Haitian Voodoo Origins

Haitian Voodoo in the Eighteenth Century:
Language, Culture, Resistance
By David Geggus
Along with other Afro-American religions in Brazil and the Carib-

bean, Haitian voodoo constitutes one of the most striking examples
of neo-African culture in the Americas. The slave trade to Saint
Domingue (modem Haiti) ended more than a half-century earlier than
that to Brazil or Cuba, and Haiti did not experience the postslavery
contact with Africa that later brought the Shango and Kumina cults to
Trinidad and Jamaica. However, the large proportion of Africans in its
population when the French were expelled in 1803, and the weakness
of countervailing religious traditions in the country before as well as
afterwards, help explain why voodoo became the majority religion of
Haiti. Africans made up well over half of the non-white population in
the 1790s. Between the expulsion of the Jesuits in the 1760s and the
ending of the schism with the Vatican in 1860, efforts to christianize
the black population were minimal.
Nevertheless, Catholic priests and at least the sacrament of baptism
enjoyed notable prestige among many slaves in the late colonial period.
The comfortable living made by renegade French and Hispanic priests
after Independence also points to a continuing demand for christian
ritual among the rural population1. Moreover, many of the Central
Africans who bulked so large in the slave population arrived in Saint
1
Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris, Ms. 5301, 22-24; Félix Carteau, Soirées bermu-
diennes ou entretiens sur... Saint Domingue (Paris 1802), p. 81 ; Médéric-Louis-Élie Mo-
reau de Saint-Méry, Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique
de la partie française de l'isle Saint-Domingue, (1797) ed. E. Taillemite, Β. Maurel (Paris
1958), vol. 1, (hereafter: "MSM") p. 55; Jean Kerboull, Vaudou et pratiques magiques
(Paris 1977), pp. 22-43.
22 David Geggus
Domingue with a superficial familiarity with Christianity, the product

of centuries of missionary influence, primarily Portuguese and Italian2.
Besides complicating the concept of acculturation in the New World,
this factor must have facilitated the combining of Catholic ritual with
African rites and theology that characterizes voodoo.
While publications on voodoo are plentiful, and most writers routine-
ly accord it a major role in the Haitian Revolution, few have studied
its origins in the colonial period3. Three deserve mention. The best
work in the Haitian nationalist tradition, building on the studies of
Jean Price-Mars, François Duvalier, and Emmanuel Paul, is Hénock
Trouillot's Introduction à une histoire du vaudou (Port-au-Prince 1970).
Noting voodoo's syncretic character, it stresses its inspirational role
in bringing together Africans of different backgrounds and making
possible the slave revolt of 1791 and the long war of liberation from
European rule. Though somewhat critical of this tradition, Michel
Laguerre's Voodoo and Politics in Haiti (New York 1988) shares most
of its assumptions, as well as its tendency to rely on few sources and
to present hypothesis as fact. In contrast, Pierre Pluchon's Vaudou, sor-
ciers, empoisonneurs; de Saint-Domingue à Haiti (Paris 1987) combines
new research, an unsympathetic attitude toward voodoo, and a vigorous
attempt to delimit its political significance4.
None of these scholars has paid much attention to the surviving lin-
guistic evidence relating to the religious practices of Saint Domingue's
slaves, and to their links with Africa. In this article I propose to
focus initially on two religious chants, preserved in works published
in 1797 and 1814. Together they constitute an important part of the
little that is known about the religious world of the slaves who created
Haiti.
2
MSM 53; Olfert Dapper, Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam 1686), pp. 342-357;
Jean-Baptiste Labat, Mémoirs de nouveaux voyages aux isles françoises de l'Amérique
(Paris 1742), vol. 2, p. 393; Descourtilz, Voyages d'un naturaliste et ses observations,
3 vols. (Paris 1809), vol. 3, p. 148. Particularly suggestive, though not actually dealing
with voodoo, is John Thornton, "On the Trail of Voodoo; African Christianity in Africa
and the Americas": The Americas 44 (1988), pp. 261-278.
5
Michel Laguerre Études sur le vodu haïtien: bibliographie analytique (Montréal
1979).
4
A shorter, notably dispassionate, overview covering most of the printed sources is
Leon-François Hoffmann, "Le vodou sous la colonie et pendant les guerres d'indépen-
dance": Conjonction 173 (1987), pp. 109-135.
