(gentle music) - Most people are unaware that anyone was ever enslaved in what's now Michigan.

What generally surprises people is the matter of who was enslaved.

Because, yes, there were enslaved Black individuals here, they make up maybe 25% of the enslaved population.

The remaining 75% were native people, indigenous people, not from around here.

So it's not the Anishinaabek generally being enslaved, it's people coming from the Mississippi River Valley, much further west who were being enslaved out there and then bought and sold passing through existing trade networks ending up in places like Michelin, Mackinaw, and Detroit.

I think we all have an idea of what slavery looked like and what's now the United States.

And what I'll tell people is that first of all, slavery existed here in Michigan.

It was not kinder or gentler than, you know, chattel slavery, plantation slavery, when we think about the American South.

But it was different.

It's much less centralized.

Enslaved people had a degree of freedom of movement, especially they lived and worked alongside their free counterparts.

They often lived and worked alongside their enslavers.

So, you know, in a house like this, it would not have been outta the question to have an enslaved person living right here in this house alongside their enslave.

We don't see separate communities of enslaved people in French and British Canada, or what's now Michigan.

It's on a much smaller scale than slavery, as we often imagine it.

People were treated a bit differently.

Again, not better.

I stress that to people, but differently than what our common perception of slavery is.

A lot of enslaved people, whether they were Black or native, were performing domestic work, like agricultural work.

So just part of the community generally doing the same kind of work as free laborers.

- We always know that there are people at Michel Mackinac that are not here by choice and in our records the women that are Black at Michel Mackinac tend to be associated with being enslaved.

One of the first people that's mentioned as being enslaved here that was black was in the 1730s.

She was traveling with a fur trader named Abatees.

We don't know anything about her background, unfortunately, we don't know her name even.

But in the late 1730s, she was here with Abatees in the winter, they got stuck here because the lake froze over.

They're here in the winter and she was pregnant and she ended up having her baby at Michel Mackinac.

Would've been in a house like this, probably with a midwife.

We know there was a midwife here that's mentioned in the church records later on as baptizing babies.

So we know there's a midwife here.

Would've likely have been an older woman.

Someone with experience helping this enslaved Black woman have her baby.

The baby was named Augustine and baptized in the Catholic Church.

We don't know anything else about them.

Their records disappear after that.

There's nothing about them.

We believe the baby survived because he was not interned in the church yard.

Infant mortality rates could be a little scary during the 18th century, but that Black woman would not have been able to choose anything for her child.

She likely did not choose the name for the baby.

She likely didn't make any long-term choices for him at all.

We dunno who the father of the baby was, either, you know, it could have been anyone.

Honestly, We know that later on in the church records, some babies were born and the father was not named.

Many members of the community would've known who the father is.

But for enslaved women here, whether they're Black or indigenous, that was definitely a part of life.

Aside from Augustine's mother, Black women do not show up much in our historic record.

So they are here, they're just not recorded, and they're not, Black women are not as common at Michelin Mackinac as they would've been in farther east.

Part of the reason is because a lot of them are coming to North America as enslaved people.

Here, Black enslaved people tended to be more expensive.

They tended to serve in wealthier households and not necessarily come out this far west, where indigenous enslaved people were so much more readily accessible.

So later on there would be more free Black people in the region.

But for most of Michelin Mackinac history, from 1715 to about 1781, the only Black women that I've seen in the record so far have been associated with being enslaved.

(gentle music)