Slavery in New France was practiced by some of the Indigenous populations, which enslaved outsiders as captives in warfare, until European colonization that made commercial chattel slavery become common in New France. By 1750, two-thirds of the enslaved peoples in New France were Indigenous, and by 1834, most enslaved people were African.
The institution, which endured for almost two centuries, affected thousands of men, women, and children descended from Indigenous and African peoples. It also impacted many Indigenous people, who were used as domestic servants and traded as goods.
Indigenous slavery
Slavery in the Pays d'en Haut predates the arrival of Europeans. Indigenous groups of the region relied extensively on warfare that focused on captive-taking. Siouan and Algonquins practiced slavery differently than Europeans and other forms of indigenous North American slavery.
Slaves' living condition could be deshumanizing or quasi-familial, and their position within the community could change.
Slave acquisition Raids were sparked by communal discussions about issues such as a need for reliatation or a raid to weaken an enemy. Warriors then travelled to enemy territory to capture slaves – to great glory if they succeeded. Healthy young people would generally be taken as slaves.
As soon as they were a safe distance from the raided locality, captives had their hands tied and were made to run at full speed to flee any pursuer. They were led by a leash and abused physically and verbally. Slaves that could not keep up were struck on the head and scalped. At night, they would be tightly bound to stakes to prevent escape, also "[symbolizing] the victim's powerlessness and inferiority".
When brought back to the village, the arriving war chief showed that he had arrived by making high-pitched cries, one for each captured slave. The slaves would then run the gauntlet, during which they would have fingers and other extremities cut off, their nails be torn out, their nose cropped and/or be beaten. It was a public affair involving all sections of Indigenous society, including women and children. This resulted in lasting demarcations and scarring which showed the individual's captive status.
Those surviving would then be forced to undress and sing before being integrated into their new community or painfully killed, after a selection process. Children and women were more often spared, for their ease of assimilation in the new community and their ability to reproduce respectively. Male warriors were commonly traded.
They were washed, clothed and given a new name, commonly the name of the deceased relative which they replaced. Warriors owned the slaves they captured as their private possessions, and anyone wishing to adopt or kill a slave needed to bargain with them. Village politics required that slaves be distributed, but warriors could keep slaves they chose and had to be compensated for giving away slaves (without a fixed price).
This brutal series of events was designed to strip the individual of any identifications from prior groups and integrate him as a subservient slave.
Status of the slave Slaves were a form of personal property akin to domestic animals or objects, owned by individuals or families. In fact, they were one of the strongest form of such property for the Native American of the Pays d'en Haut.
Private property including slaves was owned for practical purposes, and its accumulation did not bring a higher status.
Slaves were constantly threatened with violence and insulted, and could indeed be hurt if not killed even years after integration in the village.
Utility Adoption Captives could be used to replace dead household members. It was the most commonly observed form of slavery by the French.
Captives replaced the dead member's role ("place") in the household, and not their persona. It was not adoption into a family, although there was still some kind of kinship between the adopted and the adoptees. Actual family members were favored over these "feigned parents", or "fictive kins".
While having been adopted into a household, these slaves were still considered personal property, dishonored by villagers and under threat of violence.
Work force Slaves were under the supervision of women, who generally managed the household in the matrifocal cultures of the Pays d'en Haut. They worked in agriculture and other useful manners, mostly subsistence activities. They did not produce export commodities.
Adoptees were expected to do the work of the household member they replaced. Accordingly, men often took tasks generally assigned to children and women, such as providing farm labor, serving meals and carrying packs, which was humiliating (as was being supervised by women). They also prepared skins and sometimes even hunted (although never alone) thus helping in the time-consuming and demanding activity of hunting.
Female captives were often used as secondary "chore" wives, who were used for reproductive labor and routine household acts such as drawing water and gathering wood. They also labored in the fields, as they did in their home villages.
Being the secondary wife of a successful hunter or an important chief could help rise slaves' and their children's social status. These female slaves were vulnerable to violence and neglect due to their slave status.
Slaves carried sick masters on a litter. Slaves could carry their master's body to the burial place and inform the village of their death.
Politics Slaves could be agents of diplomacy. They were often translators and "intercultural brokers" between their people and their master's, and could help the acquisition of languages. They could in this way acquire a status as an important intermediary. Some slaves were traded multiple times and thus knew multiple languages.
Slaves could also be freed and sent with an unpleasant message to their own people.
Slaves could also be objects of diplomacy. Captives could be freed as a gesture of goodwill to eventually make peace.
