Panis was a term used in French Canada for slaves of First Nations descent. First Nation slaves were generally called Panis, as most, during this period, had been captured from the Pawnee tribe or their relations. Pawnee became synonymous with "Indian slave" in general use in Canada, and a slave from any tribe came to be called Panis. As early as 1670, a reference was recorded to a Panis in Montreal. The term is widely described as a corruption of the name of the Panismahas, a sub-tribe of the Pawnee people encountered in the Illinois Country, then a remote part of New France.
"In the middle of the 17th century the Pawnees were being savagely raided by eastern tribes that had obtained metal weapons from the French, which gave them a terrible advantage over Indians who had only weapons of wood, flint, and bone. The raiders carried off such great numbers of Pawnees into slavery, that in the country on and east of the upper Mississippi the name Pani developed a new meaning: slave. The French adopted this meaning, and Indian slaves, no matter from which tribe they had been taken, were presently being termed Panis. It was at this period, after the middle of the 17th century, that the name was introduced into New Mexico in the form Panana by bands of mounted Apaches who brought large numbers of Pawnee slaves to trade to the Spaniards and Pueblo Indians.":24
Raiders primarily targeted women and children, to be sold as slaves. In 1694, Apaches brought a large number of captive children to the trading fair in New Mexico, but for some reason there were not enough buyers, so the Apaches beheaded all their slaves in full view of the Spaniards.:46 According to the Canadian Museum of History 35 individuals were held as slaves in Canada from its founding to 1699. Most of these individuals were slaves of First Nations origin. From 1700 to 1760 the Museum estimated 2000 slaves were held in Canada - two-thirds of whom were First Nations people. The museum reported most slaves were very young, that the average age of First Nations slaves was just 14 years old. Their mortality was high, as most came from the interior, and lacked immunity to European diseases. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography profiled the case of a First Nations slave who had been christened Pierre, whose original owner challenged Pierre's sale to settle his debts. He argued that Pierre sale should be declared “invalid and harmful to religion", because he had converted to Christianity, and had been baptized. Pierre was born around 1707, was baptized in 1723, was sold to satisfy his owner's debts in 1732. He died in 1747, the property of his second owner. By 1757 Louis Antoine de Bougainville considered that the Panis nation "plays... the same role in America that the Negroes do in Europe." The historian Marcel Trudel documented that close to 2,000 "panis" slaves lived in Canada until the abolition of slavery in the colony in 1833. Indian slaves comprised close to half of the known slaves in French Canada.
