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NOTES

The next annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History will convene in Washington, D. C., next November. All institutions interested in the teaching of Negro life and history will be invited to send representatives to this meeting to confer as to the best methods of prosecuting studies in this neglected field. The session will cover two days to be devoted to addresses by the best thinkers of the country. The official program will appear within a few weeks.

The illustrated textbook in Negro history by Dr. C. G. Woodson has been further delayed by disturbances among the printers. It is hoped that it will appear before the end of the year.

A. B. Caldwell, of Atlanta, has published Volume III (South Carolina edition) of what he calls the History of the American Negro.

The Journal of Negro History
Vol. V—July, 1920—No. 3

THE SLAVE IN CANADA

Preface

When engaged in a certain historical inquiry, I found occasion to examine the magnificent collection of the Canadian Archives at Ottawa, a collection which ought not to be left unexamined by anyone writing on Canada. In that inquiry I discovered the proceedings in the case of Chloe Cooley set out in Chapter V of the text. This induced me to make further researches on the subject of slavery in Upper Canada. The result was incorporated in a paper, The Slave in Upper Canada, read before the Royal Society of Canada in May 1919, and subsequently published in the Journal of Negro History for October, 1919. Some of the Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada and the editor of the Journal of Negro History have asked me to expand the paper. The present work is the result.

I have spent many happy hours in the Canadian Archives and have read all and copied most of the documents referred to in this book; but I cannot omit to thank the officers at Ottawa for their courtesy in forwarding my labor of love, in furnishing me with copies, photographic and otherwise, and in unearthing interesting facts. It will not be considered invidious if I mention William Smith, Esq., I.S.O. and Miss Smillie, M.A., as specially helpful. My thanks are also due to Messrs. Herrington, K.C., of Napanee, F. Landon, M.A., of London, Mrs. Hallam and Mrs. Seymour Corley of Toronto, General Cruikshank of Ottawa, the Very Reverend Dean Raymond of Victoria, as well as to many others of whose labors I have taken advantage. This general acknowledgment will, I trust, be accepted in lieu of special and particular acknowledgment from time to time.

The chapter on the Maritime Provinces is almost wholly taken from the Reverend Dr. T. Watson Smith's paper on Slavery in Canada in the Nova Scotia Historical Society's Collections, Vol. X, Halifax, 1899.

CHAPTER I

Before the Conquest

That slavery existed in Canada before its conquest by Britain in 1759-60, there can be no doubt, although curiously enough it has been denied by some historians and essayists.³⁶⁷ The first Negro slave of which any account is given was brought to Quebec by the English in 1628. He was a young man from Madagascar and was sold in Quebec for 50 half crowns.³⁶⁸ Sixty years thereafter in 1688, Denonville, the Governor and DeChampigny, the Intendant of New France, wrote to the French Secretary of State, complaining of the dearness and scarcity of labor, agricultural and domestic, and suggesting that the best remedy would be to have Negro slaves. If His Majesty would agree to that course, some of the principal inhabitants would have some bought in the West Indies on the arrival of the Guinea ships. The minister replied in 1689 in a note giving the King's consent but drawing attention to the danger of the slaves coming from so different a climate dying in Canada and thereby rendering the experiment of no avail.³⁶⁹

The Indians were accustomed to make use of slaves, generally if not universally of those belonging to other tribes: and the French Canadians frequently bought Indian slaves from the aborigines. These were called "Panis."³⁷⁰ It would seem that a very few Indians were directly enslaved by the inhabitants: but the chief means of acquiring Panis was purchase from les sauvages.

The property in slaves was well recognized in International Law. We find that in the Treaty of Peace and Neutrality in America signed at London, November 16, 1686,³⁷¹ between the Kings of France and England, which James II had arranged shortly after attaining the throne, Article 10 provides that the subjects of neither nation should take away the savage inhabitants, or their slaves or the goods which the savages had taken belonging to the subjects of either nation, and that they should give no assistance or protection to such raids and pillage. In 1705 it was decided that Negroes in America were "moveables," meubles, corresponding in substance to what is called "personal property" in the English law.³⁷² This decision was on the Coutume de Paris, the law of New France.

