Underground Railroad by Granger (Fine Art America)
This is the image I set at the top of my post on the Underground Railroad. It has not been possible for me to publish the entire post. The Block Editor caused severe difficulties.
Timeline
The abolition of slavery in British Colonies would not be enacted until 1833, but for some forty to sixty years Black slaves were freed the moment they arrived in Canada because of the Act Against Slavery. William Grisely had told John Graves Simcoe, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, that he had seen Adam Vrooman force Chloe Cooley into a boat that would cross the Niagara River to the United States and sell her. Chloe so resisted Vrooman that he had to call for help to tie her to the ship. John Graves Simcoe also received a petition. On 9 July 1793, Colonel Simcoe’s legislative assembly passed the Act Against Slavery. The abolition of slavery in the British empire took place in 1833, and Abraham Lincoln did not sign the Emancipation Proclamation until 22 September 1862, but after passage of the Act Against Slavery, the Blacks were free the moment they stepped on Canadian soil, Upper Canada.
The War of 1812
This story is manifold. It tells how much Richard Pierpoint contributed to the War of 1812 and how little he was given in compensation. The Act Against Slavery did not abolish racism. Richard Pierpoint created the Coloured Corps. However, White veterans got twice the land he received. Pierpoint had asked to be allowed to return to Africa. They wouldn’t help. This post also tells about the Amerindians’ contribution. They were free until Canadian Confederation, which is a very long time: from 1534 to 1867.
Amerindians & the Blacks
As you have noticed, in North America slaves were the Indigenous people and the Blacks brought to the North American continent during the Atlantic Slave Trade. Next we meet Harriet Tubman and other abolitionists.
Sir John A. Macdonald, lawyer, businessman, and the first prime minister of Canada (photo by William James Topley, courtesy Library and Archives Canada/c-10144). (The Canadian Encyclopedia)
A week ago, Canadians celebrated their nation’s birthday: Confederation. On 1st July 1867, Confederation united four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Previously, all Canadians observed their national holiday and were proud of their first Prime Minister. That is no longer the case.
A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald was removed in Victoria, British Columbia. John A. Macdonald put Amerindians on reservations and took Amerindian children from their parents and enrolled them in Residential schools, so they would be assimilated. Many were abused. One is reminded of Tzvetan Todorov‘s La Conquête de l’Amérique. La question de l’autre.[I]
In the wake of Confederation, arrangements were made to transfer the colony and the vast neighbouring territory of Rupert’s Land to Canada, yet without either consultation with the colony’s inhabitants or any guarantees of their political or property rights. That set the stage for the Red River Resistance (…)
(See Red River Settlement, The Canadian Encyclopedia.)
Later, he allowed Louis Riel to be hanged. Louis Riel had entered federal politics and was elected three times as a member of Parliament for Provencher, Manitoba. He was not permitted to enter the House of Commons. When he entered, “he was expelled from the House on a motion introduced by the Ontario Orange leader Mackenzie Bowel.” (See Louis Riel, The Canadian Encyclopedia.) The government of the Red River Resistance had executed Orangeman, Thomas Scott. However, Jean-Louis Riel was viewed as Thomas Scott’s killer.
The Red River Colony was bought from the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), by the Earl of Selkirk. After the Earl of Selkirk’s death, the Colony was returned to the Hudson’s Bay Company, but it was settled. Settled land, such as the Red River Colony and the land the Indigenous people inhabited could not belong to the HBC/Canada, by virtue of the Royal Charter signed on 2nd May 1670.
Sir John A. MacDonald was a member of the Orange Order. The Orangemen opposed the presence of French-speaking Canadians and Catholics outside Quebec. Sir John A. MacDonald had a beautiful dream, a Canada stretching from sea to sea: A Mari usque ad Mare. That is Canada’s motto, its devise. But French-speaking Canadians would have to stay on one side of the wide country. He promised British Columbia a railroad. The railroad had to go across ranges of mountains, the Rocky Mountains. Several Chinese died building the railway whose chief supervisor was Sir Cornelius van Horne. On 4th July 1886, a passenger train arrived at Port Moody, British Columbia. British Columbia entered Confederation in 1871, believing that a railroad would be built.