Haitian Voodoo in the Eighteenth Century 23
The first chant appeared in Moreau de Saint-Méry's Description de

Saint-Domingue, compiled in the late 1780s. A creole lawyer, Moreau
recorded what he had learned, largely second-hand it seems, about an
ecstatic snake cult he called le Vaudoux 5 . The cult was long-established
in the colony and associated in particular with the Aja-Fon ethnic group
that the colonists called "Arada". Arada blacks maintained the religion's
"rules and principles". According to Moreau the word vaudoux meant
"omnipotent, supernatural being." In the Fon language the word vodu
indeed refers to a supernatural being, and modem scholars have long
identified the Aja-Fon culture of Togo and Dahomey (modern Benin) as
the dominant influence in twentieth century voodoo. Among its several
component cults, the most important remains Rada6. The worship of
live snakes appears to have died out in Haiti around the end of the
nineteenth century7, but one of voodoo's principal deities remains the
python Damballa-Wedo. Whydah, in modern Benin, was both a main
port of departure for slaves transported to Saint Domingue and the
home of a local, and still extant, snake cult. It seemed to Moreau
de Saint-Méry the most probable source of vaudoux8. The magistrate
also associated vaudoux with Saint Domingue's west province, and it
was there that Arada slaves were most numerous in the late eighteenth
century9.
5
MSM, 64-69. Moreau stated that his Description, though not published until 1797,
was written in the 1780s.
6
Jean Price-Mais, Ainsi parla l'oncle [1928] (Ottawa 1973); Alfred Métraux, Le
vaudou haïtien (Paris 1958); Harold Courlander, The Drum and the Hoe (1960). Guérin
C. Montilus, "Africa in Diaspora: Myth of Dahomey in Haiti": Journal of Caribbean
Studies 2,1 (1981). pp. 73-84, argues against a narrow identification with the state of
Dahomey but fails to consider its geographical expansion in the eighteenth century.
7
Trouillot, op. cit. pp. 47-51.
8
The snake deity of Whydah was called Dangbe. The Fon of Dahomey, who captured
Whydah in 1727, did not traditionally worship live snakes but one of their main deities
was Da, a serpent and the principle of sinuosity: Melville Herskovits, Dahomey: an
Ancient West African Kingdom, 2 vols, (New York 1938), vol. 2, pp. 247-253. The
Aja-Fon double rainbow-serpent/sea-serpent Aido-Hwedo, became in Haiti the wife of
Damballa-Wedo, Aida-Wedo.
9
See below, note 68. Charles Malenfant, a West Province resident, similarly asso-
ciated vaudoux and snake-worship with the Arada: Charles Malenfant, Des colonies et
particulièrement de celle de Saint-Domingue (Paris 1814), pp. 215-217. So did another
visitor to the province, who also noted, however, the diversity of Arada cults and the
worship of snakes by other ethnic groups: Descourtilz, op. cit., vol. 3 pp. 113-114,
121, 149-150, 180, 209-211. The connection between Aradas and snake-worship in Saint
Domingue was noted more than a half-century earlier in Charlevoix, Histoire de I'isle
espagnole, 4 vols. (Paris 1733), vol. 4, p. 366.
24 David Geggus
Moreau observed that vaudoux might be performed publicly as a

dance, and that European influences were sometimes incorporated, but
that in its "pure and primitive" form it was always practised in secret.
A priest and priestess acted as intermediaries between devotees and a
divinized live snake. Supplicants made offerings and requests to it -
seeking usually "the ability to control their masters' mind", but also
money, romance, and good health10. Acting as an oracle, the priestess
replied in a convulsive trance. Ceremonies ended with participants
dancing and becoming possessed by a violent frenzy communicated
from the snake via the priest and priestess. Though whites and free
colored police were known to have spied on ceremonies, an oath,
sometimes sealed with goat's blood, bound all participants to secrecy
on pain of death. Cult leaders wielded formidable control over their
followers, which Moreau considered of great potential danger. Sects
additionally acted as friendly societies, giving aid to members in need.
When a new member was to be initiated, an "African song" was sung
in call and response fashion that sent the neophyte into a possession
trance (Chant 1). Moreau himself did not know its meaning. In the
best-known study of the Haitian Revolution, C. L. R. James supplied
the following translation: "We swear to destroy the whites and all
that they possess; let us die rather than fail to keep this vow" n .
However, this is quite incorrect. James transferred these words, without
attribution, from Drouin de Bercy's De Saint-Domingue (Paris 1814),
where they applied to a rather different chant (Chant 2), though again
incorrectly. Fanciful interpretations were also put forward by members
of the Haitian Indigenist movement in the 1940s. Some claimed that
the refrain was a revolutionary creed that originated with the maroon
band of Télémaque Canga 12 . Others thought it was an Arawak war
cry adopted by rebellious blacks and given the meaning "Liberty or
death!'" 3
Contrary to what one might expect, the chant is not in Fon, or any
other West African language, but in Kikongo, a tongue spoken widely
10
MSM, 66.
' 1 Cyril L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo
Revolution (New York, 2nd ed., 1963), p. 18.
,J
Louis Élie, Histoire d'Haïti, 2 vols. (Port-au-Prince 1944-5), vol. 2, pp. 184-185.
