PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 21 



excursions far to the westward, and bring slaves from thence, which they bartered 

 with other nations. 



The southwestern Indians raided by the lUinoisans may be inferred to have 

 been Pawnees. From their captors they passed to the white settlers in French 

 Louisiana and Quebec. 



Forty years after La Salle's time, intercourse between Louisiana and Quebec 

 became comparatively common, and families coming up by the Mississippi, brought 

 their negro and pani slaves with them. 



Charlevois, who visited Canada in 1721, refers to a nation settled on the banks 

 of the Missouri, from whom persons taken captive were made slaves. He remarks : 

 " The Arkansas River comes, it is said, from the country of certain Indians, who are 

 called Panis Noirs — I have a slave of this nation with me (6)." 



Next in date, refer to the story of the adventures of Alexander Henry, the fur 

 trader at Michilimacinac in 1763, when that outpost of Canada was taken and the 

 garrison massacred by the Chippewas and Sacs, he was led to a hiding-place hy a 

 faithful pani slave woman, and ultimately escaped. Her owner was Charles Lang- 

 lade, a French halfbreed merchant and interpreter, and afterwards one of the early 

 settlers in Wisconsin, but her name is not given. The Sacs and Chippewas were 

 then at enmity with the Pawnee nation, and made slaves of such of them as they 

 captured (7). 



Colonel Landmann relates that, in 1800, when journeying from Amherstburg 

 to St. Joseph's Island, he found a large Indian camp in busy preparation for the 

 burning of a female prisoner, with a child at her breast. The usual horrors of 

 torture had begun, and death was threatened, but the woman, in stoicism only 

 expected from the other sex, was apparently indifferent to all. The Colonel' 

 negotiated for the purchase of both mother and child, and secured them in con- 

 sideration of six bottles of rum, "that is," writes the careful chronicler "two of rum, 

 mixed with four of water." The woman showed no apparent feeling, nor did she 

 express thanks for her delivery from a terrible fate. This was but a part of the 

 stoic manner of her race. She told all to her people, and before the young officer 

 left St. Joseph's Island, a number of the woman's relations came and, to show their 

 gratitude, made a considerable present of the finest skins they had been able at the 

 instant to collect. The woman and child so saved were Pawnee captives (8). The- 

 Capitulation at Montreal had taken place on the 8th of September, 1760, and we 

 find the word pani used in its 47th section, which provides that the negroes and 

 panis of both sexes should remain in their condition of slavery, and belong to their 

 French and Canadian masters, under British rule, as they had been before under the 

 French regime, and that the masters were to be at liberty to retain them or to sell 

 them, and to train them in the Catholic religion, except those who had been made 

 prisoners of war. 



Captain Knox visited Canada soon after this, and, commenting loosely on this 

 section of the treaty, states his belief that panis imply convicts condemned to 

 slavery (9) . He gives no authority, and is entirely mistaken. This is the more to- 

 be regretted as others, assuming to write Canadian history, have copied his remark, 

 traducing the character of the humble, early servant of the old Canadian home- 

 steads. It is also remarkable that the part occupied by them in the social fabric 

 has not been introduced into books of fiction and other writings descriptive of the 

 seigniorial times. 



May we not have a gentle Yarico, taking the place of Briseis or Helen, in an 

 epic of the old regime : or even the story of a devoted Friday ? 



The stately mansion of Belmont, overlooking the St. Charles, home of the 



(6) Charlevois' Journal, vol. 3, pp. 212 and 410. 



(7) Henry's Travels, part I, cap. :o. Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac, vol. i, cap. 18. 



(8) Adventures and Recollections of Col. Landmann, vol. a, cap. 6. 



(9) Historical Journal, vol. 2, p. 42P. 



