Black Population.

The number of enslaved and free Africans in both New France and the Spanish borderlands was small compared to the slave population of British North America. African slaves accompanied the Spanish who explored and settled the borderlands. In 1763 the Spanish evacuated from Florida eighty-seven free blacks and over three hundred slaves. Black slavery in the Spanish borderlands of the Southwest has not yet been studied extensively. Some black servants and slaves accompanied Juan de Onate and the colonists he brought into New Mexico in 1598. Their numbers there in the colonial era do not appear to have been great since most slaves were Indian captives, as was the case also in Texas and Arizona. According to a census in 1779 there were 20 slaves out of a population of almost 4,000. Similarly, African slaves trickled into New France, numbering about 1,000 in Canada and 450 in the Illinois...