In this instance, Canga probably referred to the ethnic group usually known in northern
Saint Domingue as Miserable or Mesurade.
13
Aya Bombé. Revue Mensuelle 1 (oct. 1946), pp. 1, 32; Price-Mars, op. cit., p. 176.
in the western Congo basin. I offer below a modern transliteration of

the five-line chant together with a tentative translation 14 . I should make
clear that I have no expertise in African linguistics, merely a "dictionary
knowledge" of Kikongo gleaned from a variety of sources, supported
by a reading of relevant ethnographic studies 15 .
Over-concentration on voodoo's links to Dahomey has for long
obscured the identity of this chant in the literature on Saint Domingue.
However, earlier translations have appeared. In a study of the Kongo
kingdom, the Africanist Jean Cuvelier identified the language of the
chant and rendered it as "Oh Mbumba snake/Stop the blacks/Stop the
white man/Stop the ndoki/Stop them" 16 . Aimé Césaire then used it in his
Toussaint Louverture, gratuitously placing these words in the mouths of
the rebels of 1791 17 . While this piece of poetic licence went unnoticed,
the translation was criticised by R. Bourgeois in the journal Présence
Africainel8. Having consulted with speakers of modern Kiyombe (a
dialect of Kikongo), he proposed instead: "Oh beneficent spirit (or
Mbùmba) / Open up the blacks' minds / Stop (or exterminate) the
European / Stop (or exterminate) this sorcerer / Stop (or exterminate)
him". Bourgeois stated that Mbùmba did not mean "snake", and that he
did not think voodoo was a snake cult. "Stop the blacks" seemed to him
a nonsensical statement on the part of slaves organizing a rebellion.
Bourgeois obviously did not realise that in Moreau de Saint-Méry's
account the chant was indeed associated with a snake cult, and with
an initiation ceremony not a rebellion. Mbùmba in fact was a very
old Kongo deity with a large number of attributes. Karl Laman, the
great Kongo ethnologist of the early twentieth century, described it
as well-known and feared. "Mbumba is used generally as a means of
14
I am very much indebted to Dr Hazel Carter of the School of Oriental and African
Languages, London, for identifying the words as Kikongo, and for kindly giving advice on
the language and on reading materials. However, she is not responsible for the translation.
15
The earliest source consulted dates from 1772: British Library, London, Manu-
script Division, Add. Ms. 33779, "Dictionnaire françois et congo" [1772]. Other main
sources were Karl Laman, Dictionnaire kikongo-français, 2 vols. (Bruxelles 1936),
whose orthography I use; William H. Bentley, Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo
Language (London 1887); Léo Bittrémieux, Mayombsch Idioticon (Gent 1922); Hazel
Carter, Joäo Makóondekwa, Kongo Course (London 1972); François Lumwamu, Essai
de morphosyntaxe systématique des parlers kongo (Paris 1973).
16
Jean Cuvelier, L'ancien royaume du Congo (Bruges 1946), p. 290.
17
Aimé Césaire, Toussaint l'Ouverture: la Révolution française et la question colo-
niale (Paris 1961), p. 178.
18
R. Bourgeois, "Lettre à Aimé Césaire": Présence Africaine 70 (1969), pp. 207-209.
26 David Geggus
CHANT I
Eh! eh! Bomba, hen! hen!

E! e! mbùmba, e! e!
Oh! Mbumba, oh!
Canga bafio té
Kànga bafyòti
Render harmless the blacks
Canga moune dé lé
Kànga múndele
Render harmless the European
Canga doki la
Kànga ndòki
Render harmless the witch [es]
Canga li19
Kànga
Render them harmless.
CHANT 2
A ia bombata bombé
E yáa mbumb'ayáfya] mbumb'e!
Oh! honored Mbumba, oh Mbumba!
Lamma samana quana

Lama säamuna kwäna
Seize, carry off, take by force
E van vanta vana docki

E wó vónda vòona ndòki
Yes! kill, crush that witch!
19
"Li" is a creole addition that nowadays designates the third person singular pronoun;
but in the 18th and 19th centuries it was used also for the plural. See the texts cited in
Victor Schoelcher, Colonies étrangères et Haiti, 2 vols. (Paris 1843), vol. 1, p. 283, n. 4;
David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier (Cambrigde 1979), p. 284; below, note 32.
protection against the influence of and evil deeds of wicked spirits

and bandoki ... to paralyze those having evil designs" 20 . He noted its
connection with causing and curing disease, and with the Bankimba
(Bakhimba) secret society in Mayombe, where a goat was sacrificed
in making an Mbùmba sculpture 21 . Although Laman thought the deity
was originally derived from a type of otter, his dictionary lists among
the word's meanings: "rainbow", "secret", and "calebash of the nkisi
Simbi" 22 .
