Jim Cree – Cleveland's Indigenous Hockey Star

James Cree was born on August 25, 1889 in St. Regis Reservation in Upstate New York, as a Mohawk member of the Akwesasne territory, a territory also including parts of southern Ontario and Quebec in Canada across the St. Lawrence River.

Growing up on the Canadian side of border Cree came in close contact with ice hockey as a young man, and in 1911–12 he had his breakthrough season in the Inter-Provincial Amateur Hockey Union (IPAHU), representing the Brockville Hockey Club on the winger position. Cree displayed promising scoring upside over the season, but his team only mustered a fourth place finish in the Central Division of the IPAHU that year.

For the following season, in 1912–13, Cree instead joined the Syracuse Arena team, on the other side of the border in Upstate New York, captaining the team in its newly built indoor arena.

The Syracuse Arena team made a strong showing over the 1912–13 season, compiling a record of 16 wins, five losses and two ties in 23 contests, appearing victorious in exhibition games against teams from both Canada and the United States, such as the Montreal Shamrocks and the New York Hockey Club.[1] The team finished off its schedule on March 21 and 22 in 1913 with two games on home ice against a Winnipeg All Star aggregation consisting mainly of players from the Winnipeg Monarchs, with future Hockey Hall of Fame inductees Dick Irvin and Fred “Steamer” Maxwell on the roster.

Syracuse lost the first game to the Winnipeg All Star team 3 goals to 1, but they rebounded nicely and claimed the second game 2 goals to 1. For the second game between the two teams, the Winnipeg Tribune described Jim Cree as “fast and spectacular,” how he “played a wonderful game” and “followed the puck closely, breaking up the onslaughts of the visitors and going through their team at will.” On the game winning goal, the Winnipeg Tribune described how Cree


Jim Cree was supposed to go to Manhattan to join the New York Irish-Americans in the American Amateur Hockey League (AAHL) for the 1913–14 season, but the transfer fell through due to the league’s strict resident rule. He instead stayed for an additional year in Syracuse before joining the New York Irish-Americans in 1914–15.

On the New York Irish-Americans Cree formed an offensive duo with Canadian sharpshooter John McGrath, where Cree mainly acted as a set up man to McGrath. But the New York Irish-Americans weren’t strong enough as a team and finished in fifth and last place in the 1914–15 AAHL standing.

For the the 1915–16 season Jim Cree left New York to join the hockey team of the Cleveland Athletic Club, out of the Elysium Arena, one of the better puck chasing aggregations in the United States at the time. Cleveland had a number of good Canadian players on its team, such as goalie Vernon Turner, defenseman Clarence “Moose” Jamieson and forwards Elmer Irving and Joe DeBernardi, as well as American defenseman Frank “Coddy” Winters, originally from Duluth, Minnesota.


Cree was first slated for a place as a substitute on the Cleveland team, and then as a defenseman. But he showed such a craft at the puck chasing game that he soon instead found himself on the rover position, one of the hardest and most strenuous jobs on a hockey team at the time, where the player had to shift between defense and offense in a constant speedy two-way role.[3]

In the 1910s and 1920s Cree stood out as one of the few indigenous players in the higher ranks of North American hockey. Louis “Buck” Grant, a swift playing forward in the Calgary and Edmonton senior leagues who also played briefly in the Western Canada Hockey League in the early 1920s, was of mixed Shoshone and European descent, but most other indigenous athletes were either involved with lacrosse or football, such as the famous American multi-sport athlete Jim Thorpe. Or in running, such as the dominant Canadian Onondaga long-distance runner Tom Longboat.

Jim Cree would stay in Cleveland for many years, though the number of games played by the team would drop quite dramatically during the most intense war years. But in 1920–21 the team joined the newly founded United States Amateur Hockey Association (USAHA), a league consisting of 12 teams in three separate divisions.

Cleveland also saw a new player join its ranks for the 1920–21 season, a young lanky Canadian center forward from the Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club of the Ontario Hockey Association named Nelson Stewart. Or “Nels” Stewart, as he would later become popularly known as.

Jim Cree and Nels Stewart would soon form a successful partnership on Cleveland’s forward line, with Cree mostly figuring on Stewart’s left wing. The two players complemented each other very well: Cree with his speed and dodging down the wing, and Stewart with his clever stickhandling and his ability to go through opposing players down the center ice area.[4]

Cleveland won its USAHA division in 1920–21, in front of the second placed St. Paul Athletic Club, and then faced off with the Boston Athletic Association in the league semi-final in a four-game series between March 15 and 19. Cleveland came from behind and managed to defeat Boston A. A. after a 3-0 win in the final game on home ice at the Elysium Arena, earning an aggregated score of 10 goals to 8.[5] Nels Stewart scored five goals over the series for Cleveland, whereas Jim Cree and Moose Jamieson tallied two each.

In the final series of the 1920–21 USAHA season Cleveland squared off against the Eveleth team from northeastern Minnesota, champions of the Western Division and spearheaded by its star defenseman Ivan “Ching” Johnson and its left winger Percy Galbraith, both former members of the Winnipeg Monarchs.

Cleveland won the first two games of the championship deciding four-game series 6-3 and 6-3 at the Elysium Arena on April 1 and 2, with Nels Stewart and Joe DeBernardi starring for the team in the first game, and Moose Jamieson scoring four times in the second game. But when the series switched to neutral ice at the Duquesne Garden in Pittsburgh (due to insufficient ice conditions in Eveleth) for April 6 and 7, the Eveleth lads picked up steam and won the two final games 2-0 and 4-2, which still wasn’t enough to close the goal differential gap from the first two meetings, leaving Cleveland as inaugural USAHA champions by a 14-12 aggregated score.[6]


Jim Cree played three additional USAHA seasons with Cleveland, until 1923–24, but despite the team being continuously powered by Nels Stewart’s reliable goal scoring it never managed to duplicate its championship winning ways from 1920–21, and Cree subsequently retired from hockey at an age of 34. He died in October of 1951, at an age of 62.

For his two last seasons in the USAHA Cree was joined on the Cleveland club by another Mohawk player, defenseman Paul Oronhyatekha Jacobs from the Kahnawake territory south of Montreal. Jacobs, who was four years Cree’s junior, had previously played on teams in the various Montreal city leagues, and had also had a try-out with the Stanley Cup holding Toronto Arenas for the 1918–19 NHL season.

USAHA was a strong league in general and saw many high profile players go through its ranks before reaching the NHL, such as Tiny Thompson, Roy Worters, Lionel Conacher, Ivan “Ching” Johnson, Herbie Lewis and Nels Stewart.

Cree’s forward teammate Nels Stewart, after having left Cleveland in 1925, went on to enjoy a highly successful NHL career, which eventually would land him in the Hockey Hall of Fame, winning both the scoring title and the Hart Trophy (as league MVP) in his rookie 1925–26 season, as well as the 1926 Stanley Cup with the Montreal Maroons. He also later played with the Boston Bruins and the New York Americans.


Sources:

[1] Spalding’s Official Ice Hockey Guide (1914)
[2] Winnipeg Tribune, Mar. 24, 1913
[3] Holmes, Brown. Evening Gazette (Reno, Nevada), Dec. 3, 1915
[4] Boston Globe, Mar. 16, 1921
[5] Boston Globe, Mar. 20, 1921
[6] Winnipeg Tribune, Apr. 8, 1921


Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)