page_title: Slavery in New France
section_title: Indigenous origins of slavery in Canada
hierarchical_section_title: Slavery in New France / Indigenous origins of slavery in Canada
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Carte de la Nouvelle-France vers 1750. English: Map of the New-France about 1750.
context_page_description: Slavery in New France was practiced by some of the indigenous populations, which enslaved outsiders as captives in warfare, but it was 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 1843, most enslaved people were black.
  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.
context_section_description: The existence of slavery in this region predates arrival of Europeans and had major impacts on the way the system of slavery progressed during French colonization. Entrenched in a culture of war, indigenous groups of the Pays d'en Haut relied extensively on warfare that focused on captive-taking, rather than killing. These captives would then be processed, often through a brutal series of events designed to strip the individual of any identifications from prior groups and also supplying lasting demarcations and scarring to signify the individual's captive status to others in the community.
  The process of integration was often cruel and life-threatening and included acts such as the cutting off of fingers or other extremities, nails being torn out, nose cropping, and beatings. The ritual of captive integration was a public affair, which involved all sections of native society, including women and children, whose participation was particularly poignant in solidifying the status of the slave, often a captured male warrior, in his new community. Those surviving from being beaten and marked would then undergo humiliating acts, such as undressing and forced singing, to erase former identities further before they were reintegrated into their new community or were ritually tortured and executed. Once part of the community, captives served distinct social functions within it. Generally, slaves were not typically seen as freely-transferable property and trade goods as traditionally seen in modes of chattel slavery. Instead, slaves were intended to serve the social role of a lost community member: when one member would be murdered or taken from the community, a captive would be provided to take that member's place and assume her or his roles. That often meant that the position of the slave was gendered in a way that pushed men to take on traditionally-female tasks, such as serving meals, providing farm labour, preparing skins, and carrying packs when hunting. Female captives were often used as secondary "chore" wives, who were used for routine household acts as well as providing reproductive labour.
  Politically, there was also considerable value in these captive-taking rituals. Captives' unique positions as social intermediaries allowed them to provide diplomatic services, such as translation. Able to act as symbolic gifts between peoples, slave-trading added social and political weight behind indigenous relations, linking separate regions' peoples to one another through ethnic and linguistic boundaries. Often being seized from one group, integrated into another, and then exchanged to still others, they had capacities to act as cultural coordinators, which highlighted the utility of the indigenous slave trade and the degree to which indigenous captives may have been able to exercise autonomy within their servitude.
caption: New France, 1750
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