Atikamekw

The Atikamekw, self-styled Nehirowisiw, meaning people in balance with nature, are Algonquian speakers of the boreal forest north of the Saint Lawrence River. Their homeland Nitaskinan, our land, is the upper Saint-Maurice valley in Quebec, where they gathered in summer at places such as Wemotaci and dispersed into winter camps in bark lodges called piskokan.

They hunted, fished and trapped; women raised corn and boiled maple sap into syrup. French documents first name them in the early seventeenth century as the Atikamegouékhi, five or six hundred strong; they soon traded furs for French metal goods. Peaceful, they shared the country with the Innu, Cree and Algonquin, but beaver-trade rivalry drew them into war with the Mohawk.

Smallpox around 1670 to 1680 devastated them; Mohawk raids killed many survivors; early in the eighteenth century a people called Tête-de-Boule by the French reappeared there, likely Atikamekw remnants regrouped with nomadic families.