Image – Indians and Africans on a New Orleans Levee, 1730s

Chapter 4

Indians and Africans on a New Orleans Levee, 1730s

Visible in this painting is an enslaved Fox woman, barrels of liquor, and bundles of deerskin in the foreground. There is also an enslaved African boy and an Attakapas hunter on the right who is holding a peace pipe also called a calumet. The calumet was used in Indian diplomatic rituals throughout the region. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the French relied heavily on Indians for farming, hunting, and fishing.  The French also increasingly relied on Africans as a labor force to work the tobacco plantations along the Mississippi River.