The Panis and Negro slaves were not always obedient. Jacques Raudot, the Intendant, April 13, 1709, made an ordinance on "the Subject of Negroes and Savages called Panis." In this he recited the advantage the colony would acquire by certainty of ownership of the savages called Panis "whose nation is far removed from this country" and that certainty could only be brought about through the Indians who capture them in their homes and deal for the most part with the English of Carolina, but who sometimes in fact sell them to the Canadians who are often defrauded of considerable sums through an idea of liberty inspired in the Panis by those who do not buy,³⁷³ so that almost daily they leave their masters under the pretext that there are no slaves in France—that is not wholly true since in the islands of this Continent all the Negroes bought as such are regarded as slaves."

The further recital says that all the colonies should be on the same footing, and that the Panis were as necessary for the Canadians for the cultivation of the land and other work as the Negroes were for the islands, that it was necessary to assure the property in their purchases those who have bought and those who should buy in the future. Then comes the enactment "Nous sous le bon plaisir de Sa Majesté ordonnons, que tous les Panis et Nègres qui ont été achetés et qui le seront dans la suite, appartiendront en pleine proprieté à ceux qui les ont achetés comme étant leurs esclaves." "We with the consent of His Majesty enact that all the Panis and Negroes who heretofore have been or who hereafter shall be bought shall be the absolute property as their slaves of those who bought them."³⁷⁴

This ordinance was not a dead letter. On February 8, 1734, Gilles Hocquart, the Intendant at Quebec issued an ordinance in which he recited that in 1732 Captain Joanne of the Navy brought a Carib slave of his to Canada and employed him as a sailor; that he had deserted when Captain Joanne was ready to embark for the West Indies; and that the master had seen and recognized him a short time theretofore in the Parish of St. Augustine but on reclaiming him certain evil-disposed persons had facilitated his escape. The ordinance directed all captains and officers of the militia to give their assistance to the master in recovering the Carib slave and forbade all persons to conceal him or facilitate his escape on pain of fine or worse.³⁷⁵

Slavery thereafter tended to expand. The Edict of October 1727 concerning the American islands and colonies and therefore including Canada in the preamble spoke of the islands and colonies being in a condition to support a considerable navigation and commerce by the consumption and trade of Negroes, goods and merchandise, and the measures taken to furnish the necessary Negroes, goods and merchandise. It was decreed that only such Negroes, goods, and merchandise should be received by the islands and colonies as should be brought in French bottoms. Very explicit and rigid regulations were made to that end.

Some of these slaves were too vindictive to be good servants. There is given by Abbé Gosselin in a paper in the Transactions, Royal Society of Canada for 1900, an account of a mutiny of part of the garrison at Niagara incited by a Panis probably in the service of an officer at the post. Some of the mutineers were sentenced to death but made their escape while the Panis, Charles, was sent to Martinique with a request to the authorities to make him a slave and to take every precaution that he should not escape to Canada or even to the English colonies. A female slave of color belonging to Mme. de Francheville who had been bought in the English Colonies set fire to her mistress' home the night of the 10-11 April 1734, thus causing a conflagration which destroyed a part of the city of Montreal. The unfortunate slave was apprehended and tried for the crime then and for long after a capital felony. Being found guilty, she was hanged June, 1734.

The increase in the number of slaves made necessary some regulation concerning their liberation. September 1, 1736, Gilles Hocquart, the Intendant already mentioned, made an ordinance concerning the formalities requisite in the enfranchisement of slaves. Reciting that he had been informed that certain persons in Canada had freed their slaves without any other formality than verbally giving them their liberty, and the necessity of fixing in an invariable manner the status of slaves who should be enfranchised, he ordered that for the future all enfranchisements should be by notarial act and that all other attempted enfranchisements should be null and void.

Slaves unable to secure their freedom by legal means, however, undertook sometimes to effect the same by flight. A royal decree of July 23, 1745, recited the escape of three male and one female Negro slaves from the English West India Island of Antigua to the French Island of Guadeloupe and there sold. There followed a decision of the Superior Council of Guadeloupe that the proceeds of the sale belonged to the King of France and Negro slaves belonging to the enemy when they came into a French colony became at once the property of His Majesty. To make clear the course to pursue for the future, the decree declared that Negro slaves who escape from enemy colonies into French colonies and all they bring with them belong to His Majesty alone in the same way as enemy ships and goods wrecked on his coasts.

