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.Imports of 4,400 slaves into the thirteen colonies were recorded, only4 percent of the total number of slaves sent to America by all Europeannations and only 7.4 percent of the slaves purchased by the British.Mostof the slaves went to the West Indies to work in the labor-intensive sugar-cane plantations.Slavery was common in Detroit, based on the right to sell captives.ManyFrench families had Indian and black slaves employed as house servants orworking for the fur traders.At Michilimackinac both Indian and blackslaves were present as early as 1743, when the birth of Veronique was recorded,the daughter of a fur trader and his black slave girl.In 1770 John Askinhad three black slaves working in his stores in Michilimackinac.In the Detroit 1750 census 33 slaves are recorded.In 1773 there were83 slaves.By 1782 there were 179 slaves, indicating that Indian raids duringthe Revolution had led to the capture of some black slaves from southernplantations.Some of the Indian slaves in Detroit were Pawnees from the MissouriRiver taken captive by war parties.Records of the period refer to the Indiansas  panis. White captives were also sold as slaves to the French.In a raidon a settlement near present-day McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1755,Charles Stuart, his wife, and two children were captured by some Delawares,Mingos, and Shawnees.They were taken to Kittanning by the Wyandots andthen to Sandusky and Detroit.In 1756 Stuart and his wife were compassion-ately ransomed by Father Potier in Detroit for £24 Pennsylvania s worth ofgoods.In return for the favor Stuart and his wife worked for eight monthsat the Huron Mission.By March 1757 they had worked off the ransom andthen worked an additional month for thirty livres.In the spring of 1757 theywere sent as prisoners to Quebec along with Captain Smith, Richard Joyce,Thomas Millaken, William Brattin, and John Gill.Later they went to Englandand then back to New York.There is no mention of the fate of the children.The farmers in Illinois made widespread use of slaves in the eighteenthcentury.There were over a thousand slaves in Illinois before the British occu-pation, primarily working as agricultural laborers.When the British occupiedIllinois they cut off the supply of slaves from New Orleans for the Frenchfarmers.Despite the contrary tenets of their Quaker religion, Baynton andWharton were deeply involved in the slave business in Illinois.In their wide-ranging assortment of goods for sale to the French, the partners added slavesin 1767.In January 1767 they were offering slaves in lots of four toNicholas Chapau of Vincennes for 12 cattle, 200 otter, 450 beaver, or 1,700raccoons.When purchased in quantity, the slaves were offered at discounts.196 People of the American Frontier"Beaver pelts sold in Illinois in 1768 for £2 sterling ($400) per pound andthe average skin weighed 1.5 pounds, so the price demanded for four slaveswas about £1,350 or £390 ($78,000) each, a very high price.Otter sold for£4 each, so the price for four slaves was £1,600.The price demanded wasincredibly high considering that the price of a slave in New Orleans was only£200.Baynton and Wharton paid Bean and Cuthbert £35 ($7,000) each(a total of £5,355 Pennsylvania) for ninety slaves delivered to Philadelphiaon the sloop Polly September 10, 1767.The slaves were intended for salein Illinois.In December 1767 George Morgan was selling the slaves inIllinois in exchange for furs, Spanish silver dollars, bills of exchange, andfarm produce.His terms were 10 percent down and the remainder payableon May 1, 1768.The French, who had formerly traveled downriver to New Orleans tobuy slaves, could not compete with Baynton and Wharton, who preemptedthe business.Morgan hoped to gain a monopoly by paying for flour withslaves and then selling the flour to the British garrison.By February 1768 Morgan was having trouble selling his remaining slaveseither because the price was too high or the French farmers did not wantto buy from a colonial merchant.Boloin (possibly Daniel Blouin), a Frenchmerchant, was planning to go to New Orleans to purchase sixty slaves inthe spring.The price there was only £200.Anticipating lower prices fromBoloin, the Illinois French farmers delayed purchasing slaves from Morgan,who was offering them at £360 each.Unable to sell the slaves, Morgan usedthem himself to farm 60 acres of a 1,500 acre parcel of land that hehad acquired in payment of a debt growing tobacco and corn.He alsofattened cattle on the land and raised hogs to supply the army with pork.In March 1768 John Baynton wrote to James Rumsey thanking him forhandling the movement of Jamaican slaves to Illinois.Rumsey had been anensign in the British 42nd Regiment in 1764 and became a trader in Illinoisfrom 1767 to 1773.He was associated with William Murray, Bernard Gratz,Alexander Ross, and David Franks.Murray was also planning to enter theslave trade in Illinois using slaves to purchase flour, cattle, and salt beef tocompete with Baynton and Wharton in supplying rations to the Britisharmy garrison.Indians were also used as slaves and were considered a commodity in NewYork, just as black slaves were in the South.Indian women became common-law wives of even the wealthy.Some owners had compassion for their long-time servants to the extent of including them in their will.An example isSir William Johnson, who fathered eight children by his Indian housekeeper,Mary Brant.Johnson left one-fourth of his slaves and cattle to his son, SirJohn Johnson, in his will in 1774.He left Brant and their children varyingSlaves and Indentured Servants 197"amounts of money ranging from £1,000 sterling ($200,000) to £100sterling ($20,000) each [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]