The Cree FHS and the Cree Indians

from various contributors

According to the book The Native Tribes of North America written by Michael Johnson, The Kristineaux or Cree Indians were one of the largest and most important native tribes of the North American continent. They were an Algonkian people related to the Montagnais, Menomini, Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo and Shawnee. The term “Kristineaux" from Kenistenoag or KnistEn'O is the French version of their native name, the form “Cree” being contracted from Kristineaux during the fur trade period. The designation has no literal translation; and neither does the Plains Cree term for themselves, “Nehuawak" or “Nehiyawak”.

The Crees’ importance was due mainly to the position they held in the Canadian fur trade, and the influence that position gave them with other tribes. The Cree were scarcely a tribe in the popular sense but rather a collection of bands, groups, even families, scattered through an immense area due to their rearrangement in western Canada while engaged in the activities of the Hudson Bay Company. At the height of Cree power no tribe in North America ever occupied such a large area. Whilst the Cree were scattered so widely there were only minor dialectical differences between most of the bands; however, due to long separation there were slight differences between the languages of the Plains and Woods Cree. In short, before their historic westward expansion they were a typical eastem Subartic tribe of the Algonkian linguistic stock. They can be generally subdivided into the West Main Cree, Woods Cree and Plains Cree. However, there were probably Cree in the west before the advance of the fur trade, and an old group known as the Rocky Cree may have been in Saskatchewan before European contact.

Although the Cree Indians have no known direct genealogical connection with those of the surname Cree, that potential relationship is often remarked upon. For example, Annie Sommerville of Southampton, England, wrote in March 1996 in response to Mike Spathaky's exchange of letters in the national Daily Mail newspaper concerning Katherine Longdon’s claimed Cree origins from the Indians of North America. Annie wrote, I have enclosed a copy of a photograph of my great-grandfather James Cree with his wife Elizabeth McAlastair-Blackwood, and two of their children, Robert and Elizabeth (my grandmother). As you can see from the photo, James Cree is a very tall, very dark gentleman.

When I spoke to Annie on the telephone she explained that many members of her family were of a dark complexion and that she had long believed that the Cree Indian origin was quite plausible. The fact that the renowned Pocahontas, the daughter of an Indian chief, married an Englishman and travelled to England as early as the 1600s opens up the possibility that a number of other native Americans may have subsequently made the same journey at a later date.

The Scotch-Irish settlers of North America, of whom the Cree families of Pennsylvania are numbered, were certainly frontier people who had considerable contact with the Indians. A map of 1750 indicates that they formed an initial buffer zone along the Appalachian Mountains after which they struck out west over the River Ohio to settle new lands in what was called in 1787, the Northwest Territory. Dr Jay Randall Worch (Cree FHS 81) sent Mike Spathaky (Cree FHS 1) a copy of a letter he had written which recounted the experiences of his great-great-great-great-grandmother, Sarah Cree (1789-?), the grand-daughter of Robert Cree of Pennsylvania (1732?-1813). Sarah Cree (Van Schoich) was living close to Columbus, Ohio, where she was looking after her grand- daughter, Emily Butt (1836-1918). On more than one occasion, my Dad told me of the story about his great-grandma and her encounter with the Indians up in Delaware County. As a young boy of seven or eight years of age Dad would sit on her lap while she told him the story about how she got into big trouble when she was about three years old (1839). She went on to say that, one day while her grandma (Sarah Van Schoich) was taking care of her, she wandered out back of the cabin and noticed two Indians in the woods, near the cabin clearing, and they were motioning to little Emily to come to them so that they could give her a little home made doll they were showing her. The doll was made from a corn cob, corn silk, and corn leaves. Seeing the Indians and seeing that they had this little doll for her, she started toward the woods. Just about the time she was to reach them she heard a loud scream behind her and turned around to see her grandma running towards her waving her arms. Her grandma screamed at the Indians to get away, grabbed Emily, and ran back toward the cabin. Once there Emily’s grandma scolded her saying, ”I told you never to go near those savages!”

A different reference to Cree contact with the Indians states that After Vicksburg, Theodore G. Cree was commissioned a second lieutenant in an Iowa regiment and became captain of the 23rd Iowa Infantry but August 27, 1863, resigned because of ill health and migrated to Colorado. August 20, 1864, Cree was mustered in as captain of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry, a 100-day outfit, to fight Indians.