With all of this security the ownership of slaves became common. In the Registers of the Parish of La Longue Pointe is found the certificate of the burial, March 13, 1755, of the body of Louise, a female Negro slave, aged 27 days, the property of M. Deschambault. In the same Parish is found the certificate of baptism of Marie Judith, a Panis, about 12 years of age belonging to Sieur Preville of the same Parish, November 4, 1756. On January 22, 1757, one Constant a Panis slave of Sieur de Saint Blain, officer of Infantry, is sentenced by de Monrepos, Lieutenant-Governor civil and criminal in the Jurisdiction of Montreal,³⁷⁶ to the pillory in a public place on a market day and then to perpetual banishment from the jurisdiction.

The conquest of Canada begun at Quebec in 1759 and completed by the surrender to Amherst of Montreal by de Vaudreuil in 1760 had some bearing on slavery. One of the Articles of Capitulation, the 47th, provided that "the Negroes and Panis of both Sexes shall remain in the possession of the French and Canadians to whom they belong; they shall be at liberty to keep them in their service in the Colony or to sell them: and they may also continue to bring them up in the Roman religion."³⁷⁷

Having now reached the end of the French period, it will be well to say a word as to the rights of the slaves. There is nowhere any intimation that there was any difference in that regard between the Negro and the Panis. The treatment of the latter by their fellow Indians depended upon the individual master. The Panis had no rights which his Indian master was bound to respect. Remembering the persistence of customs among uncivilized peoples, one may conclude that the description given of slavery among the Chinook Indians about a century later will probably not be far from the mark concerning the Indians of the earlier time and their slaves.

Paul Kane, the celebrated explorer and artist,³⁷⁸ in a paper read before the Canadian Institute³⁷⁹ in 1857 said: "Slavery is carried on to a great extent along the North-West Coast and in Vancouver Island and the Chinooks.... The inhabitants still retain a large number of slaves. These are usually procured from the Chastay Tribe who live near the Umqua, a river south of the Columbia emptying into the Pacific. They are sometimes seized by war-parties but are often bought from their own people.... Their slavery is of the most abject description: the Chinook men and women treat them with great severity and exercise the power of life and death at pleasure."

Kane gives shocking instances of this. He tells of a chief who sacrificed five slaves to a colossal wooden idol he had set up and says that the unfortunate slaves were not considered entitled even to burial but their bodies were cast out to the crows and vultures.

Amongst the French such an extreme of barbarity did not obtain. Their law was based upon the civil law, that is, the law of Rome, which in its developed form recognized the slave as a human being. The Roman world was full of slaves. Not only were there slaves born but debtors sometimes sold themselves³⁸⁰ or their children. The criminal might be enslaved. In early pagan times the slave had no rights. He was a chattel disposable according to the will of his master who had jus vitæ necisque, who could slay, mutilate, scourge at pleasure.³⁸¹ In the course of time this extreme power was restrained. Hadrian forbade the killing of slaves, Marius allowed the slave to lay an information against his master. The prefect at Rome and the presidents of the provinces took cognizance of crimes against the slave; and Constantine allowed a master to go free on killing his slave in chastisement only if he used rods or whips, but not if he used sticks, stones or javelins or tortured him to death.³⁸² Hard as was his lot, the unhappy slave had at least some rights in the later civil law, few and slight as they were, and these he had under the Coutume de Paris, the law of French Canada.

CHAPTER II

The Early British Period

When Canada passed under the British flag by conquest there was for a time confusion as to the law in force. During the military regime from 1760 to 1764 the authorities did the best they could and applied such law as they thought the best for the particular case. There was no dislocation in the common affairs of the country. When Canada was formally ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris, 1763,³⁸³ it was not long before there was issued a royal proclamation creating among other things a "Government of Quebec" with its western boundary a line drawn from the "South end of Lake Nipissim"³⁸⁴ to the point at which the parallel of 45° north latitude crosses the River St. Lawrence. In all that vast territory the English law, civil and criminal, was introduced.³⁸⁵ It is important now to see what was the law of England at the time respecting slavery.

