Ilili

The Ilili, better known as the Moose Cree or West Main Cree, take their self-name Ililiw from the Algonquian word for a human being. They occupy the south-western shore of James Bay in present-day Ontario, around the Moose and Albany rivers and bay islands, and speak the l-dialect of Cree, part of the Central Cree grouping.

French Jesuits first recorded them in the Jesuit Relations of 1671 along James Bay and the Moose River, and the Hudson's Bay Company quickly followed: Moose Factory was founded in 1672 and 1673, the first English settlement in modern Ontario, while Fort Albany was built between 1675 and 1679.

Drawn into the fur trade as trappers, canoe men and middlemen, their war bands ranged far inland; in 1732 two hundred Cree warriors gathered near Fort Frances to campaign against the Dakota.