Cree The Cree tribe is one of the largest American Indian groups in North America. There are 200,000 Cree people today living in communities throughout Canada and in parts of the northern United States. Cree is pronounced to rhyme with the English word "see." It's a shortened form of the French word for the tribe, Kristeneaux, but it's not clear where that word came from. It may have been a French mispronunciation of a Cree clan name (Kenistenoag) or a Cree mispronunciation of the French word for "Christian" (Chrétien.) In their own language the Crees call themselves Iyiniwok or Ininiwok, meaning "the people," or Nehiyawok, "speakers of the Cree language."