The early slavery among the French was mild in nature.[279] The system was of a patriarchal type. The Indian slaves often worked along with their owners, especially those engaged in agricultural labor, and were treated as children who must be guided, directed, punished or rewarded by their superiors. Cramoisy, writing of Bienville’s expedition of 1737, states that a Chickasaw slave who acted as guide, had belonged to his owner five years and was always treated as one of the family.[280] A French settler in the Fox Valley is spoken of as living with his Pawnee slaves in feudal style.[281] The relation of the French and the Indians, bond or free, was always different from that existing between the English and the Indians. The Frenchman never looked upon the Indians with the disdain and contempt for an inferior race which was displayed by the English. Marriage between French and Indians was common. The social result of this close connection was more pronounced in case of the Frenchman than in that of the Indian. It meant the “Indianizing” of the Frenchman, or the bringing him to the social level and to the life and habits of the red man. The most striking result of this tendency was supplied by the “coureur de bois;” but the same result was apparent even in the case of the superior colonists of lower Louisiana. And to this result the Indian slave contributed in a measure. The lack of social distinction between Frenchman and native tended toward kind treatment on the part of the owner, and to a shifting of the social planes of master and slave toward that of equality. Yet instances of cruelty to slaves are not lacking. The punishments of the age were cruel, whether the offender was bond or free.[282]