The dictum of Lord Chief Justice Holt: "As soon as a slave enters England he becomes free,"³⁸⁶ was succeeded by the decision of the Court of King's Bench to the same effect in the celebrated case of Somerset v. Stewart,³⁸⁷ when Lord Mansfield is reported to have said: "The air of England has long been too pure for a slave and every man is free who breathes it."³⁸⁸

James Somerset,³⁸⁹ a Negro slave of Charles Stewart in Jamaica, "purchased from the African coast in the course of the slave trade as tolerated in the plantations," had been brought by his master to England "to attend and abide with him and to carry him back as soon as his business should be transacted." The Negro refused to go back, whereupon he was put in irons and taken on board the ship Ann and Mary lying in the Thames and bound for Jamaica. Lord Mansfield granted a writ of habeas corpus requiring Captain Knowles to produce Somerset before him with the cause of the detainer. On the motion, the cause being stated as above indicated, Lord Mansfield referred the matter to the full court of King's Bench; whereupon, on June 22, 1772, judgment was given for the Negro.³⁹⁰ The basis of the decision and the theme of the argument were that the only kind of slavery known to English law was villeinage, that the Statute of Tenures enacted in 1660, expressly abolished villeins regardant to a manor and by implication villeins in gross. The reasons for the decision would hardly stand fire at the present day. The investigation of Paul Vinogradoff and others have conclusively established that there was not a real difference in status between the so-called villein regardant and villein in gross, and that in any case the villein was not properly a slave but rather a serf.³⁹¹ Moreover, the Statute of Tenures deals solely with tenure and not with status.

But what seems to have been taken for granted, namely that slavery, personal slavery, had never existed in England and that the only unfree person was the villein, who, by the way, was real property, is certainly not correct. Slaves were known in England as mere personal goods and chattels, bought and sold, at least as late as the middle of the twelfth century.³⁹² However weak the reasons given for the decision, its authority has never been questioned and it is good law. But it is good law for England, for even in the Somerset case it was admitted that a concurrence of unhappy circumstances had rendered slavery necessary³⁹³ in the American colonies; and Parliament had recognized the right of property in slaves there.³⁹⁴ Consequently so long as the slaves, Panis or Negro, remained in the colony they were not enfranchised by the law of the conqueror but retained their servile status.

The early records show the use of slaves. General James Murray, who became Governor of the Quebec Fortifications and adjoining territory immediately after the fall of Quebec and in 1763 the first Captain General and Governor in Chief of the new Province of Quebec,³⁹⁵ writing from Quebec, November 2, 1763, to John Watts in New York speaks thus of the promoting of agriculture in the Province:

"I must most earnestly entreat your assistance, without servants nothing can be done, had I the inclination to employ soldiers which is not the case, they would disappoint me, and Canadians will work for nobody but themselves. Black Slaves are certainly the only people to be depended upon, but it is necessary, I imagine they should be born in one or other of our Northern Colonies, the Winters here will not agree with a Native of the torrid zone, pray therefore if possible procure for me two Stout Young Fellows, who have been accustomed to Country Business, and as I shall wish to see them happy, I am of opinion there is little felicity without a Communication with the Ladys, you may buy for each a clean young wife, who can wash and do the female offices about a farm. I shall begrudge no price, so hope we may, by your goodness succeed."³⁹⁶

From time to time slavery makes its appearance in official correspondence. Moreover, there are still subsisting records which show the prevalence of slavery in the province.³⁹⁷ In January, 1763, there took place at Longueuil the marriage of Marie, slave of baroness de Longueuil, with Jacques César, slave of M. Ignace Gamelin. From 1763 to 1769 there are found records of the baptism of the children of slaves in the registers of the Parish of Lachine. In the first issue of the Gazette of Montreal, June 3, 1778, there is an advertisement by the widow Dufy Desaulniers, offering a reward of six dollars for the return to her of a female slave who had run away on the 14th. She was thirty-five years old and she was dressed in striped calico of the ordinary cut and was of "tolerable stoutness."

Alexander Henry writing from Montreal, October 5, 1778, to the Governor Sir Frederick Haldimand, says that he had obtained a Judgment in the Court of Common Pleas against one Gillelande in the colonies who owed him a considerable sum of money. "Hearing that a Negro of his had deserted from him," said Henry, "and was lurking in this Province I obtained an execution upon that judgment and got the negro apprehended—who is still in gaol." General Powell who was the Commander there sent to Mr. Gray the Sheriff desiring him to postpone the sale until such time as the Governor should be made acquainted with the matter. Mr. Gray thereafter informed Mr. Henry that he mentioned the affair to Sir Frederic Haldimand, who likewise ordered the sheriff to postpone the sale until the Governor could confer with the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General thereafter informed Mr. Henry that he had spoken to the Governor, who was of the opinion that the civil law should take its course.... Mr. Gray thought he should have some definite authority to sell.... He said: "There are some gentlemen from the Upper Countries³⁹⁸ whom I presume will give more for him than any person resident here and … they are now on their return." He asked that an order for sale should be sent before the departure of these gentlemen.³⁹⁹ The higher price which the gentlemen from the "Upper Countries" would pay indicates the objection of those in the old settled parts of the province to Slavery.

