At first, the native slaves bought by French settlers almost all took to their heels. It was because other colonists revealed to them that slavery was illegal in France and in New France. So they could get out.
It wasn’t just a belief. It was information. The French of the early 17th centurye century had a clear idea of what a slave was. Tens of thousands of them had been enslaved by Muslim states in North Africa. Rescue expeditions were organized at great expense. The survivors had the obligation to tour the regions of France for three months to recount their ordeal, praise the value of their liberators and raise funds for the next liberation operations.
I draw this science from an extraordinary work published in 2012 which was pointed out to me this year. The American Brett Rushforth combed the archives at home, in France and in Spain to feed this monumental story: Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous Atlantic Slaveries in New France (UNC Press).
He describes the strong interaction between Aboriginal peoples and French settlers on a question that was thought to be secondary, but which he finds central, that of the use of slavery within nations and in the relations between them. “No honor was more important to a young Native than capturing slaves. His achievement was celebrated in public ceremonies, engraved in his arms, and a tattoo testified to each enemy thus enslaved,” he wrote. Slaves were treated as inferior beings. The men, especially, were subjected to torture and abuse. But they became a precious currency, used for trade, as a gift to obtain a favour, to repair a wrong committed, or to express a desire to establish peace. Slavery was an essential diplomatic tool.
Learn slave diplomacy
The French made the combination of alliances with the Aboriginal peoples the key to their influence in America and had to, sometimes the hard way, integrate this notion. Thus, when two members of the Outaouais nation are accused of having killed two Frenchmen, a merchant, Daniel Greysolon Dulhut, wishes to put them on trial. The council of the nation of the Outaouais proposes, to repair the fault, to give slaves. But the accused are executed and this rebuff is so badly received that the Outaouais inform the other nations of what they consider a serious offense. Eventually, the French agreed to receive and sometimes give away slaves to prove the importance they attached to alliances. They were thus, explains Rushforth, colonized by the Aboriginal peoples, who imposed their practices on them.
French law invents a distinction to bring the empire into the slave market, mainly blacks for the West Indies, mainly natives in New France. The French refuse the right to enslave anyone, but agree to buy, then trade, people who are already slaves. They will find something to content themselves with among the African slavers and among the indigenous nations, who derive a great profit from these sales.
The labor shortage being (already) glaring in the new colony, the purchase of native slaves became the norm. Madeleine de Verchères and her husband had more than a dozen.
Slavery as a deterrent
The nations allied to the French, around the Great Lakes, in no way wished to share with other nations the lucrative fur trade they practiced with the colony and which gave them access to weapons, tools, spikes metal for their arrows. But the French wanted to extend their area of influence with new alliances further south. This was particularly the case with the nation of the Foxes, an enemy despised by the allied nations. To thwart the French will, they resorted to a stratagem: capture Foxes and sell them to French colonists. When the delegation of fox chiefs arrived in Quebec to negotiate an alliance, they would realize that some of their people were in slavery. It would have a bad effect. This is precisely what happened in this case, and in that of the Sioux. “Over time,” writes Rushforth, “the French reluctantly accepted this situation and had to trade their dream of a universal alliance beyond the Great Lakes for a steady supply of enslaved Indians from that region and from beyond. »
The enumeration issue
In total, how many slaves did New France have? In interview at Duty, Rushforth claims to have been able to confirm the presence of the 4000 slaves listed by the historian Marcel Trudel. He thinks he has found a hundred more, but has not published the list. It is from him that comes the new estimate of 10,000 slaves, spread over a century. He arrives at this result by comparing the transactions carried out in the Great Lakes, which can reach 200 for a given year, while the colonial archives of New France only report six or seven arrivals. He did not, however, publish any text supporting this plausible calculation. He estimates that a thousand slaves were able to simultaneously inhabit the territory, at the height of the colony, or 2% of the population. He judges that the number and the proportion of slaves in the native nations were considerably higher. After their war of extermination of the Hurons and three other nations, the Iroquois villages were made up half of slaves.
One last word, in conclusion. No French-language publishing house, in Quebec or in France, is currently planning to translate and publish this essential book. At a time when we are more interested than ever in our common history, Aboriginals and Francophones, on our territory, it is truly incredible.
Father, columnist and author, Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018. | [email protected] / blog: jflisee.org