The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
Slaves unable to secure their freedom by legal means, however,
undertook sometimes to effect the same by flight. A royal decree of
July 23, 1745, recited the escape of three male and one female Negro
slaves from the English West India Island of Antigua to the French
Island of Guadeloupe and there sold. There followed a decision of the
Superior Council of Guadeloupe that the proceeds of the sale belonged
to the King of France and Negro slaves belonging to the enemy when
they came into a French colony became at once the property of His
Majesty. To make clear the course to pursue for the future, the decree
declared that Negro slaves who escape from enemy colonies into French
colonies and all they bring with them belong to His Majesty alone in
the same way as enemy ships and goods wrecked on his coasts.
With all of this security the ownership of slaves became common. In
the Registers of the Parish of La Longue Pointe is found the
certificate of the burial, March 13, 1755, of the body of Louise, a
female Negro slave, aged 27 days, the property of M. Deschambault. In
the same Parish is found the certificate of baptism of Marie Judith, a
Panis, about 12 years of age belonging to Sieur Preville of the same
Parish, November 4, 1756. On January 22, 1757, one Constant a Panis
slave of Sieur de Saint Blain, officer of Infantry, is sentenced by de
Monrepos, Lieutenant-Governor civil and criminal in the Jurisdiction
of Montreal,[10] to the pillory in a public place on a market day and
then to perpetual banishment from the jurisdiction.
The conquest of Canada begun at Quebec in 1759 and completed by the
surrender to Amherst of Montreal by de Vaudreuil in 1760 had some
bearing on slavery. One of the Articles of Capitulation, the 47th,
provided that "the Negroes and Panis of both Sexes shall remain in the
possession of the French and Canadians to whom they belong; they shall
be at liberty to keep them in their service in the Colony or to sell
them: and they may also continue to bring them up in the Roman
religion."[11]
Having now reached the end of the French period, it will be well to
say a word as to the rights of the slaves. There is nowhere any
intimation that there was any difference in that regard between the
Negro and the Panis. The treatment of the latter by their fellow
Indians depended upon the individual master. The Panis had no rights
which his Indian master was bound to respect. Remembering the
persistence of customs among uncivilized peoples, one may conclude
that the description given of slavery among the Chinook Indians about
a century later will probably not be far from the mark concerning the
Indians of the earlier time and their slaves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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