PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. ig- 



The Panis — An Historical Outline of Canadian Indian Slavery in 

 THE Eighteenth Century. By James Cleland Hamilton, M.A., 

 LL.B. 



(Read December :2, i8g6.) 



I. Examples of early American slavery among the Portuguese, Spaniards, and 

 New Englanders. Story of Inkle and Yarico. Reference to panis in 

 writings of Hennepin, Charlevois, Colonel Landmann, and Captain Knox. 

 Dr. D. G. Brinton, J. G. Shea, and Horatio Hale as to the Pawnees and 

 Pan: stock and their habitat. The New York and other early Colonial docu- 

 ments referred to. 



II. The Lower Canada records as to panis in cities of Quebec, Three Rivers, Mont- 

 real, and elsewhere. The punishment of slaves, the pillory, carcan and the 

 rack. Panis in Montreal Hospital, in the seigniories. 



III. Legal position of Canadian slaves : The statutes, ordinances, and edicts as 



to them. 



IV. Panis in Upper Canada, at Niagara and Amherstberg. The Huron Treaty of 



1764. The last pani. 



I. The Portuguese in 1500 sent out an expedition to North America under 

 Gaspar Cortereal, which entered Hudson's Straits. They brought away fifty-seven 

 natives, to be sold as slaves and used as laborers. 



The supposed excellent quality of these kidnapped natives, and the large supply 

 which the country was likely to furnish, caused it, as our author alleges, to be 

 called Terra Laborador, or the land of laborers, whence its present name (i). 

 This seems to have been the beginning of the subjugation of aborigines on! the 

 North American Continent to slavery by Europeans and their descendants. 



Before this the Spaniards had been active in Hayti and Jamaica in reducing 

 the natives there to servitude, working them in the mines, and exporting many to 

 the home slave market. In 1498 Christopher Columbus sent 600 ofi the natives to 

 Spain and wrote as to them in impious blasphemy: "In the name of the Holy 

 Trinity there can be sent as many slaves as sale can be found for in Spain, and they 

 tell me 4,000 can be sold." He is said to have repented of his cruelty after being 

 in turn sent to Spain in chains by Bovadilla. Tennyson makes him thus bemoan 

 his fate, and theirs: — 



" Ah God, the harmless people whom we found 

 In Hispaniola's island paradise — 

 Who took us for the very gods from heaven, 

 And we have sent them very fiends from hell. 

 And I, myself, myself not blameless, I 

 Could sometimes wish I had never led the way." 



The Spaniards' cruelty in the Antilles was only paralleled by their conduct 

 toward the natives of Mexico. The enslavement of red, as well as of black men, 



(i) History of Nova Scotia and other British Provinces, by James S. Buckingham, p. i68. Other 

 derivations have been given, but the aoove seems appropriate and well founded. 



