat thrown into the fire. Ceremonial feasts, including singing and dancing, were held on various occasions. The main ceremonies revolved around life cycle events, lunar eclipses, and memorial potlatches. Bear and caribou were considered to be especially deserving of respect, in part owing to a supposed physical connection (shared hearts) between people and caribou.
Tribal chiefs were chosen for their leadership qualities or wealth. In some cases the positions were hereditary, but leaders had no real power. Local groups (two or so extended families) lived in a defined area and used its resources.
Animal-associated matrilineal clans declined in importance from west to east. The clans had marriage and ceremonial functions, playing significant roles in feasts and games. There were three social classes that may have been ranked: the "dark people" (Crow), "fair people" (Wolf), and "halfway people" (no crest). There were also some slaves, although they probably were not purchased.
Women carried babies in their coats or in birch-bark containers. They also performed most of the hard work (except for cooking, which men did) and ate only after the men had finished. Women generally selected husbands for their daughters. Female infants, as well as the elderly, were sometimes killed. From shortly before puberty until marriage, young men moved away from their parents to live in a lodge with other such young men. This was a period of self-denial and skill sharpening.
Young women were segregated during their menstrual periods. At that time they observed many taboos, such as not looking at others, designed to prevent others from being "contaminated" by their "condition." The dead were cremated. Their ashes were hung in bags from poles, or, if the person were particularly influential, the body was placed in a coffin in a tree until it decayed and then it was burned. Relatives destroyed their own property and cut their bodies.
Hospitality was a key value. The nuclear family was the basic unit, but grandparents might sleep in a nearby lodge and spend a great deal of time with the family. Rich men of certain tribes gave potlatches but usually only at funerals. Everyone enjoyed singing, dancing, games, and contests. Games included stick and hand games, ball games, and athletic contests. Witches were greatly feared.
Dome-shaped, caribou skin tents were stretched over curved spruce poles painted red. These portable lodges were about twelve to fourteen feet long and six to eight feet high. There was a smoke hole at the top, fir boughs for flooring, and bough and snow insulation. Some groups covered the lodges with birchbark instead of caribou skin. Some groups built semisubterranean dwellings of moss blocks covering a wood frame, with gabled roofs. When traveling, men sometimes built dugout snow houses glazed with fire.
Fishing took place mainly in the summer. Men hunted mainly caribou but also moose, hare, beaver, muskrat, and other game. Dogs often assisted in the hunt. People also ate waterfowl and plant foods, such as berries, rhubarb, and roots.
In addition to the many nonfood items derived from the caribou, important material items included wooden and birchbark trays, woven spruce and tamarack root baskets and cooking vessels, and other containers made of bentwood and birchbark. There were any number of tools with which to work hides, bone, and wood. Blades were mostly of stone and bone. Musical instruments included wooden gongs, drums, and willow whistles.
Sleds were made with high-framed runners, which might be covered with bone or frozen sod coated with water or blood. Inuit-style birchbark canoes had flat bottoms and nearly straight sides. The people also used moose skin canoes, toboggans, and particularly well-made long, narrow snowshoes with babiche netting.
Most clothing came from white caribou skin as well as furs. Shirts were pointed both front and rear.
Wide (Inuit-style) leggings attached to moccasins were beaded or embroidered with porcupine quill designs along the sides. Winter gear included long mittens, headbands, fur hats, and winter hoods. Most clothing was fringed and/or decorated with seeds or dentalium shell beads and/or painted and embroidered with porcupine quills.
Both sexes, but especially men, wore quill and dentalium shell personal ornamentation. Men also skewered their noses; women simply wore nose decorations. People took particular care of their hair. Men applied a large amount of grease to their hair and wore it in a ball at the neck, covered with bird down and feathers. They also painted their faces red and black. Women tattooed lines on their chins.
Gwich'in people encountered the Mackenzie expedition in 1789. The North West Company founded Fort Good Hope in 1806; other trading posts followed in 1839 (Fort MacPherson) and 1847 (Fort Yukon). Fur trapping gained in importance among the people during the nineteenth century. Catholic and Protestant (Church of England) missions worked in Gwich'in territory from the midnineteenth century on. Missionaries introduced a system of reading and writing (called Tukudh) in the 1870s.
Major epidemics stalked the people during the 1860s and 1870s, and again in 1897 and into the twentieth century. Many Gwich'ins left their immediate region to take advantage of the local whaling boom at the end of the nineteenth century. The Klondike gold rush (1896) brought an influx of nonNatives into the region, many of whom abused the Indians and stole their land. Religious residential schools existed from 1905.
Some groups live in small wood-frame houses. Although some have access to modern inventions such as snowmobiles, televisions, and satellite dishes, more than most other Indians the Gwich'ins have been able to retain a semiaboriginal lifestyle and culture, including religious beliefs, to a considerable degree (although less so in Fort Yukon). Most are fluent in English, although there are efforts to retain the Native language. The people are fighting to maintain the health and existence of the Porcupine caribou herd, which is threatened by development-related resource destruction.
See also Athapaskan Languages; Athapaskan
People; Canada, Indian Policies of; North West Company.
See Ingalik; Gwich'in.
"Hare" comes from the people's reliance on the Arctic or snowshoe hare. Their self-designation was Kawchottine, "People of the Great Hares," or Kasogo-tine, "Big Willow People." They were culturally similar to the Kutchins and Dogribs. This description of "aboriginal" culture includes some postcontact influences.
Hare Indians lived and continue to live west (to just past the Mackenzie River) and northwest of Great Bear Lake, in the present-day Northwest Territories. They ranged in parts of Alberta, the Yukon, and Alaska. This territory includes tundra, taiga, mountains, and intermediary areas. There were probably no more than 800 Hares in the early eighteenth century. Hare is a Northern Athapaskan language.
Guardian spirits formed the basis of Hare religious belief. Spirit helpers were not formally sought out but appeared in dreams. Shamans were able to attract particularly powerful guardians through dreams and visions. Cures were effected by using medicinal plants, singing, and sucking. Shamans sometimes hung by ropes from trees or tent poles when communicating with the spirits. Religious feasts included a memorial to the dead a year after death and on the occasion of a new moon.
There were perhaps five to seven small, autonomous, nomadic bands of fluid size and composition. The bands had defined hunting territories but only informal leaders, with little authority other than their people's respect for their hunting and/or curing abilities.
Sharing and generosity were highly valued. The bands gathered together several times a year for ceremonies, socializing, and hunting and fishing during migration and spawning seasons. Girls entering puberty were isolated in special huts and required to observe food and behavior taboos. Certain of these taboos, such as those regarding fish and animals, were continued during every monthly period. A feast would be held for young men who killed their first big game.
Intermarriage was common with several peoples, such as the Bearlake Mountain (Kaska and other tribes) and Kutchin Indians. Marriage occurred in the early teens and was generally arranged, although divorce was readily available. There was some period of bride service after marriage.
World History
