An ethnographic and documentary study of the subsistence-settlement patterns and social organization of the Red Earth Cree of east central Saskatchewan with particular emphasis upon a "deme" (discrete intermarriage arrangement) they shared with the Shoal Lake Cree. The author argues that demes are characteristic of hunter-gatherers but that environment, the events of the contact period, and modern government have disrupted its practice among Northern Algonkians. Published in English.