THE CREE INDIANS, OR EYTHINYUWUK.
The various Tribes of the Crees.--Their Conquests and subsequent
Defeat.--Their Wars with the Blackfeet.--Their Character.--
Tattooing.--Their Dress.--Fondness for their Children.--The Cree
Cradle.--Vapor Baths.--Games.--Their religious Ideas.--The Cree
Tartarus and Elysium.
The various tribes of the Crees, or Eythinyuwuk, range from the Rocky
Mountains and the plains of the Saskatchewan to the swampy shores of
Hudson’s Bay. Towards the west and north they border on the Tinné,
towards the east and south, on the Ojibbeway or Sauteurs, who belong
like them to the great family of the Lenni-lenape Indians, and inhabit
the lands between Lake Winipeg and Lake Superior.
About sixty years since, at the time when Napoleon was deluging Europe
with blood, the Crees likewise played the part of conquerors, and
subdued even more extensive, though less valuable domains.
Provided with fire-arms, which at that time were unknown to their
northern and western neighbors, they advanced as far as the Arctic
Circle, imposing tribute on the various tribes of the Tinné. But
their triumphs were not more durable than those of the great European
conqueror.
The small-pox broke out among them and swept them away by thousands.
Meanwhile the Tinné tribes had remained untouched by this terrible
scourge; and as the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company, advancing
farther and farther to the west and north, had likewise made them
acquainted with the use of fire-arms, they in their turn became the
aggressors, and drove the Crees before them. Their former conquerors
now partly migrated to the south, and leaving the forest region, where
they had hunted the reindeer and the elk, spread over the prairies of
the Saskatchewan, where they now pursued the herds of bison, sometimes
driving them over a precipice, or chasing them on foot through the
snow. But in their new abodes they became engaged in constant feuds
with their new neighbors the Assiniboins and Blackfeet, who of course
resented their intrusion.
The romance in which the manners and character of the Indians are
portrayed might lead us to attribute to these people a loftiness of
soul for which it would be vain to look in the present day, and which
without much skepticism we may assert they never really possessed.
Actions prompted only by the caprice of a barbarous people have been
considered as the results of refined sentiment; and savage cunning,
seen through the false medium of prejudice, assumed the nobler
proportions of a far-sighted policy. But though the history of the wars
of the Indians among themselves and with the Europeans affords but few
instances of heroism, it abounds in traits of revolting cruelty, and in
pictures of indescribable wretchedness.
[Illustration: 118. A HERD OF BISON.]
A large party of Blackfeet once made a successful foray in the
territory of the Crees. But meanwhile the latter surprised the camp
where the aggressors had left their wives and children; and thus, when
the Blackfeet returned to their tents, they found desolation and death
where they looked for a joyful welcome. In their despair they cast away
their arms and their booty, and retired to the mountains, where for
three days and nights they wailed and mourned.
[Illustration: 119. DRIVING BISON OVER A PRECIPICE.]
In the year 1840 a bloody war broke out between the Crees and the
Blackfeet, arising as in general from a very trifling cause. Peace was
at length concluded, but while the two nations were celebrating this
fortunate event with games and races, a Cree stole a ragged blanket,
and a new fight immediately began. Returning home, the Blackfeet met
a Cree chieftain, with two of his warriors, and killed them after a
short altercation. Soon after the Crees surprised and murdered some of
the Blackfeet, and thus the war raged more furiously than ever. Sir
George Simpson, who was travelling through the country at the time,
visited the hut of a Cree who had been wounded in the conflict at
the peace meeting. As in his flight he bent over his horse’s neck, a
ball had struck him on the right side, and remained sticking near the
articulation of the left shoulder. In this condition he had already
lain for three-and-thirty days, his left arm frightfully swollen, and
the rest of his body emaciated to a skeleton. Near the dying savage,
whose glassy eye and contracted features spoke of the dreadful pain of
which he disdained to speak, lay his child, reduced to skin and bones,
and expressing by a perpetual moaning the pangs of illness and hunger,
while most to be pitied perhaps of this wretched family was the wife
and mother, who seemed to be sinking under the double load of care and
fatigue. During the night the “medicine-man” was busy beating his magic
drum and driving away the evil spirits from the hut.