Arrival of the first Canadian Pacific transcontinental passenger train at Port Moody, British Columbia, July 4, 1886. Canadian Pacific Limited Rail Corporate Archives (Photo Credit: Britannica)
Prince Rupert of the Rhine (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)
British Columbia had been New Caledonia. However, it was renamed on 2nd August 1858, by Queen Victoria.
New Caledonia (“New Scotland”), was a name given in 1806 to the central and highland plateau area of British Columbia by Simon Fraser, a partner, trader and explorer in the North West Co.
(See New Caledonia, The Canadian Encyclopedia.)
When Canada bought Rupert’s Land, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company had merged. The North West Company had forts in British Columbia. But it was no longer called the North West Company. Rupert’s Land was bought from the Hudson’s Bay Company.
In 1821, a parliamentary Act granted exclusive trade to the HBC and to William and Simon McGillivray and Edward Ellice of the NWC, in an effort to placate all parties by devising coalition, not amalgamation.
(See The North West Company, The Canadian Encyclopedia.)
The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and The North West Company (NWC) had quarreled for years but they were now the Hudson’s Bay Company. The school I attended in Victoria, British Columbia, St. Ann’s Academy, was built in 1859, before Confederation.
The French Fact
Sir John A. MacDonald put aside not only Canada’s Indigenous population, but he also ignored what I call the French Fact. Jacques Cartier discovered what would become Canada in 1534. In 1867, the year Confederation occurred, the French had been on the North American continent for 333 years and many had married Amerindians. I learned, late in life, that I am métissée, as are other Québécois.
In 1633 and 1635, the Huron-Wendat were asked by Champlain and Father Paul Le Jeune, S.J. to consider intermarriage with the French.
(See Huron-Wendat, TheCanadian Encyclopedia.)
One could take the view that it was all about the weather. Winters were cold in New France. Moreover, how could the colony’s few colonists get beaver pelts without a canoe and snowshoes. The inhabitants of New France depended on Amerindian skills and equipment to survive. Champlain could not alienate Amerindians. He in fact fought the Iroquois, the Huron‘s enemies.
An account of the alliance between the Indigenous people and the French can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Interestingly, The Canadian Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica have joined forces to tell the history of Canada.
“Already in 1603 Champlain had noted that the Iroquois, whom Jacques Cartier had found there, had withdrawn from the St. Lawrence under pressure from the Algonquin Indians of the north country. The French then became the allies of the Algonquin in the rivalry that began for control of the inland fur trade. In 1609, in accordance with this alliance, Champlain and three companions joined an Algonquin war party in a raid against the Mohawk, the easternmost group of the Iroquois Confederacy. The party ascended the Richelieu River toward Lake Champlain. In an encounter with a Mohawk band, Champlain and his men killed some Iroquois, and the Europeans’ firearms panicked the remainder. This skirmish signaled the initial commitment of New France to the side of the Algonquin and the Huron (the latter being Iroquoian but hostile to the confederacy) in what became a century-long struggle for control of the output of furs from as far away as the western Great Lakes.”[II]
The image above can be found in Arnaud Bessière’s[1] entry on Slavery, in the Virtual Museum of New France, Slavery. Bessière’s document is short and authoritative. Morever, it is bilingual. I have used it to create this post. There were slaves in New France, but most were the Indigenous people of North America who themselves owned slaves.
Slave-owning people of what became Canada were, for example, the Yurok, a fishing society, who lived along the Pacific coast from Alaska to California or the Northwest Coast.
Some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war and their descendants were slaves. Some nations in British Columbia continued to segregate and ostracize the descendants of slaves as late as the 1870s.
(see Slavery in Canada, Wikipedia).
Slavery among Amerindians may not have been as ingrained a cultural element in the native population of North America Northeastern coast, but Amerindians living on the shores of the St Lawrence had slaves. It was not uncommon for an Amerindian friend to give a slave to a French colonist. These Amerindians were members of the First Nations.
Let us see the numbers.
Before the Conquest of New France by the British in 1659,[2]New France had 4,000 slaves, but 1,123 were Blacks and the remainder, 2,472, Aboriginals. After the Conquest, French- speaking Canadians owned 1,509 of which 181 were English. These are Marcel Trudel’s numbers, quoted in Slavery in Canada (Wikipedia). Marcel Trudel also notes 31 marriages between French colonists and Aboriginal slaves (see Slavery in Canada, Wikipedia).
