PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 23 



^ny Indian held in bondage was called a pani. As to this our worthy and renowned 

 Canadian ethnologist, Mr. Horatio Hale, writes me; " Pani and Pawnee are un- 

 doubtedly the same word, in different orthographies." He states that the article last 

 quoted is from the pen of J. G. Shea, the distinguished ethnologist, and editor of 

 Charlevois : " All that he wrote on Indian matters is of the highest authority — 

 what Mr. Brinton writes is also entirely trustworthy." "The Pawnees were true 

 Ishmaelites. They had no friends upon the prairies, save those they had conquered 

 and held by fear (11)." In addition to the Pawnees, there was certainly another tribe 

 which contributed slaves to Canada (12) . In 1712 the Renards, or Foxes, en- 

 deavored to capture and destroy Fort Detroit, but were defeated and compelled to 

 surrender at discretion. Those found in arms were massacred, the rest were dis- 

 tributed as slaves among the victors. 



There are a few references in the New York Colonial Documents to panis, or 

 to Indians enslaved by whites. A narrative, presented to the Mayor's Court of New 

 York City, 24th January, 1689, complaining of the violent acts of the Lieutenant- 

 Governor, Jacob Leysler, states that an Indian slave of Philip French was, by him, 

 dragged to Fort William on the 23rd of the previous December, and 'there im- 

 prisoned, but French was himself arrested by order of this bold Governor, and 

 spent his Christmas in durance, for various matters of alleged contempt to His 

 Honor. (Vol. 3, 676.) 



Colonel Heathcote reports to Lord Townsend, British Colonial Secretary, July 

 i6th, 171S, that the Indians complain that their children, who had been bound, out 

 for a limited time to be taught and instructed by the Christians, were transferred to 

 other plantations and sold for slaves. He adds, " And I don't know but that there 

 may be some truth in what they allege." (Vol. 5, 433.) M. La Galissoniere's 

 Journal of events in Canada, under date Nov. 11, 1747, says : "The four negroes 

 and a panis, who were captured by the English, would be put on board a small vessel 

 bound for Martinico, to be there sold for the benefit of the proprietors." (Vol. 10, 138.) 

 Colonel William Johnson writes to Governor Clinton, of New York, 22nd January, 

 1750 : " I am very glad your Excellency has given orders to have the Indian 

 children returned, who are kept by the traders as pawns or pledges, as they call it, 

 but rather stolen from them, as the parents came at the appointed time to redeem 

 them, but they sent them away before hand, and as they were children of our 

 friends and allies, and if they are not returned next spring it will confirm what the 

 French told the Six Nations, viz. : that they are looked upon as our slaves, or 

 negroes, which afifair gave me a great deal of trouble at that time to reconcile. I 

 cannot find that Mr. Abeil, who has a Seneca child, or Vandrieson, who has got a 

 Missisagey, are to deliver theirs, which I am appreljensive, will cause a great 

 •disturbance." (Vol. 6, 546.) 



We find references of a similar character in the .diary of David Zeisberger, the 

 good Moravian missionary (13) He was loath to believe that such cruelty was 

 practised, and ascribed the stories he heard to " lying rumours." Yet it is clear that 

 these were' well founded. Writing in 1795 at Fairfield-on-the-Thames, now known 

 as Moraviantown, Ont., he says : " We had many lying rumours which the Indiums 

 hatch out, that the Indians here are entrapped by the white people, and will not be 

 let go until they have all been sold as slaves. . . . The Chippewas have war with 

 the North-western Indians. They have brought into Macinaw one hundred pris- 

 oners, a part of whom they sold to the whites. This is a nation with which they 

 have waged war for many years." (14) 



II. Next refer to the records in the old Province of Quebec relating to Pani.;. 

 For these we are mainly indebted to the Abbe Tanguay's researches, made and 



(11) " Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales." by Geo. B. Grinnell, 1889, p. 307. 



(12) McMillen's History of Canada, p. 91. 



(13) Diary of David Zeisberger, by Eugene F. Bliss, published by the Historical and Philosophical 

 Society of Ohio, 1885, '^'ol. II., pp. 411 and 491. 



(14) A Traversles Registres, Montreal, 1886. 



