Ilnu

The Ilnu, or Ilnuatsh, are the western branch of the Innu, the Montagnais bands of the Saguenay River, Lac Saint-Jean and the western north shore of the St. Lawrence. Like the eastern Innu they were nomadic caribou hunters speaking Innu-aimun, here in its Southern Montagnais dialect, and the French encountered these southern bands earlier than any other Innu group: Tadoussac became the first great meeting place of the northern fur trade.

In 1603 their leaders made the alliance with Champlain that drew them into the French wars against the Haudenosaunee, and for the rest of the seventeenth century Haudenosaunee war parties struck up the Saguenay into their hunting grounds.

The Ilnu entered the French peace settlement alongside the other allied nations by signing the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701, and kept to their hunting grounds around present-day Pessamit.