The Kongo word for python is mboma. Several sources list mbámba
as a smaller type of snake 23 . Mbùmba itself does not mean a snake, but
the deity Mbùmba Luangu that was worshipped in the Bankimba society
was in fact a rainbow-serpent, similiar to the Aja Aido-Hwedo. It was
both a rainbow and a great snake that lived near the water's edge 24 .
Though Laman, following William Bentley, thought Bankimba was a
fairly recent development, its connection with Mbùmba went back at
least to the mid-seventeenth century. The Dutch traveller Olfert Dapper
noted that Bomba was a major deity at Loango on the coast west of
the Mayombe highlands, and he described the Cymbo-Bomba initiation
ceremony, with its wild dancing and drumming 25 . Writing in the 1960s,
Albert Doutreloux described Mbùmba as a formerly important deity,
presiding over many rituals, including female and male initiation, and
represented by various objects, including the rainbow. Its cult had been
centered in the coastal states north of the mouth of the River Zaire 26 .
20
Karl E. Laman, The Kongo, 4 vols. (Uppsala 1953-68), vol. 3, pp. 100-102.
21
Ibidem, vol. 3, pp. 102, 244.
22
Ibidem, vol. 3 p. 101; above, note 15. Nkisi is commonly translated as "fetish",
an object endowed with occult power. It can also mean the supernatural force trapped
in the object. Simbi are localized, usually aquatic, spirits found in both Kongo popular
religion and Haitain voodoo,
23
"Dictionnaire françois-congo" (cited note 15); Bentley, op. cit., p. 497; Pierre
Swartenbroeckx, Dictionnaire kikongo et kituba - français (Bandundu 1973).
24
Léo Bittrémieux, La société secrète des Bakhimba au Mayombe (Bruxelles 1936),
pp. 53, 120-122, 242-244; Georges Balandier, La vie quotidienne au royaume de Kongo
(Paris 1965), p. 251; Édouard de Jonghe, Les sociétés secrètes au Bas-Congo (Bruxelles
1907), p. 38; John Janzen, Lemba, ¡650-1930: a Drum of Affliction (New York 1982),
p. 53; Wyatl MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa: the BaKongo of Lower
Zaire (Chicago 1986), p. 79.
23
Dapper, op. cit., p. 337.
26
Albert Doutreloux, L'ombre des fétiches: société et culture yombe (Louvain 1967),
pp. 217, 221-222. At Nsoyo (Ngoyo, Woyo) immediately north of the river's mouth, a
snake was also worshipped for fertility and rain, but was called Uri: Cuvelier, op. cit.,
p. 290. The state's foundation myth involved twin serpents: Janzen, op. cit., p. 302.
Mbùmba is known there nowadays as a protective nkisi that brings riches, luck, and
28 David Geggus
We now know that from the ports of this region, Cabinda, Malembe,
and Loango, embarked at least half of all Africans transported to Saint
Domingue 27 .
As Laman's comments suggest, Mbùmba seems to have been known
in other parts of the Kongo region besides Mayombe and the Loango
coast, but was not necessarily identified as a rainbow-serpent. In some
places it was the name of the creator god, more often identified as
Nzambi or Bunzi28. Joseph Van Wing, who worked among the east
Kongo, recorded the widespread use of the name in popular sayings
and ritual29. He thought it sometimes an honorific title applied to
all supernatural forces inhabiting an nkisi (fetish), and that it always
implied the idea of mystery. Finally, in the Cuban Bantu cult of
Palo Monte Mayombe, Mbùmba Mamba appears as an aquatic deity
sometimes represented as a snake30. One can conclude that, of the
thousands of "Congo" slaves who arrived each year in Saint Domingue
during the later eighteenth century, a large number would have brought
with them in their mental universe a deity called Mbùmba, and that its
representation as a snake may have been familiar to many.
The basic meaning of kànga is "to bind or tie". However, in the
context of sorcery it would seem best translated as "to bewitch, keep at
bay, or render harmless 31 ". In Haitian creole, the French amarrer, "to
long life, but which demands a human life and blood sacrifice: Habi Buganza Mulinda,
"Le nkisi dans la tradition woyo du Bas-Zaïre": Systèmes de Pensée en Afrique Noire 8
(1985), pp. 208-214.
27
Jean Mettas, Répertoire des expéditions negrières, ed. S. and M. Daget, 2 vols.
(Paris 1978-84). The exact origin of so-called "Congo" slaves is controversial. Limited
evidence suggests at least 15% were Yombe: David Geggus, "Sugar and Coffee Culti-
vation in Saint Domingue and the Shaping of the Slave Labour-Force": Cultivation and
Culture: Work Process and the Shaping of Afro-American Culture in the Americas, ed. Ira
Berlin, Philip Morgan, forthcoming.