Although the Crees show great fortitude in enduring hunger and the
other evils incident to a hunter’s life, yet any unusual accident
dispirits them at once, and they seldom venture to meet their enemies
in open warfare, or even to surprise them, unless they have a great
advantage in point of numbers. Instances of personal bravery like that
of the Esquimaux are rare indeed among them. Superior in personal
appearance to the Tinné, they are less honest, and though perhaps
not so much given to falsehood as the Tinné, are more turbulent and
more prompt to invade the rights of their countrymen, as well as of
neighboring nations.
Tattooing is almost universal among them. The women are in general
content with having one or two lines drawn from the corners of the
mouth towards the angles of the lower jaw, but some of the men have
their bodies covered with lines and figures. It seems to be considered
by most rather as a proof of courage than an ornament, as the
operation is both painful and tedious. The lines on the face are formed
by dexterously running an awl under the cuticle, and then drawing a
cord, dipped in charcoal and water, through the canal thus formed. The
punctures on the body are made by needles of various sizes, set in a
frame. A number of hawk-bells attached to this frame serve, by their
noise, to cover the groans of the sufferer, and probably for the same
reason the process is accompanied with singing. An indelible stain is
produced by rubbing a little finely-powdered willow-charcoal into the
puncture. A half-breed, whose arm was amputated by Sir John Richardson,
declared that tatooing was not only the more painful operation of the
two, but rendered infinitely more difficult to bear by its tediousness,
having lasted, in his case, three days.
The Crees are also fond of painting their faces with vermilion and
charcoal. In general the dress of the male consists of a blanket thrown
over the shoulders, a leathern shirt or jacket, and a piece of cloth
tied round the middle. The women have in addition a long petticoat, and
both sexes wear a kind of wide hose, which, reaching from the ankle
to the middle of the thigh, are suspended by strings to the girdle.
These hose, or “Indian stockings,” are commonly ornamented with beads
or ribands, and from their convenience have been universally adopted
by the white residents, as an essential part of their winter-clothing.
Their shoes, or rather soft boots (for they tie round the ankle), are
made of dressed moose-skins; and during the winter they wrap several
pieces of blanket round their feet. They are fond of European articles
of dress, such as great-coats, shawls, and calicoes, which, however
showy they may be at first, are soon reduced to a very filthy condition
by their custom of greasing the face and hair with soft fat or marrow.
This practice they say preserves the skin soft, and protects it from
cold in the winter and the mosquitoes in summer; but it renders their
presence disagreeable to Europeans who may chance to be seated near
them in a close tent and near a hot fire.
[Illustration: 120. WATCHING FOR CREES.]
The Cree women are not in general treated harshly by their husbands:
a great part of the labor, however, falls to the lot of the wife. She
makes the hut, cooks, dresses the skins, and for the most part carries
the heaviest load; but when she is unable to perform her task, the
husband does not consider it beneath his dignity to assist her.
The Crees are extremely indulgent to their children. The father never
chastises them; and the mother, though more hasty in her temper, seldom
bestows a blow on a troublesome child.
The cradle in use among them is well adapted to their mode of life,
and is one of their neatest articles of furniture, being generally
ornamented with beads and bits of scarlet cloth, but it bears a very
strong resemblance in its form to a mummy-case. The infant is placed
in this bag, having its lower extremities wrapped up in soft sphagnum,
or bog-moss, and may be hung up in the tent or to the branch of a
tree, without the least danger of tumbling out; or, in a journey may
be suspended on the mother’s back by a band which crosses the forehead
so as to leave her hands free. The sphagnum forms a soft elastic bed,
which absorbs moisture very readily, and affords such a protection
from the winter cold that its place would be ill supplied by any other
material.
[Illustration: 121. A CREE VILLAGE.]
The ordinary wigwams, skin tents, or “lodges” of the Tinné and Crees
are exactly alike in form, being extended on poles set up in a conical
manner; but as a general rule the tents of the latter are more
commodious and more frequently supplied with a fresh lining of the
spray of the balsam-fir. They also occasionally erect a larger dwelling
of lattice-work, covered with birch-bark, in which forty men or more
can assemble for feasting, debating, or performing some of their
religious ceremonies. The entire nation of the Eythinyuwuk cultivate
oratory more than their northern neighbors, who express themselves more
simply and far less fluently.
