Plains Cree: A Grammatical Study - Computer Science Club

WOLFART: PLAINS CREE
10 [TRANS. AMER. PHIL. SOC.
MAP. 3. Distribution of Cree groups.
--- Approximate distribution of Cree-speaking grol ups 1970.
- Plains Cree (culturally defined; after Mandelb; aum) 1860.
TH: Woods Cree at Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan
and in Rupert's Land (between the lower courses of
the Nelson and Churchill Rivers).
N: Swampy Cree, in a broad belt from Cumberland
House, Saskatchewan (just west of The Pas, Mani-
toba) to the coast of Hudson Bay and James Bay,
from the Nelson River in the north to the Albany
River in the south.10
L: Moose Cree, spoken at Moose Factory (Mooso-
min), Ontario and in the lower portion of the Moose
River drainage.
1.23. Plains Cree
The Plains Cree dialect which forms the basis of
the present study is spoken primarily in the central
part of Alberta and in the central and southern parts
of Saskatchewan. Since language-based figures do
not exist, we can only cite Canadian government
sourcesll which indicate a total of about 26,000 Plains
Cree and 12,000 other Cree in Alberta and Saskatche-
10 Ellis's Spoken Cree (1962) and 'Cree Verb Paradigms" (1971)
are composite treatments of the n-dialect of Fort Albany and the
i-dialect of Moose Factory; in Ellis, 1962 the text shows I and the
tapes, n In the present study, the dialect(s) described by Ellis is
referred to as James Bay Cree and cited with n.
11 Canada, 1970. These figures are based on cultural affiliation
and other criteria and are not to be relied on as guides to dialect
or even language assignment.
,'p % 19-^ 70.B%
wan.'2 These figures reflect only "treaty Indians"
not all of whom necessarily still speak Cree; on the
other hand, they ignore the large iumber of non-
treaty Indians and Metis many of whom do speak
Cree, so that they may be useful as a gross estimate
after all.
The historical movement of the Plains Cree from
their seventeenth-century location in an area bounded
by Lake Superior, Lake Winnipeg, and Hudson Bay,
to the western Plains and the foot of the Rocky
Mountains has been described in great detail by
Mandelbaum (1940). Mlandelbaum's chief concern
is the dramatic change, brought on by the fur trade,
from the aboriginal woodlands culture to that of the
Plains; but the texts even of today bear eloquent
witness to the woodlands heritage, as for instance in
the Windigo stories.
Map 3 shows the range of the Plains Cree (cultur-
ally defined; after Mandelbaum, 1940) in the 1860's;
it also indicates the approximate distribution of Cree-
speaking groups at present (after Canada, 1970).
12 In 1874 Lacombe had estimated the number of Plains Cree
as 15,000 to 16,000 (1874a: p. x). These figures would seem to
fit the estimate of Chafe (1962: p. 165) who gives a figure of
30,000 to 40,000 for all Cree (and 5,000 for Montagnais-Naskapi).
According to government sources for 1970 (Canada, 1970) there
are about 16,000 Cree in Manitoba and another 16,000 in Ontario
and Quebec, bringing the total to about 70,000.