28
Efraim Andersson, Messianic Popular Movements in the Lower Congo (Uppsala
1958), pp. 12, 21. The snake is associated with generation apparently because of its
ability to shed its skin.
29
Joseph Van Wing, Études Bakongo, 2 vols. (Bruxelles 1921. 1938), vol. 1, p. 240,
vol. 2, pp. 21-22; idem, "Nzo Longo": Congo 2 (Dec. 1920), pp. 239-240. Cf. de Jonghe.
op. cit., p. 60; E. P. L. de Clerq, De Bakongo in Hun Taai (Brussels 1939), pp. 71-83.
30
Lydia Cabrera, Reglas de Congo: Palo Monte Mayombe (Miami 1979), p. 128. On
the Bomba dance in the Spanish Caribbean see Carlos Ortiz, La africanía de la música
folklórica afrocubana (Habana 1965), p. 82; Carlos E. Deive, El indio, el negro, y la vida
tradicional Dominicana (Santo Domingo 1978), p. 130.
31
John Janzen, Wyatt McGaffey, An Anthology of Kongo Religion (Lawrence 1974),
p. 36, state it is what an nkisi does to its victim. Kànga additionally translates as "to
hinder", "to freeze", and "to imprison".
tie", acquired this meaning 32 , as did amarrar and ligar in the vocabulary
of Kongo-influenced cults in Cuba, where another word for "bewitched"
is nkangado33. In making an nkisi, this activity is sometimes literally
represented by knotting a string around the fetish, be it a small packet, a
calebash, or a wooden statue. This tying action can be seen as symbolic
both of what the fetish will do to its victim, and of the trapping of occult
power in a physical object. It is sometimes also interpreted as activating
the fetish by angering it (similarly achieved by hammering in nails) 34 .
Thus, in the chant in question "canga" doubtless does mean "stop" but
with the particular connotation of "rendering harmless by supernatural
means".
Bafyòti is a common term in western Kongo for "blacks", and
mándele, "the European"35. Ndòki, a word that frequently crops up
in Kongo invocations, is a person with occult power, a sorcerer, or evil
spirit that sometimes manifests itself in animal form 36 . Since mándele
32
On the voodoo ceremony of marre loa, see Métraux, op. cit., p. 272; Jean
Price-Mars, "Lemba-Petro, un culte secret": Revue de la société haïtienne d'histoire et
de géographie 28 (1938), pp. 24-25. Cf. the account cited in Bernard Foubert, "Les
volontaires nationaux de l'Aube et de la Seine-Inférieure à Saint-Domingue": Bulletin
de la Société d'Histoire de la Guadeloupe 51 (1982), p. 30, of slave rebels calling out
in battle, "Coupe tete a li, coupe bras a li, coupe jambes a li, amare li". Since tying up
people with no arms or legs would make no sense, the meaning here must be "render
harmless". In West Indian French, the nautical amarrer tended to replace attacher. G.
F. Brueys d'Aigalliers, Oeuvres choisies (Nismes 1805) p. 49.
33
Lydia Cabrera, Vocabulario congo (Miami 1984), pp. 20-21, 31; idem, La regla
kimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje (Miami 1977), pp. 14-15. See also idem, Yemaya
y Ochun (New York 1980), pp. 301-302, on Yoruba-derived practices in Cuba.
34
Above, note 33; Mulinda, op. cit., p. 213-214; Janzen and MacGaffey, op. cit., p.
36; Robert Fanis Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (New York 1984), pp. 120, 125, 127;
George E. Simpson, Religious Cults of the Caribbean (Rio Piedras 1970), p. 263. The
association of knots and spells is by no means confined to African culture: James Frazer,
The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. (London 1914), vol. 2, pp. 293-317. David Barry Gaspar,
Bondmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua (Baltimore 1985), p.
247, contains a fascinating example drawn from the 1736 slave conspiracy on Antigua,
in which a "Coromantee" ritual specialist tied knots in a string, "... so the Baccaras
[whites] should become Arrant fools, and have their Mouths Stoped, and their hands
tyed that they should not Discover the Negro's Designs".
35
Plural: minndele. It was perhaps subject to interference (on the part of transcriber
or speakers) from the creole moun - "person, people", though one also finds kanga
mundete in Cuban Spanish cult language: Cabrera, Vocabulario, p. 20; idem. Regla,
p. 4.
