Innu

The Innu, called Montagnais by the French, are the Algonquian hunter-gatherers of Nitassinan, their homeland on the north shore of the St. Lawrence and the Labrador peninsula. For thousands of years they lived by seasonal caribou and moose hunts, moving in skin tents between coast and inland forest, and their language, Innu-aimun, belongs to the Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi continuum.

At Tadoussac they became the first inland allies of the French, and in 1603 Champlain sealed an alliance that in 1609 led him to join Innu, Algonquin and Wendat warriors against the Haudenosaunee on the lake that now bears his name.

The Haudenosaunee replied with deep raids into Innu hunting grounds during the seventeenth-century Iroquois Wars, in which the Innu also clashed with the Inuit and other neighbors. The wars ended for the Innu when they signed the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701.