Comments on Brette Rushforth 2012 book, by Jean-François Lisée

Le Devoir, June 30^th, 2023

 (TN: bold highlining is mine)

At first, the native slaves bought by French settlers almost all ran away. Other settlers told them that slavery was illegal in France and New France*. So they could leave.

He (Rushforth) describes the strong interaction between Aboriginals 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 relations between them. “No honour was more important to a young Aboriginal than capturing slaves. His feat was celebrated in public ceremonies, engraved in his weapons, and a tattoo bore witness to each enemy thus enslaved,” he writes. Slaves were treated as inferiors. Men, in particular, suffered torture and abuse. But they became a precious currency, used for trade, as a gift to obtain a favour, to make amends for a wrong committed, or to express a desire to establish peace. Slavery was an essential diplomatic tool.

It wasn’t just a conviction. It was information. The French in the early 17th century had a precise idea of what a slave was. Tens of thousands of them had been enslaved by the Muslim states of North Africa. Rescue expeditions were organised at great expense. The survivors were obliged to tour the regions of France for three months, recounting their ordeal, extolling the virtues of their liberators and raising funds for future liberation operations.

I draw this science from an extraordinary book published in 2012 that was brought to my attention this year. American Brett Rushforth combed the archives in France and Spain to compile this monumental account: Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous Atlantic Slaveries in New France (UNC Press).

In it, he describes the strong interaction between Aboriginal peoples and French colonists on an issue that was thought to be secondary, but which he finds to be central: the use of slavery within nations and in relations between them. “No honour was more important to a young Aboriginal than capturing slaves. His feat was celebrated in public ceremonies, engraved in his weapons, and a tattoo bore witness to each enemy thus enslaved,” he writes. Slaves were treated as inferiors. Men, in particular, suffered torture and abuse. But they became a precious currency, used for trade, as a gift to obtain a favour, to make amends for a wrong committed, or to express a desire to establish peace. Slavery was an essential diplomatic tool.

Learning slave diplomacy

The French saw the accumulation of alliances with the Aboriginals as the key to their influence in America and had to integrate this notion, sometimes the hard way. So when two members of the Outaouais nation were accused of killing two Frenchmen, a merchant, Daniel Greysolon Dulhut, wanted to put them on trial. The council of the Outaouais Nation proposed giving them slaves to make amends. But the accused were executed and this rebuff was so badly received that the Outaouais notified the other nations of what they considered a serious offence. Eventually, the French agreed to receive and sometimes give slaves to prove the importance they attached to alliances. In this way, Rushforth explains, they were colonised by the Aboriginals, who imposed their practices on them.

French law invented a distinction to bring the empire into the slave market, mainly black in the West Indies and mainly aboriginal in New France. The French denied themselves the right to enslave anyone, but agreed to buy and then trade in people who were already slaves. They would find enough to satisfy them among African slave traders and the Aboriginal nations, who profited greatly from these sales.

With labour shortages (already) acute in the new colony, buying 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 had no desire to share with other nations the lucrative fur trade they conducted with the colony, which gave them access to weapons, tools and metal points for their arrows. But the French wanted to extend their zone of influence with new alliances further south. This was particularly the case with the Fox nation (TN: aka Renards, Outagamis, Mesquakies), an enemy despised by the allied nations. To thwart the French, 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 find that some of their own were in slavery. It would look bad. This is precisely what happened in this case, and in that of the Sioux. “Over time,” Rushforth writes, “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 beyond.”

The question of counting

In total, how many slaves were there in New France? In an interview with Le Devoir, Rushforth claims to have been able to confirm the presence of the 4,000 slaves listed by historian Marcel Trudel. He believes he has found around a hundred more, but has not published the list. The new estimate of 10,000 slaves, spread over a century, comes from him. He arrived at this result by comparing the transactions carried out in the Great Lakes, which can reach 200 in a given year, whereas the colonial archives of New France only record six or seven arrivals. However, he did not publish a text supporting this plausible calculation. He estimates that a thousand slaves may have been living in the territory at the height of the colony, representing 2% of the population. He considers that the number and proportion of slaves in the indigenous nations were considerably higher. After their war of extermination of the Hurons and three other nations, half of the Iroquois villages were made up of slaves.

One last word in conclusion. No French-language publishing house, in Quebec or France, is currently planning to translate and publish this indispensable book. At a time when there is more interest than ever in our shared history, Aboriginal and Francophone, on our territory, this is quite incredible.

*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***

• In 1315, Louis X published a decree abolishing slavery and proclaiming that “France signifies freedom”, with the effect that any slave setting foot on French soil should be freed. (Wikipedia)