An official report made in 1778 by James Monk, Attorney General at Quebec, to the Governor, Sir Guy Carleton, (afterwards Lord Dorchester) gives a sufficiently full account of an occurrence the subject of much controversy and correspondence showing the significance of slavery at that time. The Attorney General examined the several papers, making a case of complaint, by Joseph Despin of St. Francois Merchant a trader against Major de Barner Commanding a Regiment of Light Infantry Chasseurs of Brunswick Troops. Despin complained to Brigadier General Ehrenkrook, Commander of the Brunswick Troops at Trois Rivieres, that Major de Barner by his orders or otherwise at Midnight of the first of the previous June, occasioned forcibly to be taken from said Despin a Negro-woman slave, Despin's property and suffered her to be carried out of the province. He therefore prayed Brigadier General Ehrenkrook, that Major de Barner might either return to him the said slave with damages or pay to Despin the value thereof.

Upon this complaint an inquiry was made. In the course of this inquiry Joseph Despin did not support his complaint and charge with those legal proofs which could entitle him to recover from Major de Earner thereupon; "or induce a Court of Justice to consider Major de Barner as having either given any others for the taking of, or even had any knowledge touching the intended escape of the Slave." The complaint of Despin was then deemed very justly dismissed.

Upon the dismission of this complaint Major de Barner requested of the Governor satisfaction and punishment upon the accuser, and a notary, one Robin, who prepared notarial acts, in an unbecoming affrontive manner. This request was made under three heads: first, that Despin might be exemplarily punished, not merely for a false dishonoring accusation of Major de Barner, a commanding officer and injurious to his whole battalion, but punishment for the personal insults to Major de Barner and his character; second, that Despin might pay the expenses of preparing and making out writings; and third, that the said Robin, the notary, may be equally punished for using expressions in his acts hurtful and indecent to persons of honor and character.

The Attorney General asserted that there is reason to conclude from the several testimonies appearing in the case, that Despin had lost his slave by means of some soldiers belonging to the Battalion of Chasseurs which Major de Barner Commanded, though not in the least by the orders or with the knowledge or consent of Major de Barner as charged.

One of the most extraordinary stories of the time is told by William Dummer Powell afterwards Chief Justice of Upper Canada, but in 1780⁴⁰⁰ and later practising as a barrister in Montreal. "Meeting in the Street of Montreal an armed Party escorting to the Provost Guard several female prisoners and Children," says Mr. Powell, "curiosity was excited and upon engaging the Non-Commissioned Officer commanding the Escort, Mr. Powell was informed that they were Prisoners of war, taken in the Kentucky Country and brought into Detroit by a Detachment of the Garrison and now arrived from thence. Further Enquiry after procuring necessary relief to the first wants of the party, drew from Mrs. Agnes La Force the following Narrative:

"That her husband was a loyal Subject in the Province of North Carolina,⁴⁰¹ having a good Plantation well stocked and a numerous family. That his political Sentiments exposed him to so much Annoyance from the governing Party, that he determined to retire into the wilderness, that he accordingly mustered his whole family, consisting of several Sons and their Wives and Children, and Sons-in-law with their Wives and Children, a numerous band of select and valuable Slaves Male and female, and a large Stock of Cattle, with which they proceeded westward, intending to retire into Kentucky.