Slavery's role in warfare Slavery in general was designed as a deterrent conflicts: to raid would mean to risk enslavement of one's own people. It "stopped warfare from overtaking the region".
Relationship with French slavery Natives flooded the slave market in the course of intense diplomacy with the French to prevent colonial encroachment of Native land. Therefore, the flood of Native slaves in St. Lawrence largely came from their Western counterparts. According to Rushforth, "by narrowing the target to a specific set of victims known as the 'Panis nation', Raudot and his successors created a North American counterpart to the African kingdom of Nigritie: a distant and populous nation at war with more proximate allies, poorly understood but identified as legally and morally enslavable". Effectively, this meant Western Natives were strengthening future adversaries in the east, with their own slaves, in a struggle to preserve their land.
French settlers primarily acquired slaves through the process of ritualized gift-giving commonly used to facilitate diplomatic negotiations. However French hunger for more slaves altered indigenous practices of captive-taking and enslavement. Warfare focusing on captive taking increased, as captives became not just a way to symbolically replace lost relatives, but also became economically valuable goods to exchange with the French. Networks of alliances between Indigenous groups helped funnel captives towards the French.
The exchange of slaves and different understandings about the nature of slavery also had real impacts on French relationships with their native neighbors. Protracted conflicts, such as the Fox Wars, were largely encouraged because war captives provided an ample source of new slaves. Indigenous nations allied to the French and antagonistic to the Fox used this incentive to leverage French military support.
At other times, different conceptions of slavery stood in the way of relationships. Denonville's decision to send 40 captured Iroquois to France as galley slaves proved to be a major roadblock to future peace negotiations between the French and the Iroquois. Similarly, diplomatic talks with Sioux chiefs in 1742 were marred by the presence of Sioux slaves who had ended up in French possession.
European slavery A system of slavery was well underway before French arrival, which the French adapted in their practice of slavery. Initially, slavery in the colony was complicated by France's ethical stance on the matter: slave ownership in New France was not legally recognized (as per their free-soil doctrine), but it could still be justified with the understanding that only the act of enslaving people was deemed unethical and simply buying or receiving slaves was accepted.
Slavery had already been well established in the Indigenous and French alliances throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many inhabitants claimed that slavery had no legal standing in New France and encouraged slaves to flee. To stop this, intendant Jacques Raudot passed the Ordinance Rendered on the Subject of the Negroes and the Savages Called Panis on 13 April 1709, legalizing the purchase and possession of indigenous and black slaves in New France. According to the ordinance, the entire panis (pawnee) nation was considered to be slaves. The ordinance resulted in the increased acquisition of Native American slaves, and the sale of slaves became increasingly notarized.
in 1710, Raudot ruled in a court case that slaves cannot be exported outside New France and that a panis leaving New France is freed. Some slaves were still exported to the Antilles, both by the state and private owners. Projects to send Native American slaves to the Antilles were proposed in 1706, 1708, 1747 and 1749, but they all failed. There are cases of slaves being sent to France, although it is unknown if they stayed slaves.
From 1728 onward, blacks found on foreign vessels were confiscated by the state. From 1748 onward, black slaves fleeing from enemy colonies continued being slaves and had to be sold for the state's profits. They were however not extradited.
Slaves came from tribes that were not formally allied to the French, although there were a few exceptions. Christian Native Americans could be slaves, as confirmed by Hocquart in a 1733 court case.
Hocquart explained the lawsuit to the king and requested a formal law on Native American slavery, but the king refused to do so in 1734, without overturning Hocquart's decision on the lawsuit. In 1735 and 1736, he repeated his refusal to decide on this matter and left the governor and the intendant decide on this matter. This decision may have been to facilitate alliances with Native American nations, but was more likely a continuation of France's general policy of assimilation and not destruction of Native Americans.
On 1st September 1736, Hocquart published an ordinance mandating that the freeing of a slave be notarized, lest it be void.
Regional characteristics of slavery Slavery in Canada Origin of slaves in Canada 1671–1760 First Nations African Sum 1685 402 2087Source:Trudel, Marcel (1960). L 'esclavage au Canada français. Les presses universitaires Laval.
Thousands of people were legally held as slaves in Canada during the colonial period, used as status symbols and servants for wealthy individuals, the local government, and religious organizations including the Grey Nuns. Black slaves exploited by the French were brought from other colonies like Martinique or captured from African regions like Madagascar.The first slave in Canada, named Olivier Le Jeune, was brought by David Kirke in 1629, sold to a local and then in 1632 given to another. The next black slave only appeared 25 years later.