Panis (slaves of First Nation descent)

Panis was a term used in French Canada (New France, 1534-1763) for slaves of First Nations descent.[1][2][3] First Nation slaves were generally called Panis (anglicized to Pawnee), as most, during this period, had been captured from the Pawnee tribe or their relations. Pawnee became synonymous with "Indian slave" in general use in Canada, and a slave from any tribe came to be called Panis. As early as 1670, a reference was recorded to a Panis in Montreal. The term is widely described as a corruption of the name of the Panismahas[4], a sub-tribe of the Pawnee people encountered in the Illinois Country, then a remote part of New France.[5]

"In the middle of the 17th century the Pawnees were being savagely raided by eastern tribes that had obtained metal weapons from the French, which gave them a terrible advantage over Indians who had only weapons of wood, flint, and bone. The raiders carried off such great numbers of Pawnees into slavery, that in the country on and east of the upper Mississippi the name Pani developed a new meaning: slave. The French adopted this meaning, and Indian slaves, no matter from which tribe they had been taken, were presently being termed Panis. It was at this period, after the middle of the 17th century, that the name was introduced into New Mexico in the form Panana by bands of mounted Apaches who brought large numbers of Pawnee slaves to trade to the Spaniards and Pueblo Indians."[6]:24

For other uses, see panis (disambiguation).

Raiders primarily targeted women and children, to be sold as slaves. In 1694, Apaches brought a large number of captive children to the trading fair in New Mexico, but for some reason there were not enough buyers, so the Apaches beheaded all their slaves in full view of the Spaniards.[6]:46

According to the Canadian Museum of History 35 individuals were held as slaves in Canada from its founding to 1699.[1] Most of these individuals were slaves of First Nations origin.

From 1700 to 1760 the Museum estimated 2000 slaves were held in Canada - two-thirds of whom were First Nations people.[1] The museum reported most slaves were very young, that the average age of First Nations slaves was just 14 years old. Their mortality was high, as most came from the interior, and lacked immunity to European diseases.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography profiled the case of a First Nations slave who had been christened Pierre, whose original owner challenged Pierre's sale to settle his debts.[7] He argued that Pierre's sale should be declared “invalid and harmful to religion", because he had converted to Christianity, and had been baptized. Pierre was born around 1707, was baptized in 1723, was sold to satisfy his owner's debts in 1732. He died in 1747, the property of his second owner.

By 1757 Louis Antoine de Bougainville considered that the Panis nation "plays ... the same role in America that the Negroes do in Europe." The historian Marcel Trudel documented that close to 2,000 "panis" slaves lived in Canada until the abolition of slavery in the colony in 1833. Indian slaves comprised close to half of the known slaves in French Canada (also called Lower Canada).[8]

References
  1. "Population: Slavery". Canadian Museum of History. Archived from the original on 2019-03-24. Retrieved 2019-06-15. In Canada, the majority of slaves were not of African, but rather of Aboriginal origin. Native populations customarily subjugated war captives before the arrival of the French, but this practice acquired new meanings and unprecedented proportions in the context of western expansion. Beginning in the 1670s, the French began to receive captives from their Aboriginal partners as tokens of friendship during commercial and diplomatic exchanges. The Illinois were notorious for the raids which they led against nations to the southeast and from which they brought back captives. By the early eighteenth century, the practice of buying and selling these captives like merchandise was established.
  2. Robert Everett-Green (2014-02-28). "200 years a slave: the dark history of captivity in Canada". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 2019-06-15. Retrieved 2019-06-15. Many in Quebec had to be content with captives stolen or bought from indigenous peoples, some of whom practiced slavery before the Europeans arrived. About two-thirds of the slaves in Quebec were native people, mostly from the Pawnee nations of modern-day Nebraska, whose French Canadian name – Panis – became a synonym for an indigenous slave of any origin.
  3. Signa A. Daum Shanks (2013). "A Story of Marguerite: A Tale about Panis, Case Comment, and Social History". Native Studies Review. 22 (1). Retrieved 2019-06-15. As typically experienced by other slaves in the New World, panis were not considered persons with respect to legal rights, but they could still be evaluated under the law in criminal matters.
  4. George E. Hyde (1988). The Pawnee Indians. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 24. ISBN 9780806120942. Retrieved 2019-06-15. The raiders carried off such great numbers of Pawnees into slavery that in the country on and east of the upper Mississippi the name Pani developed a new meaning: slave. The French adopted this meaning, and Indian slaves, no matter from which tribe they had been taken, were presently being termed Panis.
  5. Woodson, Carter Godwin; Logan, Rayford Whittingham (1920). The Journal of Negro History. Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.
  6. Hyde, George E. (1974). The Pawnee Indians. Internet Archive. Norman : University of Oklahoma Press.
  7. Michel Paquin. "PIERRE, Comanche Indian, slave; b. c. 1707; baptized 11 Sept. 1723 in Montreal; buried there 5 Aug. 1747". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Archived from the original on 2017-07-20. Retrieved 2019-06-14. In 1732 Pierre, as he had been baptized, was the subject of a legal struggle which obliged the authorities of New France to pronounce more definitively on the legality of slavery in the colony than had Intendant Jacques Raudot* in his ordinance of 1709.
  8. Trudel, Marcel; d'Allaire, Micheline (2013) [1963]. Canada's Forgotten Slaves. Translated by George Tombs. Véhicule Press. p. 64.
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