Nihithaw

The Nihithaw, or Woodland Cree, call themselves Nîhithawak in their Cree dialect and are also known as the Sakāwithiniwak, the people of the woods. They speak an Algonquian language and, before the eighteenth century, held the boreal forest west of Hudson Bay as far north as Churchill.

Once the Hudson's Bay Company opened its bay-side posts, they became the chief middlemen of the northern fur trade. Guns won through that trade let them push west and north through the Saskatchewan and Athabasca country, displacing Dane-zaa and Dene groups, until a peace between the Cree and the Chipewyan was brokered at Churchill in 1715 through the Chipewyan guide Thanadelthur.

Their western bands, often called the Rocky Cree, moved into the upper Saskatchewan and Athabasca river valleys and intermarried with Assiniboine, Dane-zaa and Dene neighbours.