The origin of the Crees, to which nation the Cumberland House Indians
belong, is, like that of the other aborigines of America, involved in
obscurity; but the researches now making into the nature and affinities
of the languages spoken by the different Indian tribes may eventually
throw some light on the subject. Indeed the American philologists seem to
have succeeded already in classing the known dialects into three
languages:
1. The Floridean, spoken by the Creeks, Chickesaws, Choctaws, Cherokees,
Pascagoulas, and some other tribes who inhabit the southern parts of the
United States.
2. The Iroquois, spoken by the Mengwe, or Six Nations, the Wyandots, the
Nadowessies, and Asseeneepoytuck.
3. The Lenni-lenape, spoken by a great family more widely spread than the
other two and from which, together with a vast number of other tribes,
are sprung our Crees. Mr. Heckewelder, a missionary who resided long
amongst these people and from whose paper (published in the Transactions
of the American Philosophical Society) the above classification is taken,
states that the Lenape have a tradition amongst them of their ancestors
having come from the westward and taken possession of the whole country
from the Missouri to the Atlantic, after driving away or destroying the
original inhabitants of the land whom they termed Alligewi. In this
migration and contest, which endured for a series of years, the Mengwe,
or Iroquois, kept pace with them, moving in a parallel but more northerly
line, and finally settling on the banks of the St. Lawrence and the great
lakes from whence it flows.
