Small Eyes

Abishabis (died August 30, 1843) was a Cree religious leader. He became the prophet of a religious movement that spread among the Cree communities of northern Manitoba and Ontario during the 1840s. His preaching caused some Cree people to stop hunting furs, angering employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and reducing the company's profits. After losing much of his influence in 1843, Abishabis was suspected of murdering a First Nations family living near York Factory, in present-day Manitoba. He was arrested and imprisoned at Fort Severn, where a group of people forcibly removed him from his jail cell, murdered him and burned his body. His followers slowly disavowed his teachings and destroyed their relics from the movement or practiced their religion in secret. The religious philosophy of his teachings was a syncretism of Christianity and traditional Cree religion. Abishabis preached that he had visited heaven and that followers could use a Cree writing system to create religious relics, the purpose of which is disputed among academics. His followers did not worship him as a deity but believed his teachings were a revelation from their god. In 1930, John Montgomery Cooper reported that stories about Abishabis were passed down by the Cree people, who claimed that Abishabis had introduced Christianity to them.