After the Conquest of Canada by Britain (1759), formalized by the Treaty of Paris (1763), French Canadians owned 181 Black slaves and 1,509 Amerindian slaves. So, as Bessière writes, no slave ship sailed down the St. Lawrence River.
Despite colonial officials’ oft-reiterated yearning to have African slaves imported to the colony, no slave ship ever reached the St. Lawrence valley.
Bessière also writes that
[t]hose black slaves who arrived in the region came from the neighbouring British colonies, from which they were smuggled or where they were taken as war captives. A number of Canadian merchants also brought black slaves back from their business trips to the south, in Louisiana or in the French Caribbean.
Lower Canada: the First Black Citizen & the First Black Slave
Mathieu da Costa
Olivier le Jeune
We know that Mathieu da Costa was the first Black to come to New France. He was not a slave, but a free man of African-Portuguese descent and Canada’s first linguist. As for the first Black slave in New France, he was a six-year old child. The young slave belonged to Sir David Kirke, one of the Brothers Kirke, who blockaded the St. Lawrence during the Anglo-French War of 1627 – 1629. Quebec fell (1628), but Samuel de Champlain argued that the English seizure of his land was unlawful, as the war had already ended when David Kirke took Québec. The territory was therefore returned to France, in 1632.
Oliver le Jeune may have had other owners, but he was last bought by Father Paul le Jeune and then given to one of Nouvelle-France first colonists, perhaps the first, Guillaume Couillard (see Bessière and Slavery in Canada, Wikipedia).
Guillaume Couillard, figure au monument Louis-Hébert, parc Montmorency, Québec (Wikipedia)
New France did not have large plantations requiring an enormous work force. It was a semi-feudal society consisting of Seigneuries, long and narrow tracts of land located on both sides of the St Lawrence river. It was owned by the Compagnie des Cent-Associés, the Company of a Hundred Associates, who had a monopoly over the fur-trade. Finally, Black slaves were too expensive for ordinary colonists.
“The company was closely controlled by Richelieu, and was given sweeping authority over trade and colonization in all of New France, a territory that encompassed all of Acadia, Canada, Newfoundland, and French Louisiana. Management was entrusted to twelve directors.” (See Slavery in Canada, Wikipedia)
Consequently, the Black slaves of New France were domestic servants. Moreover, most of the colonists of New France were poor. In Philippe-Aubert de Gaspé‘s 1863 Les Anciens Canadiens (The Canadians of Old), a male Ethiopian is mentioned. Jules d’Haberville’s father was a Seigneur. But to return to Olivier le Jeune, it is believed the child was manumitted (freed) by the Couillard family. He died in 1654.
According to Afua Cooper, author of The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal, “enslaved First Nations people outnumbered enslaved individuals of African descent, under French rule. She attributed this to the relative ease with which New France could acquire First Nations slaves. She noted that the mortality of slaves was high, with the average age of First Nations slaves only 17, and the average age of slaves of African descent, 25.”[3]
The Seigneurial System
Farmers, later called cultivateurs, were given thirty acres of land. They paid their rente to their Seigneur and their dîme, to their curés, the parish priest. Their was a Chemin du Roy, but the river was the highway. It linked Quebec-city, Trois-Rivières and the island of Montréal. Under the Seigneurial System, farmers did the work.
The Code Noir, which regulated enslavement in the French colonial empire, was promulgated by Louis XIV, in 1685. The first Code Noir was written by Colbert, but it was amended. It stressed that slaves had to be Catholics or convert to Catholicism. In 1689, New France was granted permission to enslave Blacks. But New France’s slaves were mostly Amerindians, all of whom were called Panis, whether or not they belonged to the Pawnee people. New France had very few slaves in the 17th century, but their numbers grew in the 18th century.
