Cree indians
Cree Indians This is an introduction to the Cree Indians way of life explaining about the foods they ate, significance of story telling, myths, religious beliefs, rituals performed, and their present day way of life. ... Some native words used by Cree Indians: Kiwetin meaning the north wind that brings misfortune (Gill, Sullivan 158). ... The history of the Cree Indians begins where they live for the most part in Canada, and some share reservations with other tribes in North Dakota. The Cree Indians, an Alogonquian tribe sometimes called Knisteneau, were essentially forest people, though an offshoot, the so-called Plains Cree, were buffalo hunters. The Cree’s first encounter with white people was in 1640, the French Jesuits. The Cree Indians later lost many of their tribe in the 1776 break out of small pox, battles with the Sioux, and a defeat to the Blackfeet in 1870. The Cree lived by hunting, fishing, trapping, and using muskrat as one of their staples. ... The Cree lived in the Northern Plains, which was also home to the Sarsi, Blackfoot, Plains Ojibway, and Assiniboin. ... The introduction of the horse by the Spanish led to the plains Indians to become more able and skillful hunters. ... The Cree Indians used the art of storytelling as a process that continues in its meaning and importance for the present and even future. ... Indians used stories for entertainment, education, and to explain life (Penn 6). Penn interprets what most Americans have yet to realize about the Native American Indians legends and stories: Native American legends and stories combine over time, for the listener who hears them again and again, into a kind of epic of his community, her tribe, their family, and the relationship among them all. ... This Cree story told about a young man courting a woman for the wrong reasons. ... The Cree Indians mythology consisted of many things, an example is that curing is often done through spiritual intervention. The Cree call on the helping spirits “Pakahk” and “Maskwa”, a bear ally, to cure (Gill, Sullivan 120). ... A Cree ritual performed called the shaking tent is used to become a conjurer with the permission of the spirit Mistapew. ... Since contact with whites, seven linguistic families have divided these groups with the Plains Cree being one of them (Carmody 60). ... Indians would hold rituals calling upon each of the four winds to give them good gifts and keep back the bad. ... Joseph Epes Brown writes that, for plains Indians, animals and other natural forms reflected aspects of God: Animals were created before human beings, so that in their divine origin they have a certain proximity to the Great Spirit, which demands respect. ... The Cree had a ritual that included parts of a bear that were not edible like the skull and bones. ... The Cree did this every time they killed a bear so it would return to life to come back to be killed again. ... Recently eight Cree communities lands and traditional way of life were threatened in 1971 by the construction of the James Bay hydroelectric development project It has been contested because of Native rights, mercury pollution, loss of wildlife habitat, and other form of cultural and environmental disruption. ... It was hard for the Cree because of this destruction to be able to trap and hunt like they used to. ... The Cree nation is comprised of nine communities having a total population of well over 12,000 Eeyou (Cree People). ... Schooling for Cree children started from birth through the age of five to six years old becoming totally involved in learning their language, social patterns, traditional norms, expectations appropriate for their age and sex.