The Mushmush
The term "Mushmush" is an exonym, used by the people of the Feudal Core as a "wastebasket taxon" to refer to the peoples who dwell in the far north beyond the Great Lakes and Quebec, termed "Mushmush" out of the (incorrect) belief that they drive their dogsleds forward by incessantly chanting "Mush! Mush!". The first recorded use of the term was by the theologian Harold of Atlanta in an influential treatise on the legality of the expansion of the Nondenominational Church into Canada. As the treatise was widely circulated, so was the term, and it caught on like wildfire. Today, the term is still applied loosely to refer to the northern barbarians, and the products they trade to the south. Universally, their lives center around the winter, preparing for it and surviving it.
The Canucks
The Canucks are a people who dwell along the northernmost shores of the Great Lakes, making their lives in the fjords and islands of that harsh country. Agriculture has devolved into horticulture, albeit with some rather advanced techniques employed to maximize microclimates and get the most out of the stony soil. For the most part, they are hunters and fishermen and above all fur trappers, both catching their own and trading with the more northerly peoples to finally sell their furs to the trade stations of the Mackinaw League, foremost among them Sault Ste. Marie. Occasionally, they will turn to raiding, taking their longboats to set the cities of settled folk ablaze, but this has grown rarer since the war between Ohio and Illinois ended. They consider themselves Lakemen, and so do the other Lakelanders, albeit reluctantly. The greatest number of Canucks pledge fealty to the Governor of Wisconsin, but this is more theoretical than anything.
Their dialect has a surprising amunt of Finnish influence, due to their contact with the Finns of the Upper Peninsula, Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. They are almost entirely Christian, though Nondenom is rather rare: instead, they have been won over by some of the stubborn Lutheran burghers of Wisconsin. The Wendigo is largely unknown, and the Dogman is widely feared but largely considered a simple demon, and they will only engage in minor folk magic to combat their influence. Of far more concern to Nondenominational Priests are the quasi-religious terms they speak of the Lakes and storms in, and the idols they build to placate both. While Sault Ste. Marie is majority Canuck, it is ruled by Lakeish merchants who have made efforts to shift the culture for the sake of ease of governance. The only true city of the Canucks is Thunder Bay where a Mackinaw fort abandoned in the most recent league war has taken up by an ambitious chieftain, who has grander plans to stand against the League and unite the Canuck people.
The Kanadi
The Kanadi are the people who dwell upon the frigid Canadian prairie, though they no longer confine themselves beyond the 51st parallel. They are Cowboys like most other societies on the Great Plains, and their contact with their American brothers has led them to full-heartedly adopt the New Israelite faith. Like all other New Israelites, they consider themselves to be the Chosen People. Curiosly, they make the pilgrimage to Mt. Rushmore and revere the stone heads as their forefathers and as symbols of the covenant, but they consider themselves distinctly Canadian. Indeed, their banners are emblazened with the symbol of the Maple Leaf, and they even engage in some minor maple cultivation.
Unlike most other Cowboys, the extremely harsh winters on the Canadian prairies have prompted them to adopt a semi-settled lifestyle. Each clan is centered around a large hill-fort called a "Mall". These "Malls" can provide some measure of security in case of attack (though their wooden construction makes them vulnerable to fire), but primarily they are used for protection against the cold and the wolves that winter brings. All things are held in common within the Mall, with the entire clan sleeping under one roof. They engage in minor horticulture at the base of these hillforts. They are terrified of the Dogman, whom they consider to be Judas, and the Wendigo is considered Satan himself. While they wait to deliver up sacrifices to God for the pilgrimage to the Black Hills, they will sacrifice so-called "sin-eaters" (usually diseased kine or sheep) to ensure that they are not visited by the Wind Walker.
The Metis
The definition of what it is to be Metis has shifted in the New Medieval Age. Metis are not simply those of mixed descent, for most of the Kanadi have a non-insignificant amount of aboriginal blood in them, and indeed many of the Kanadi are descended from the current Metis nation. The Metis as a concept have shifted northwards of their historical place in the south of the prairie provinces, assimilated or displaced by the predations of New Israelite horsemen. They now inhabit where the horsemen dare not tread, in the deep and dark forest band of the north between the prairie and the frigid arctic expanse, extending their cultural reach into northern Ontario and Quebec. They have devolved to a lifestyle that is almost totally dependent upon hunting, gathering and fishing. They spend their days moving between summer and winter camps, never settling down in any one place, constantly fighting both between themselves and against foreign peoples at their margins.
By and large, the Metis speak a creole tongue that is in its greatest part French, but with clear influence from aboriginal languages and English, and many tribes speak predominantly aboriginal languages. They are in large part nominally Catholic, but the worship of the Saints has become totally animistic and, some Qebuecoise critics would say, polytheistic. The landscape is marked by cairns in shrines to these animistic saints that the tribes prostrate before during their voyages. Though the Dogman is not known in these reaches, the Wendigo certainly is, and like the Kanadi is regarded as Satan himself. Unlike the Kanadi, who attach to the Wendigo many of the imagistic trappings of a more convnetional Satan, the Wendigo of the Metis is a far more spectral figure, influenced almost wholly by the native conception. So thin that when he turns he becomes invisibe, so tall that when he passes the leaves of the tallest trees shudder, then suddenly still. As it is punishable upon pain of death to depict the Wendigo, it is uncertain precisely how it looks in detail, but shamen speak of taut, ashen skin, of the horns of deer and rams, of thing, bloody lips. In the winter, the Wendigo whispers to men in their lodgings, compelling to commit the abomination of cannibalism with glee and envy. Cannibalism is regarded as the greatest sin imaginable among the Kanadi, and once it has been committed the only cure is death followed by re-baptism. For this reason the Eucharist is punishable by death, and the Quebecoise church has ruled that there is no requirement for the Eucharist for the Metis or the
voyageurs who go among them.
The Eskimos
The final of the Mushmush tribes, and perhaps the vaguest. In its strictest sense, it refers only to the coastal Inuit who make their living off the fat of the sea. More often it is a broad term for all peoples of the far north, many of them totally unrelated and of wildly differing traditions. Many consider the Laskans themselves a legendary race of Eskimos, who themselves apply it to practically all peoples beyond the Rockies, from the Athabaska to the Metis.