Vapor baths are in common use with the Crees, and form one of the
chief remedies of their medicine-men. The operator shuts himself
up with his patient in the small sweating-house--in which red-hot
stones besprinkled with water, and having a few leaves of a species of
_prunus_ strewed around them, produce a damp atmosphere of a stifling
heat--and shampoos him, singing all the time a kind of hymn. As long
as the medicine-man can hold out, so long must the patient endure the
intense heat of the bath, and then, if the invalid be able to move,
they both plunge into the river. If the patient does not recover, he is
at least more speedily released from his sufferings by this powerful
remedy.
The Crees are a vain, fickle, improvident, indolent, and ludicrously
boastful race. They are also great gamblers, but, instead of cards
or dice, they play with the stones of a species of _prunus_. The
difficulty lies in guessing the number of stones which are tossed out
of a small wooden dish, and the hunters will spend whole nights at this
destructive sport, staking their most valuable articles. They have,
however, a much more manly amusement, termed the “cross,” although
they do not engage even in it without depositing considerable stakes.
An extensive meadow is chosen for this sport, and the articles staked
are tied to a post, or deposited in the custody of two old men. The
combatants being stripped and painted, and each provided with a kind of
racket, in shape resembling the letter P, with a handle about two feet
long, and a head loosely wrought with net-work, so as to form a shallow
bag, range themselves on different sides. A ball being now tossed up
in the middle, each party endeavors to drive it to their respective
goals, and much dexterity and agility is displayed in the contest. When
a nimble runner gets the ball in his _cross_, he sets off towards the
goal with the utmost speed, and is followed by the rest, who endeavor
to jostle him and shake it out, but, if hard pressed, he discharges it
with a jerk, to be forwarded by his own party or bandied back by their
opponents until the victory is decided by its passing the goal.
Neither the Esquimaux nor the Tinné have any visible objects of
worship, but the Crees carry with them small wooden figures rudely
carved, or merely the tops of a few willow-bushes tied together, as the
representatives of a malicious, or at least capricious being, called
Kepoochikann. Their most common petition to this being is for plenty of
food, but as they do not trust entirely to his favor, they endeavor at
the same time to propitiate the _animal_, an imaginary representative
of the whole race of larger quadrupeds that are objects of the chase.
Though often referring to the Kitche-manito, the “Great Spirit,” or
“Master of Life,” they do not believe that he cares for his creatures,
and consequently never think of praying to him. They have no legend
about the creation, but they speak of a deluge caused by an attempt of
the fish to drown Woesack-ootchacht, a kind of demi-god, with whom they
had quarrelled. Having constructed a raft, this being embarked with his
family and all kinds of birds and beasts. After the flood had continued
for some time, he ordered several waterfowl to dive to the bottom.
They were all drowned; but a musk-rat, dispatched on the same errand,
returned with a mouthful of mud, out of which Woesack-ootchacht,
imitating the mode in which the rats construct their houses, formed a
new earth. First a small conical hill of mud appeared above the water;
by-and-by, its base gradually spreading out, it became an extensive
bank, which the rays of the sun at length hardened into firm land.
Notwithstanding the power that Woesack-ootchacht here displayed, his
person is held in very little reverence by the Indians, who do not
think it worth while to make any effort to avert his wrath.
Like the Tinné, the Crees also have a Tartarus and an Elysium. The
souls of the departed are obliged to scramble with great labor up the
sides of a steep mountain, upon attaining the summit of which they
are rewarded with the prospect of an extensive plain abounding in all
sorts of game, and interspersed here and there with new tents pitched
in pleasant situations. While they are absorbed in the contemplation
of this delightful scene, they are descried by the inhabitants of the
happy land, who, clothed in new skin dresses, approach and welcome,
with every demonstration of kindness, those Indians who have led good
lives, but the bad Indians are told to return from whence they came,
and without more ceremony are hurled down the precipice.
As yet Christianity has made but little progress among the Indians of
British North America, its benefits being hitherto confined to the
Ojibbeways of Lake Huron, and to a small number of the Crees of the
Hudson’s Bay territory. The well-fed Sauteurs of the Winipeg are as
disinclined to be converted as the buffalo-hunters of the prairies.