Cree

Cree, or Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi, stretches from Labrador and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence through James Bay to Alberta. Its nine western and eastern groups are distinguished chiefly by their different reflexes of one Proto-Algonquian sound.

It grew from a Proto-Algonquian dialect whose speakers left the Great Lakes homeland two and a half to three thousand years ago and split into eastern and western branches around James Bay. A polysynthetic language, Cree folds subject and object into the verb and divides nouns into animate and inanimate genders.

After 1670, Cree families armed through the fur trade expanded west from James Bay across the boreal forest and onto the plains, and long contact with French and Ojibwe speakers gave rise to the mixed languages Michif and Oji-Cree.