Slavery in New France was practiced by some of the indigenous populations, which enslaved outsiders as captives in warfare, until European colonization that made commercial chattel slavery become common in New France. By 1750, two-thirds of the enslaved peoples in New France were indigenous, and by 1834, most enslaved people were black.
The institution, which endured for almost two centuries, affected thousands of men, women, and children descended from indigenous and African peoples. It also impacted many indigenous people, who were used as domestic servants and traded as goods.
Indigenous origin of slavery France
The existence of slavery in this region predates the arrival of Europeans and had major impact on the way the system of slavery progressed during French colonization. Entrenched in a culture of war, indigenous groups of the Pays d'en Haut relied extensively on warfare that focused on captive-taking, rather than killing. These captives would then be processed, often through a brutal series of events designed to strip the individual of any identifications from prior groups and also supplying lasting demarcations and scarring to signify the individual's captive status to others in the community.
The process of integration was often cruel and life-threatening and included acts such as the cutting off of fingers or other extremities, nails being torn out, nose cropping, and beatings. The ritual of captive integration was a public affair, which involved all sections of native society, including women and children, whose participation was particularly poignant in solidifying the status of the slave, often a captured male warrior, in his new community. Those surviving being beaten and marked would then undergo humiliating acts, such as undressing and forced singing, to erase former identities further before they were reintegrated into their new community or were ritually tortured and executed. Once part of the community, captives served distinct social functions within it. Generally, slaves were not typically seen as freely-transferable property and trade goods as traditionally seen in modes of chattel slavery. Instead, slaves were intended to serve the social role of a lost community member: when one member would be murdered or taken from the community, a captive would be provided to take that member's place and assume her or his roles. That often meant that the position of the slave was gendered in a way that pushed men to take on traditionally-female tasks, such as serving meals, providing farm labor, preparing skins, and carrying packs when hunting. Female captives were often used as secondary "chore" wives, who were used for routine household acts as well as providing reproductive labour.
Politically, there was also considerable value in these captive-taking rituals. Captives' unique positions as social intermediaries allowed them to provide diplomatic services, such as translation. Able to act as symbolic gifts between peoples, slave trading added social and political weight to indigenous relations, linking separate regions' peoples to one another through ethnic and linguistic boundaries. Often being seized from one group, integrated into another, and then exchanged to still others, they had capacities to act as cultural coordinators, which highlighted the utility of the indigenous slave trade and the degree to which indigenous captives may have been able to exercise autonomy within their servitude.
French-indigenous patterns of enslavement
Clearly established prior to the French arrival, a system of slavery was well underway. The French practice of slavery, therefore, existed more as an adaptation to an existing system rather than the imposition of a new system upon indigenous peoples and spaces. Slavery was adopted by French settlers in earnest beginning in 1632, continuing after the Conquest of New France in the 18th century. Initially, slavery in the colony was complicated by France's ethical stance on the matter: slave ownership in New France was not legally recognized (as per their free-soil doctrine), but it could still be justified with the understanding that only the act of enslaving people was deemed unethical and simply buying or receiving slaves was accepted. Hoping to mimic the economic success of other colonies, France's royal administration gave in to Canadian pressures from slave-purchasing colonial officials, and issued the Raudot Ordinance of 1709, putting into law a legitimacy of enslavement within the St. Lawrence Valley colonial setting.