Colonial Canada had less than 7,400 slaves before its abolition in 1834, a practice the Indigenous kept both before and afterwards.
A recent historic analysis finds most French Canadian slaves were indigenous, and that Canada’s record fares much better than its neighbors to the south.
“Slavery in Canada: The facts rarely told” by Majorie Gunn for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy says North America had “39 distinct slave societies” in North America before Columbus arrived in 1492. When New France acquired slaves, many were available through a system of native alliances that brought them from Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes, but also from as far away as the Missouri River Basin and the Upper Mississippi River.
