Originally, the word "panis" was applied to any Caddoan-speaking slaves from the east-central Plains, which included the people now recognized as the Pawnee and the Wichita. The earliest panis in French possession were a pair given to La Salle in 1682 by the Illinois, who had acquired them from Siouan trading partners across the Mississippi, the Missouria and the Osage. At the time, a series of political and military dominos were falling east-to-west in North America, prompted mainly the rapid westward expansion of the Haudenosaunee--the Iroquois League. The Haudenosaunee were allied with the Dutch and the English and from these European trading partners, they became well-armed. As they advanced west, they pushed several Algonquian (like the Illinois) and Siouan nations out of the Ohio Valley ahead of them. These allied with the French to resist the Iroquoian expansion. These nations likewise came into conflict with those west of them, like the Pawnee and the Wichita. By the 1690s, however, the French had added the Pawnees to their great anti-Anglo-Haudenosaunee alliance, and the Pawnee prospered as one of the primary suppliers of panis to the slave trade of New France, raiding deep into the southwest for Navajo and Apache captives.

By the mid-1700s, "panis" had come to mean any enslaved Native American from the central and western parts of the continent and traded eastward. This included not only the western enemies of those nations allied with the French, but as the Haudenosaunee and English got in on the slave trade and adopted the term “panis” for such slaves from French, it came to include individuals from French-allied nations too, like the Illinois. Essentially anyone living between the Appalachians and the Rockies was at risk to become a slave in the east. Once sold, they all became part of the great fictitious nation of Panis.

Check out Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France for more information. I also drew a bit from One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark for this post.