The term is widely described as a corruption of the name of the Panismahas,[4] a sub-tribe of the Pawnee people encountered in the Illinois Country, then a remote part of New France.
The raiders carried off such great numbers of Pawnees into slavery, that in the country on and east of the upper Mississippi the name Pani developed a new meaning: slave.
It was at this period, after the middle of the 17th century, that the name was introduced into New Mexico in the form Panana by bands of mounted Apaches who brought large numbers of Pawnee slaves to trade to the Spaniards and Pueblo Indians.
[7] By 1757 Louis Antoine de Bougainville considered that the Panis nation "plays ... the same role in America that the Negroes do in Europe."
[7] A number of New French institutions, including the enslavement of First Nations, continued to be legal as stipulated in the Articles of Capitulation of Montreal.
[7] Several court decisions, and legislative acts passed in the Canadas during the late-18th and early 19th century resulted in the decline of the institution in the colonies.