It would be difficult to determine how many Panis were given by Amerindian friends to the citizens of New France and how many were taken by colonists. However, no one can dispute that most slaves in New France were Amerindians rather than Blacks. Slavery and racism can be linked, but Amerindians had Amerindian slaves. Slavery has existed since time immemorial, but the Blacks of New France were owned by Whites. The transatlantic slave trade was human trafficking. It is a practice that has yet to end. La traite des Blanches, white slavery, was/is also human trafficking, and racism cannot be excluded.
I have noted that given Canada’s harsh climate, survival is a keyword in both the history New France and English-speaking.[4] In other words, the French, fur traders in particular, depended on Amerindians: birch bark canoes, snowshoes, remedies. Jacques Cartier, Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts and his nagivator, Samuel de Champlain, were provided with thuja occidentalis, when their men were dying of scurvy. As for North America’s natives, they were not immune to certain European illnesses, such as smallpox, a devastating illness.
1876 portrait of Gobineau by the Comtesse de la Tour (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)
Slavery vs Racism
Slavery may or may not be racist. However, enslavement is an extreme form of humiliation. So persons who have been slaves may be viewed as inferior.
Joseph Arthur, comte de Gobineau (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882), the author of Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (Essai sur l’Inégalité des races humaines), believed commoners were inferior to aristocrats. (See Arthur de Gobineau, Wikipedia) and the White race superior to other races. However, although Arthur de Gobineau believed in Aryan supremacy, he did not look upon the Jews as an inferior “race.”
However unsavoury Arthur de Gobineau’ writings, he is associated with Scientific Racism. The 19th century is the birthplace of sociology and related disciplines. Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) developed the science of evolution. His ideas were shocking to many, but more scientific than Gobineau’s who thought the Black race was an inferior race.
The Disappearance of Indigenous Women
At the moment, the disappearance of aboriginal women in Canada is alarming.
“The issue gained increased awareness and attention after Amnesty International published Stolen Sisters: A Human Rights Response to Violence and Discrimination against Indigenous Women in Canada (2004) and No More Stolen Sisters (2009). Research conducted by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) established a database of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. In 2011, the NWAC database included 582 known cases, most of which had occurred between 1990 and 2010.” (The Canadian Encyclopedia)
The Hanging of Angélique
Marie-Josèphe dite Angélique is Canada’s most famous slave. Marie Josèphe, was a Portuguese slave brought to New England by a Flemish owner who sold her to a Montreal Seigneur, François Poulin de Francheville. When he died, his wife Thérèse de Couagne de Francheville decided to sell Marie-Josèphe to a Quebec City owner. Fearing she would lose the man she loved, an indentured servant whose name was Claude Thibault, the two escaped but were returned to Madame de Francheville, Thérèse de Couagne.
Marie-Joseph-Angélique, (Photo credit: The Dictionary of Canadian Biography)
While she was absent, Thérèse de Couagne’s house was destroyed in a fire that spread to a large part of Old Montreal, including l’Hôtel-Dieu, a hospital. Marie-Josèphe was accused of arson. She was a runaway slave. She had run away with Claude Thibault who had been jailed and released. He disappeared. Marie-Josèphe was tried and convicted of arson. She was to be tortured, make amends (amende honorable), and be burned alive. The five-year old daughter of Alexis Monière, Amable, claimed she saw Marie-Josèphe- Angélique transporting coal. Marie-Josèphe-Angélique was tortured and hanged on 21 June 1734.
“The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal”
Marie Josèphe’s guilt was questioned by Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne in a book published in 2004. The fire may have started elsewhere. Two years later, in 2006, Dr Afua Cooper, PhD, who was born in Jamaica and is a faculty member at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, published The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal. According to Dr Cooper, Marie-Josèphe did set fire to her owner’s house, thus rebelling against her condition: slavery. (See Marie-Joseph Angélique, Wikipedia.)
In Lower Canada (Quebec), Sir James Monk, who could not abolish slavery, “rendered a series of decisions in the late 1790s that undermined the ability to compel slaves to serve their masters…” (See Slavery in Canada, Wikipedia). Later, Sir James Kempt refused a request to return a black slave to the United States. In practice, slavery had ended in Lower Canada.
There is racism in Canada, including Quebec, but I do not know whether it is “systemic.” The French in Québec, the former Lower Canada, have concentrated on preserving their language. Bill 21 (secularization) led to demonstrations.