36
The "la" appears to be the French/creole "there", or creole "the". Or possibly it
was a remnant of an archaic form of the word, since in Surinam ndòki passed into the
Saramaka language as dókkiman, and into Sranan as ndokimá: Jan Daeleman, "Kongo
Elements in Saramaka Tongo": Journal of African Language 2 (1972), p. 10. Bindokila
30 David Geggus
and seemingly also ndòki are both in the singular 37 , the words may
be in appositon, the whites being referred to as sorcerers. However,
this is a far from necessary assumption. As the studies of Laman
and Van Wing make clear, Mbùmba was already invoked in Africa
for protection against sorcerers and evil spirits. And in the world
of individual slaves Europeans did not represent the sole danger. 1
think the likeliest interpretation of Chant 1, therefore, is that, rather
than a revolutionary creed, it was a routine Kongo invocation seeking
protection against a wide range of potential enemies - black, white,
and those possessing occult power.
It is true, as Bourgeois argued, the word kànga does have a number of
meanings, depending on what tonal value is given to its two phonemes.
Anthropologists have also noted that Kongo religious chants favor the
use of word play, using homonyms or words with similar form but
different meanings 38 . However, Bourgeois's suggestions of "to open
the minds o f ' and "to exterminate" appear to be very uncommon
renderings of kànga, since I cannot find them in any dictionary. A
tempting alternative is "to free, to save", found in the South Bantu
dialect of Kongo. This would suggest an alternative reading along the
lines of "Free the blacks/Foil the whites/Keep at bay the evil spirits".
Yet, as the dialect in question is not widely spoken 39 , this would be in
my view a rather forced reading of the chant.
Chant 2 is also in Kongo, though it is less easily recognizable by
modern speakers of the language. Like the first chant, it is an invocation
to Mbùmba, whose name is here obscured by a vocative prefix and
suffixes expressing veneration, and by the elision of syllables, which
also appears in an (untranslated) invocation of the Kongoderived Kumina cult in Jamaica:

Edward Brathwaite, "Kumina - The Spirit of African Survival": Jamaica Journal (1978),
p. 42. In the Nsoyo region, nddkila refers to an excrescence that issues from the stomach
of a sorcerer and is an identifying characteristic: Mulinda, op. cit., p. 216. The phrase
in question therefore may imply "witchcraft", rather than "witch". A further possibility
found in the Yombe dialect is ndòkula, "brigand".
57
Bindòki is the common plural form. However, Dr Hazel Carter informs me that
ndòki may also be plural: communications of 22 June 1981, 21 June 1982.
38
Janzen and MacGaffey, op. cit., p. 6.
w
See the linguistic map in Laman, Dictionnaire, vol. 1. Laman, Kongo, vol. 3, p.
144, translates an invocation for treating a sick person, evidently involving the repetition
of kànga, as follows: "Loosen, loosen! Bind the pig, bind the hen, bind the goat but do
not bind us, Mwe e!"
is common in Kongo 40 . Among the various meanings of lama the

relevant one here is "to stick to, attach oneself to". As with kànga,
the word had a special application in magical discourse; it described
how a beneficent spirit attacked an ndòkiAi. "Samana" appears to be
säamuna, another word with many meanings, though another possibility
is simuna, "to hold tightly" 42 . Kwána can also mean "to shoot" as well
as "to seize violently." Bearing in mind that the transcription was done
by a French speaker, the middle word in the very emphatic last line is
clearly vónda, the common word for "to kill" 43 . The preceding "van"
appears to be either the demonstrative w6, or an alliterative device
typical of Kongo cult language 44 . The penultimate "vana" might be
vòona ("crush, seize"), or ν una ("tear up with its roots, kill") 45 .
This second chant was published in 1814 by the creole planter
Drouin de Bercy 46 . It is not, as Pierre Pluchon (and presumably C.
L. R, James) thought, merely an innaccurate transcription of Chant
l 4 7 . The translation Drouin gave of it is clearly wrong. There is no
mention of Europeans at all this time, solely of sorcerers or evil
spirits. It is not an oath. The chant is certainly violent, but similar
to other chants found in traditional Kongo religion without any hint
of anti-colonialism 48 . Writing after the Haitian Revolution, Drouin not
surprisingly regarded vaudou as an anti-white organisation "devoted to
the ruin and destruction of the whites". However, it is important to
note that these were his words not those of its participants. Moreover,
its methods, individual poisoning and theft, were traditional rather than
revolutionary, and its victims black as well as white 49 .
40
For -ayàya, see Bentley, op. cit ? p. 471; and yúa Laman, Dictionnaire, p. 1109.
For other invocations, see Van Wing, Etudes, I, pp. 249-252, 304; Bittrémieux, Idioticon
II, pp. 445-6, 448-453.
41
See that chant in Van Wing, "Nzo Longo", pp. 239-240: "E mpongo mbumba/E
singi di mbumba/Sala nki ya? Lamal/Gonda!", rendered as "O sovereign mbumba/Curse
of mbumba/What will you do then?/Attache-toi/Kill!"
42
See Janzen and MacGaffey, op. cit., p. 36.
