(Un)holy Trade: Ecclesiastical Slavery, French Missionaries, and Catholic Expansion in the Early U.S. West

Abstract: This article explores the enslaving practices of Catholic priests and nuns in the American West in the early republic. Through a study of Catholic correspondence and financial records, the study reveals how Catholic missionary leaders—who were predominantly French—regarded the holding and trading of enslaved people as a holy endeavor fostering the expansion and prestige of the U.S. Catholic Church in the West and thereby contributed to the dynamic and dehumanizing growth of the economy of slavery in the antebellum era. The research underscores how the legacy of slavery in the French Atlantic, together with distinctive Catholic features such as the sacrality of Catholic marriages and the status of nuns, uniquely influenced the growth and shape of ecclesiastical slavery in the West. By doing so, this article demonstrates the need to move beyond the prevailing scholarly focus on Catholic institutional slavery in North America, which is traditionally centered on Anglo-Catholic institutions in the East Coast.