Historical accounts between 1632 and 1760 show a chilling reality: 734 Indigenous children were enslaved in France’s North American colony. These children, torn from their families and transported far away, were subjected to a system in which they were considered to be commodities to be purchased, sold, and utilized as labor. Quebec historian Dominique Deslandres illuminates this largely forgotten page in Canadian history in two recent studies.

Class of 1909-1910 – Class pH๏τo taken in front of the only school in Canada built (1861) by fugitive slaves. Credit: Buxton National Historic Site

While slavery among Indigenous peoples existed before contact with the Europeans, the French, and then the British, introduced a more rigid, permanent form based on Roman law: a child born of a slave mother was automatically a slave himself. This was different from Indigenous culture, where slavery was not pᴀssed down from parent to child and could often be temporary or symbolic.

Deslandres, a professor at the Université de Montréal, notes that Montreal (then Ville-Marie)’s slavery history has long been an overlooked subject. Her recent articles reveal not only the scale of slavery in the colony but also its ruinous effect—especially on children.

Historian Marcel Trudel once reckoned there were around 4,000 slaves in New France. However, recent evidence indicates that the actual number could have been as high as 10,000. Of those who have been identified by age, close to half were under the age of 12 when last recorded. In Montreal alone, 430 out of 947 slaves identified were Indigenous children under 12.

An enslaved woman and child stand on an auction block, surrounded by potential buyers, 1800 – 1899, from The New York Public Library

These children, then well known by the French colonial terms panis or panisse, were deprived of their idenтιтy. They had only first names, or acquired the owner’s surname—a dehumanizing practice that deprived them of their roots and contributed to what Deslandres mentions as a “social death.”

Death rates were appallingly high. Statistics show that half of enslaved Indigenous boys died before the age of 17 during the French regime, and the median age declined to a mere 11 under the British. Among girls, the median age of death dropped from 21 to 13 over the same period. These patterns are characteristic of causes other than disease—mistreatment, harsh conditions, and neglect most probably being significant factors.

The demand for child labor was triggered by the colony’s growing agricultural needs, domestic work, and desire to control loyal, obedient workers. African slaves were relatively rare and expensive, and hence colonists relied on Indigenous allies in order to capture enemy children in raids to meet the growing demand.

The inclination to enslave children was also directly related to colonial values and family structures. Raising a child slave guaranteed long-term service and reduced the possibility of rebellion. As Deslandres explains, children captured when they were young were easier to control because they had completely lost ties to their Indigenous families and cultures.

Artist Woodrow Nash’s sculptures of newly emancipated (freed) slave children at the freed-slave-built Antioch Baptist Church. Public Domain

Rather than being incorporated into families—something earlier accounts have attempted to imply—slave children lived in strict, patriarchal servitude. They were ᴀssigned hard labor within and outside the home and were owned for life. They might be brutally punished, especially as anxiety about revolt increased towards the end of the French reign. A girl was reportedly hanged when she inadvertently injured her mistress.

Slave ownership extended across all social classes. Families even rented out slaves on a short-term basis, similar to car rentals today. And if an enslaved child fell ill, they might have been dispatched to a hospital, not out of compᴀssion, but so that an economic ᴀsset could be preserved.

Deslandres and her team used AI-powered software known as Transkribus to examine thousands of ancient documents. Even a quick search for terms like panis uncovered hundreds of previously unseen records, allowing researchers to reconstruct individual stories. François’ is one such story. An enslaved boy at about the age of six, he was freed at 17 and given land. His freedom was short-lived. He went into debt and became his old master’s slave again.

François’s story is especially personal to Deslandres, whose ancestor married an Indigenous slave who had been brought to New France as a child. She now walks the same streets François did—Rue Saint-Paul, near where he worked and lived—and reflects on the sad, largely invisible history that underlies today’s Montreal.

More information: University of Montreal

Publications: Dominique Deslandres, (2025). À la recherche de François, panis de Pierre Prudhomme, Searching for François, Pierre Prudhomme’s panis, Les Cahiers des Dix. DOI: 10.7202/1117951ar

“Enfant et esclave à Montréal : un angle mort de la recherche / Montreal’s child slaves: a blind spot in research,” (2024). www.erudit.org/fr/revues/rhnf/ … -rhnf09391/105183ac/