43
Sometimes also gonda, the letter g replacing ν in some dialects.
44
See Bentley, op. cit., ρ, 507; Lumwamu, op. cit., pp. 140-3. Cf. "Vo vonda ngondo"
translated as "Kill that alligator" by ex-slaves in the U.S., cited in John W. Blassingame,
The Slave Community (New York 1979), p. 27.
45
The latter meaning is found in the eighteenth century dictionary cited in note 15.
44
[Louis Marie César Auguste) Drouin de Bercy, De Saint- Domingue (Paris 1814),
p. 178.
47
Pluchon, op. cit., p. 114.
48
See above, note 41; Van Wing Études, II, pp. 21-22; Laman, Kongo I, p. 90.
49
Drouin de Bercy, op. cit., pp. 175-177.
32 David Geggus
The setting of the two chants was remarkably similar. Both were
sung during an initiation ceremony into a snake cult presided over
by a vaudou "king and queen". The ceremonies were highly secret,
began with offerings, and ended with orgiastic dancing and drinking.
Immediately preceding the singing, the initiate received, in Moreau de
Saint-Méry's account, a small packet containing herbs, hair, and other
substances (the sort of amulet called in modern Haiti paquet-Congo).
In Drouin's account the initiate was given poisons "to destroy . . . his
enemies and their animals", as well as a wooden staff similar to that of
other cult members. The timing of these events suggests that the chants
were meant to activate the magic substances given to the initiates. It is
possible that the chants were directed not at the snake that apparently
symbolized the nkisi spirit, but at the packets which embodied it or at
least part of its power 50 .
Before exploring some of the implications of this analysis, it will be
useful to take note of two other bodies of evidence regarding magical
practices in pre-revolutionary Saint Domingue. One is the famous case
of the poisoner Macandal. Executed in 1758, he was already a figure of
legend before the Revolution, and he lives on deified in modern voodoo.
Macandal was a runaway slave who for many years built up a following
on northern plantations distributing poisons and magic paquets. He has
been credited with a scheme to poison all the colony's whites, though
it is clear from surviving documentation that his reputation became
magnified with passing decades 51 .
Historians invariably have identified Macandal simply as an African,
or more specifically as a Sudanic Moslem - in the latter case because
the investigating judge thought one of the words in his invocations
sounded like "Allah". However, a Bantu origin seems much more
likely. In the first place, the paquets he made and bound with cord seem
50
It is interesting that the late eighteenth century vaudoux societies described by
plantation manager Joinville-Gauban venerated inanimate fetishes placed in shrines that
were merely guarded by trained "reptiles or other animals": cited in Pluchon, op. cit., p.
114. Small packets of "medicines" (bila) are often attached to an nkisi (fetish): Laman,
Kongo, vol. 3, p. 82. In modem Woyo, the Mbùmba fetish is a packet buried in clay in
a pot. A person who consults it is given a small packet of Mbùmba materials: Mulinda,
op. cit., p. 211.
51
Pluchon, op. cit., pp. 165-182, 208-223, provides by far the most thorough study
of Macandal and poisoning in general. Cf. David Geggus, "Voodoo, Marronage, and
the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt": Proceedings of the Fifteenth Meeting of the French
Colonial Historical Society, ed. Philip Boucher, Patricia Galloway (Lanham 1991).
clearly to belong to that Kongo tradition in the Americas described by

Robert Fanis Thompson and others 52 . Macandal's name itself seems to
be a corruption of the Kongo word for "amulet" makundalmakwanda^.
Thus protective paquets in late colonial Saint Domingue and independ-
ent Haiti were called macandals not just in memory of the famous
poisoner. More correctly, he himself was named for them. Finally,
the name of his accomplice, Mayombe, further suggests West Central
African origins.
The second case to examine is the denunciation and trial of one
Jérôme Poteau and his accomplices, who in 1786 were indicted for pres-
iding over nocturnal assemblies in the northern parish of Marmelade 54 .
These meetings, which the slaves called "mayombe" or "bila", had been
frequent and involved up to two hundred participants. Attendance was
said to provide protection against punishment by slaveowners. Whites
apparently had tolerated the gatherings, and only intervened to disperse
them, if they became too noisy. Yet they were secret in the sense that
leaders threatened participants with punishment should they reveal what
transpired within them 55 . Several slaves made depositions, however,
when the colonial judiciary decided to investigate.
Jérôme Poteau was a mulatto slave who "sold maman-bila (small
chalky stones) contained in bags called fonda, red and black seeds
of a sort of acacia, which he called poto, but above all sticks called
mayombo, in which were placed powdered maman-bila by means of a
drill. This gave the ability to fight, without danger to oneself, another
slave whose stick had no mayombo"56. If garnished with nails, such
52
Pluchon, op. cit., ch. 3; pp. 210-212; Thompson, op. cit., ch. 3; Mulinda, op. cit.,
pp. 204-207. Note the packet form, the tying action, and the animal/vegetable/mineral
contents set in earth. The invocation "Ouaïe Mayangangué" also has a Bantu appearance;
wáayi means "slavery" in Kongo.