"That after" the accidental death of the father they pursued their route to the westward and settled with their Slaves in the wilderness about five hundred miles from any civil establishment. After a residence of three years, a party of regular Troops and Indians from the British Garrison at Detroit appeared in the plain and summoned them to surrender.⁴⁰² "Relying upon British faith," says Mr. Powell, "they open'd their Gate on condition of Protection to their Persons and property from the Indians; but they had no sooner surrendered and received that promise than her sons and sons-in-law had to resort to arms to resist the Insults of the Indians to their wives and Slaves.⁴⁰³ Several lives were lost and the whole surviving Party was marched into Detroit, about six hundred Miles, where the Slaves were distributed among the Captors and the rest marched or boated eight hundred miles further to Montreal and driven into the Provot Prison as Cattle into a Pound."⁴⁰⁴

This story will be credited with difficulty but accident some time after put into the hands of Mr. Powell a document of undeniable credit, which, however, was unnecessary: for on Mr. Powell's representation of the case to Sir F. Haldimand the most peremptory orders to the Commandant at Detroit to find out the slaves of Mrs. La Force in whose ever possession they might be and transmit them to their mistress at Montreal. But Detroit was too far distant from headquarters and interests prompting to disobedience of such an order too prevalent for it to produce any effect; and the commandant acknowledged in answer to a reiterated order that the slaves could not be produced, although their names and those of their new masters were correctly ascertained and the following list transmitted with the order.

List of slaves formerly the property of Mrs. Agnes La Force and in possession of others:

²⁰ They were taken in an expedition nominally under Captain Bird but he had little control over the Indians and had only a few men of his own British Regulars. He had had bitter experience of the cruelty and unreliability of the Indians in 1779 but had to go with them in 1780. This was not one of the two large Forts which Bird took in his 1780 expedition, Fort Liberty and Martin's Station, but a smaller fortification. It was taken June 26, 1780 (Can. Arch., B. 172, 480); that there were several small forts is certain; that some of the prisoners brought to Detroit were from the small forts and that they (or some of them) were not rebels appears from the letter from De Peyster of August 4, 1780 (Canadian Archives, B. 100, p. 441): "In a former letter to the Commander in Chief," said he, "I observed that it would be dangerous having so many Prisoners here but I then thought those small Forts were occupied by a different set of people."

The case of Mrs. La Force and some similar cases led Haldimand to require Sir John Johnson, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to report. He wrote from Quebec, July 16, 1781, "Several complaints having been made upon the subject of selling negroes brought into this Province (Quebec) by scouting parties—who allege a Right to Freedom and others belonging to Loyalists who are obliged to relinquish their properties or reclaim them by paying the money for which they were sold, I must desire that you upon the most minute enquiry give in to Brigadier General Maclean a Return of all Negroes who have been brought into the Province by Parties in any Respect under your Directions whether Troops or Indians, specifying their names, their former masters, whether Loyalists or Rebels, by whom brought in and to whom sold, at what price and where they are at present. I shall direct Cols. Campbell and Clans to do the same by which it will be in my Power to reduce the Grievances now complained of and to make such arrangements as will prevent them in future."

Johnson sent a return of Negroes to Maclean and Maclean July 26, 1781, and they sent it on to Haldimand: Clans and Campbell made returns direct to Haldimand in August of the same year. Fortunately the covering letters are extant as are the reports. There is also one Negro, Abraham, reported in a Return of Rebel Prisoners in and about Montreal as having been taken June 18, 1781; and, therefore, about a year after Mrs. La Force's capture.⁴⁰⁵

"Of the fifty or more slaves named in this list," says Dr. T. W. Smith, "nearly half were sold at Montreal, a few being carried by the Indians and Whites to Niagara. The others were handed to their former owners. 'Charles' 'taken at Balls Town making his escape out of a window in Col. Gordon's house' was sold to the Rev. David C. DeLisle, the Episcopal rector at Montreal, for £20 Halifax currency; Samuel Judah, Montreal, paid £24 for 'Jacob' also a slave of Col. Gordon, a rebel master, but for a Negro girl of the same owner he gave £60; Nero, another of Col. Gordon's slaves, captured by a Mohawk Indian, Patrick Langan sold to John Mittleberger of Montreal for £60; 'Tom' was sold by Captain Thompson of Col. Butler's Rangers for £25 to Sir John Johnson who gave him to Mr. Langan; and William Bowen, a Loyalist owner, sold his recovered slave 'Jack' for £70 to Captain John McDonell of the Rangers. 'William,' who was also sold for £30 to Mr. McDonell and afterwards carried to Quebec, had been taken from his master's house by Mohawk Indians under Captain John the Mohawk with a wagon and horses which he had got ready to convey his mistress Mrs. Fonda wife of Major Fonda to Schenectady … another Negro man, name unknown, was sold 'by a soldier of the 8th Regiment to Lieutenant Herkimer of the Corps of Rangers, who disposed of him to Ensign Sutherland of the Royal Regiment of New York.'"