Indigenous Slaves, known as Panis

https://www.historymuseum.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/population/slavery/
The Panis territory
The outlined territory shown on this map represents the region from which originate the majority of aboriginal slaves known as Panis. It includes the Pawnee, but also other aboriginal peoples that their enemies enslaved or bartered against European products.

2017- Canada’s 150th birthday prompted much looking back at our history. And one of the things Canadians have long been proud about is our status as the final stop on the Underground Railroad, a safe refuge for American slaves fleeing bondage.

This is true, and we should be proud. But let’s not be too proud ― after all, the colonies that became Canada also had slavery for more than two centuries, ending only 30 years before U.S. President Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

When Britain took over New France, about 7 per cent of the colony was enslaved, or around 4,000 out of a population of 60,000. Two-thirds were indigenous slaves, known as Panis, and the other third African, who cost twice as much and were a status symbol. The British did not set them free.

“We don’t know about what happened before the Underground Railroad, which is that indigenous and black Canadians endured slavery.” —Afua Cooper, historian

Unlike our American cousins, Canada did not itself end its slavery ― in fact, in 1777 slaves began fleeing Canada for Vermont, which had just abolished slavery. It took Britain to finally outlaw the practice across their entire empire in 1834.

There had been a history of First Nations enslaving prisoners of war prior to colonialism, however they were often exchanged as part of alliance-making or to replace their own war dead. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights reports that “unlike Aboriginal peoples, Europeans saw enslaved people less as human beings and more as property that could be bought and sold. Just as importantly, Europeans viewed slavery in racial terms, with Aboriginals and Africans serving and white people ruling as masters.”

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The Other Slavery

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He also played a central role in the European adoption of Indian or Native American slavery.

When we think of slavery in early America, we often think of the practice of African and African-American chattel slavery. However, that system of slavery wasn’t the only system of slavery that existed in North America. Systems of Indian slavery existed too. In fact, Indians remained enslaved long after the 13th Amendment abolished African-American slavery in 1865.

LISTEN: Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas - Ben Franklin's World

Gold Chains: Slavery of California Natives, Child Trafficking

“Gold Chains” unearths the accounts of slavery in California
Faith Petrie, November 28, 2019, Los Angeles Sentinel



The ACLU of Northern California in collaboration with radio station KQED, the California Historical Society and the Equal Justice Society co-created an educational project directed at highlighting the stories of slavery throughout California.

Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California includes 13 essays and six audio stories that present the experiences of African Americans and Native Californians during the 1800s.

Candice Francis, communications director of the ACLU of Northern California said that the project originally spawned from wanting to observe the 400th year since enslaved people were brought to the United States from Africa.

“We were guided to rather than take on that mammoth task, to look more closely at California because there was a hidden history there,” Francis said.

One story highlighted on the website surrounds California’s first governor, a white supremicists named Peter Hardeman Burnett. Burnett advocated for the genocide of Native Americans as well as the exclusion of African Americans and other minority groups in California.

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Visit Gold Chains Website

Rosa: Kidnapped, Sold, and Killed

Native children often suffered horrific abuse as a result of a law that professed to send them to white families for self-improvement but instead created a form of legalized child slavery. The case of Rosa, in Mendocino County, is just one example of how the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians brutalized Native, and sometimes black children.

Rosa was between 10 and 12 years old and was believed to be from either the Yuki or Pomo tribe. In the winter of 1862, she was beaten and left to die in a snowstorm by a woman who had been granted legal custody of her under the law. The woman, identified in Mendocino County public records as “Mrs. Bassett,” had locked the child outside in freezing temperatures. Her partially clothed corpse was found in a box outside the woman’s home. Mendocino County authorities never brought charges, even though Bassett’s neighbors testified that she had left Rosa outdoors, causing the child’s death. Before her death, Rosa had been forced to work in the Bassett home as an indentured servant. According to an 1862 report in the Alta California newspaper, kidnappers could sell children for “$30 to $150 depending on their quality.” That same year, a child trafficker came to Ukiah with 16 children, ages six to 13. After he was arrested, the children became public wards. But instead of returning them to their families, county officials offered them to local white residents as “apprentices.” Bassett was among the more than 100 people who applied to become guardians of the children.

Letter from Major John Bidwill of Butte County on how widespread slavery of native people was: “[native people] all amoung us, around us, with us – hardly a farm house – a kitchen without them.”

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Report from Indian Affairs Superintendent:
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, George M. Hanson, an ally of Lincoln and opponent of slavery, once found several white men making their way back from Humboldt County with native children in tow. The men said that the children were orphans, and they were providing them with homes and safety. When asked how they knew the children were orphans. The kidnappers replied that they had killed the parents themselves.