\u201cAn Overseer doing His Duty\u201d, near Fredericksburg, Virginia, ca. 1798. Watercolour by Benjamin Henry Latrobe.
![\"Labouring](\"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/files\/2011\/04\/New_France_4_3_Overseer-and-slaves-Latrobe.jpg\")
<\/a>Labouring under the eye of the overseer, end of the eighteenth century<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Slavery was introduced to New France in stages.\u00a0 A first slave, a young boy originally from Madagascar or Guiney, arrived with the Kirke brothers in 1629. Before leaving Quebec three years later, the latter sold him for the sum of 50 \u00e9cus.\u00a0 The boy soon passed into the hands of the colonist Guillaume Couillard and received the name \u201cOlivier Le Jeune\u201d.\u00a0 As Le Jeune was described as Couillard\u2019s \u201cdomestique\u201d (servant) in the record of his burial in 1654, it is plausible that he had been\u00a0manumitted by his master.<\/p>\n This exception aside, black slaves arrived in Canada only towards the end of the seventeenth century.\u00a0 Despite colonial officials\u2019 oft-reiterated yearning to have African slaves imported to the colony, no slave ship ever reached the St. Lawrence valley.\u00a0 Those black slaves who arrived in the region came from the neighbouring British colonies, from which they were smuggled or where they were taken as war captives.\u00a0 A number of Canadian merchants also brought black slaves back from their business trips to the south, in Louisiana or in the French Caribbean.<\/p>\nThe Introduction of\u00a0Slavery<\/h2>\n