The various Tribes of the Crees.—Their Conquests and subsequent Defeat.—Their Wars with the Blackfeet.—Their Character.—Tattooing.—Their Dress.—Fondness for their Children.—The Cree Cradle.—Vapor Baths.—Games.—Their religious Ideas.—The Cree Tartarus and Elysium.

The various tribes of the Crees, or Eythinyuwuk, range from the Rocky Mountains and the plains of the Saskatchewan to the swampy shores of Hudson’s Bay. Towards the west and north they border on the Tinné, towards the east and south, on the Ojibbeway or Sauteurs, who belong like them to the great family of the Lenni-lenape Indians, and inhabit the lands between Lake Winipeg and Lake Superior.

About sixty years since, at the time when Napoleon was deluging Europe with blood, the Crees likewise played the part of conquerors, and subdued even more extensive, though less valuable domains.

Provided with fire-arms, which at that time were unknown to their northern and western neighbors, they advanced as far as the Arctic Circle, imposing tribute on the various tribes of the Tinné. But their triumphs were not more durable than those of the great European conqueror.

The small-pox broke out among them and swept them away by thousands. Meanwhile the Tinné tribes had remained untouched by this terrible scourge; and as the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company, advancing farther and farther to the west and north, had likewise made them acquainted with the use of fire-arms, they in their turn became the aggressors, and drove the Crees before them.320 Their former conquerors now partly migrated to the south, and leaving the forest region, where they had hunted the reindeer and the elk, spread over the prairies of the Saskatchewan, where they now pursued the herds of bison, sometimes driving them over a precipice, or chasing them on foot through the snow. But in their new abodes they became engaged in constant feuds with their new neighbors the Assiniboins and Blackfeet, who of course resented their intrusion.

The romance in which the manners and character of the Indians are portrayed might lead us to attribute to these people a loftiness of soul for which it would be vain to look in the present day, and which without much skepticism we may assert they never really possessed. Actions prompted only by the caprice of a barbarous people have been considered as the results of refined sentiment; and savage cunning, seen through the false medium of prejudice, assumed the nobler proportions of a far-sighted policy. But though the history of the wars of the Indians among themselves and with the Europeans affords but few instances of heroism, it abounds in traits of revolting cruelty, and in pictures of indescribable wretchedness.
118. A HERD OF BISON.

A large party of Blackfeet once made a successful foray in the territory of the Crees. But meanwhile the latter surprised the camp where the aggressors had left their wives and children; and thus, when the Blackfeet returned to their tents, they found desolation and death where they looked for a joyful welcome. In their despair they cast away their arms and their booty, and retired to the mountains, where for three days and nights they wailed and mourned.

321
119. DRIVING BISON OVER A PRECIPICE.

In the year 1840 a bloody war broke out between the Crees and the Blackfeet, arising as in general from a very trifling cause. Peace was at length concluded, but while the two nations were celebrating this fortunate event with games and races, a Cree stole a ragged blanket, and a new fight immediately began. Returning home, the Blackfeet met a Cree chieftain, with two of his warriors, and killed them after a short altercation. Soon after the Crees surprised and murdered some of the Blackfeet, and thus the war raged more furiously than ever. Sir George Simpson, who was travelling through the country at the time, visited the hut of a Cree who had been wounded in the conflict at the peace meeting. As in his flight he bent over his horse’s neck, a ball had struck him on the right side, and remained sticking near the articulation of the left shoulder. In this condition he had already lain for three-and-thirty days, his left arm frightfully swollen, and the rest of his body emaciated to a skeleton. Near the dying savage, whose glassy eye and contracted features spoke of the dreadful pain of which he disdained to speak, lay his child, reduced to skin and bones, and expressing by a perpetual moaning the pangs of illness and hunger, while most to be pitied perhaps of this wretched family was the wife and mother, who seemed to be sinking under the double load of care and fatigue. During the night the “medicine-man” was busy beating his magic drum and driving away the evil spirits from the hut.

Although the Crees show great fortitude in enduring hunger and the other evils incident to a hunter’s life, yet any unusual accident dispirits them at once, and they seldom venture to meet their enemies in open warfare, or even to surprise them, unless they have a great advantage in point of numbers. Instances of personal bravery like that of the Esquimaux are rare indeed among them. Superior in personal appearance to the Tinné, they are less honest, and though perhaps not so much given to falsehood as the Tinné, are more turbulent and more prompt to invade the rights of their countrymen, as well as of neighboring nations.

322 Tattooing is almost universal among them. The women are in general content with having one or two lines drawn from the corners of the mouth towards the angles of the lower jaw, but some of the men have their bodies covered with lines and figures. It seems to be considered by most rather as a proof of323 courage than an ornament, as the operation is both painful and tedious. The lines on the face are formed by dexterously running an awl under the cuticle, and then drawing a cord, dipped in charcoal and water, through the canal thus formed. The punctures on the body are made by needles of various sizes, set in a frame. A number of hawk-bells attached to this frame serve, by their noise, to cover the groans of the sufferer, and probably for the same reason the process is accompanied with singing. An indelible stain is produced by rubbing a little finely-powdered willow-charcoal into the puncture. A half-breed, whose arm was amputated by Sir John Richardson, declared that tatooing was not only the more painful operation of the two, but rendered infinitely more difficult to bear by its tediousness, having lasted, in his case, three days.

The Crees are also fond of painting their faces with vermilion and charcoal. In general the dress of the male consists of a blanket thrown over the shoulders, a leathern shirt or jacket, and a piece of cloth tied round the middle. The women have in addition a long petticoat, and both sexes wear a kind of wide hose, which, reaching from the ankle to the middle of the thigh, are suspended by strings to the girdle. These hose, or “Indian stockings,” are commonly ornamented with beads or ribands, and from their convenience have been universally adopted by the white residents, as an essential part of their winter-clothing. Their shoes, or rather soft boots (for they tie round the ankle), are made of dressed moose-skins; and during the winter they wrap several pieces of blanket round their feet. They are fond of European art............