Rumor spread quickly in the French Atlantic. Hundreds of people circulated regularly between the Caribbean and the Saint Lawrence in the early eighteenth century, and sharing news was among the first things merchants, officers, and sailors did when they arrived at port. No document survives to show the route the information took, but by 1708 word reached Canada that Caribbean officials had both freed an African slave and executed French traders for selling enslaved Indians. Canadians seem also to have learned of the king’s 1707 declaration making free soil the French kingdom’s official policy. These reports prompted considerable disagreement over the legality of slavery in Canada and its hinterlands, where a small but growing number of colonists had begun investing in slave labor over the previous generation. Unlike the Caribbean, where Indian slavery had been declared illegal and slave raiding made a capital offense, most of the slaves in New France were Indians. According to the colony’s intendant, Jacques Raudot, many began to wonder whether Indians—or anyone—could be legally held as slaves in greater France. Some went so far as to encourage slaves to leave their masters “under the pretext that there are no slaves in France.” Others harbored fugitives. This legal ambiguity had a chilling effect on the value of colonists’ investment in slaves, as it rendered their claim to ownership insecure and frustrated plans to expand the slave trade.1
<snip>
Charged with managing New France’s legal and economic affairs, Raudot would have felt doubly frustrated by the colony’s ambivalent approach to the subject.
<snip>
To protect these investments and to put an end to disputes over slaves’ legal status, Raudot issued his 1709 ordinance, which attempted to shape the nature of slavery and its place in French colonial society.
<snip>
Although we do not know how typical these experiences were, the uncertain legal status of all Indian slaves mitigated the severity of their servitude and created paths to freedom. Their presence as free members of society could also be destabilizing, and it is possible that friendships like the one between the former slave André Rapin dit Skaianis and his enslaved neighbor Joseph contributed to anxiety about the legal status of Indian slaves in the colony. By formalizing the legal status of Indian slaves in 1709, New France’s civil officials sought to make Indian slavery in the colony more like the chattel slavery of the French Caribbean. Colonists would buy and sell slaves with enforceable contracts, and the weight of the colony’s police power would fall on those seeking to interfere with slaveholders’ property rights.77
<snip>
In Louisiana, which would have been a more logical destination for Apache slaves than distant Canada, Indian slavery hovered between being officially discouraged and being illegal, ensuring that it would never thrive in New Orleans or other major slaveholding centers