The Cree
Lark Ritchie - (
Our Roots - Chapleau Cree History
- The People of the Moosonee - Moose Factory Area
http://www.geocities.com/chapleaucree/mfhist.html Date accessed: 18 January 2008.)
Sources: Queen's University Weeneebayko Program (http://www.queensu.ca/fmed/
Native Peoples: The Canadian Experience, (2nd ed. 1995), edited by R. Bruce Morrison and C.
Roderick Wilson, published by McCelland & Stewart (link at
http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/CulturalViability/Cree/Feit1/feit1.html)
Our ancestors did not live in the European version of Eden. We lived and travelled on and
along the shores of some of the larges bodies of water on this continent. Much of our land is
Black Spruce swamp, even upstream, into the traditional lands in which we Chapleau Cree
now live. Our Moosonee/Moose Factory cousins are sometimes referred to as the 'Swampy
Cree' (more truthfully, this name is given to our neigbours on the eastern, or Quebec side of
the 'bay.) And yet, we are all part of the same family. Arbitrary borders try to separate us, but
we have lived in this native land for a long time. It has been inhabited by our our people since
the glaciers left about 5,000 years ago.
With the aid of the river systems. portages and the canoe, our people acquired traded goods through an extensive aboriginal trade network that linked them with Native groups farther south. It was not a comercial industry. It was a way of life, and trade was only a by-product of meeting our neighbours. Young men, sometimes with their families, would spend a major part of the summer traveling and living on the traditional trade routes moving from one camp to another. In a relay system of trading, goods would make their way into and out of the region. It was a slow but effective system. We needed little; fish nets, some tools, tobacco and maize. Soapstone excavated in the southern James Bay area was traded inland to our Mistassini cousins, (now northern Quebec) who used it to make tobacco pipes.
One day, visitors came to our land. Our grandfathers, hunters, and trappers, naturally became guides to these English and French
visitors. To the visitors, this was a strange and dangerous land. It was our home. They traded tools and goods for food. It was a good deal.
In time others came. And, as we traded with our neighbours, we traded with them. And we took them into the land, as we did with the first visitors. And we fed them, and took them with us when we hunted, and we showed them how to catch the animals they wanted. Most of the time, we had good relations with them. Many of us now have names of the men who entered into our hospitable way of life.