Mahmikiwini

The Mahmikiwini are the downstream division of the Plains Cree, the Māmihkiyiniwak or people living downriver, whose bands held the lower Saskatchewan River and the country towards the Red River. Their Cree belongs to the Algonquian family and shades into the neighbouring Swampy Cree dialects. Their bands intermarried with Swampy Cree, Assiniboine and Saulteaux and gathered each summer at fishing narrows such as Opaskwayak.

Closest to Hudson Bay, they were the first Cree middlemen of the fur trade. Henry Kelsey travelled inland with Assiniboine and Cree parties in 1690, and the Hudson's Bay Company opened Cumberland House, its first inland post, on the Saskatchewan in 1774.

They provisioned posts with bison pemmican and fish and joined the Iron Confederacy, raiding alongside the Assiniboine; the 1781 smallpox epidemic emptied many of their camps.