Cree

The Cree group includes the Cree, Innu, Naskapi and Atikamekw, Algonquian-speaking peoples of the northern woodlands of eastern and central Canada. They speak a chain of closely related dialects and call themselves by words meaning person or man, such as nehiyaw and innu. Bands were independent, but often joined their neighbors against outside enemies.

The fur trade brought Europeans: Charles Fort was founded on James Bay in 1668, and a Hudson's Bay Company party reached the Cree on the Nelson River in 1682. With company guns many Cree moved onto the plains as traders and bison hunters, allied with the Assiniboine. On Newfoundland the Beothuk were declared extinct in 1829.