53
Mulinda, op. cit., p. 216; Bitirémieux, Mayombsch Idioticon; Suzanne Com-
haire-Sylvain, "Survivances africaines dans le vocabulaire religieux d'Haïti": Études
Dahoméennes 14 (1955), p. 13.
54
The relevant documents are cited or paraphrased in Gabriel Debien, "Assemblées
nocturnes d'esclaves à Saint-Domingue"; Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française
208 (1972), pp. 273-284.
55
This punishment was to be carried out, apparently by slaveowners, in the form of
whippings, incarceration, or the ball and chain.
36
MSM, p. 275. Moreau was evidently confused here and misread his notes. Ac-
cording to the source he used, mayombo referred not to the stick but to the pouch
containing the powder: Archives Nationales, Paris, Colonies, F3/192, letter by Gressier
de la Jalousière, 26 mai 1786. These bâtons ferrés were studded clubs not "iron bars",
as reported in Carolyn Fick, "The Black Masses in the San Domingo Revolution,
1791-1803", Ph. D. diss., Concordia University, 1979, pp. 75-76.
34 David Geggus
sticks sold for very large sums. Jérôme placed the "maman-bila" in a
glass of rum with gunpowder, "to make them angry"57, and he added
pepper and white powder for clients suffering from fever. The "poto"
seeds were used for detecting chicken thieves and "macandals" (here
glossed as "poisoners"). One source mentioned the worship of a fetish
before an altar with two candles, and (the modern voodoo symbol of)
crossed machetes. After drinking rum mixed with powdered chalk and
pepper, participants fell down, but were revived with blows from a
machete. Another source described a fire ordeal involving gunpowder.
Several mentioned the distribution of leaves.
Once again the dominant influence here appears to be Kongo, as
in the Cuban magic-oriented cult of Palo Monte Mayombe58. Fúnda
can be any envelope-like container, but especially a package made of
folded leaves, a tied packet, or nkisi-bag. "Poto" seems to come from
buto, the common Bantu stem for "seed", which in Kongo is mbútu.
Laman mentions two types of seeds used in Kongo magic for detecting
wrongdoers and ndòki59. As for Jérôme's small white stones, bila
(plural: mabila) refers, not to pebbles, but to bags attached to a fetish,
containing such magical substances, genetically known as bilóngo60. It
seems here that some linguistic confusion or synecdochal transfer of
meaning took place. As Jérôme was of mixed racial descent, one would
expect these proceedings to exhibit a good measure of creolization, as
indeed the use of rum, a crucifix (also employed by Macandal), and of
garlic suggests. One should note, however, that chalky white stone and
white clay are very common ingredients in Kongo magic and religion61.
Stick-fighting and the carrying of cudgels were very common, if
often illegal, in Caribbean slave communities. However, it is of especial
significance that a heavy stick was in the Kongo Bankimba society
(whose patron, we have seen, was Mbùmba) "the main instrument of
57
The same term is used to describe activating an nk(si by tying it or hammering
in nails: Janzen and MacGaffey, op. cit., p. 36. In modern Haitian magic, amulets are
dipped in a mixture of blood and gunpowder poured from a mavangou bottle: Métraux,
op. cit., p. 273. Mavungu is a Kongo nkisi.
58
Cabrera, Reglas de Congo.
59
Laman, Kongo, vol. 3, p. 82.
60
Ibidem; Janzen and MacGaffey, op. cit., p. 37; Andersson, op. cit., p. 20.
61
Mulinda, op. cit., p. 205; Raoul Lehuard, Fétiches à clous de Bas-Zaïre (Amouville
1980), p. 84. White is the color of death and. success. Bakimba initiates covered their
bodies with white clay. White chalk rubbed around the eyes enables one to detect
sorcerers.
sorcery" 62 . Holes were made in a stick to contain powder, snakeskin,

and other substances, thereby converting it into an nkisi with the power
to paralyse or chase away thieves and evil spirits. In the society
described by Drouin de Bercy, too, sticks were clearly one of the
badges of membership, and adepts also wore skirts of leaves, as in
Bankimba. Another badge of Bankimba membership was a necklace of
rolled leaves containing white clay, pebbles, and small grains 63 . Finally,
the death and resurrection symbolism central to Bankimba, and the
other main Kongo secret society, Ndembo, seems to reappear in the
falling down and revival described in Jérôme's ceremonies. It may also
be glimpsed perhaps in the use of blindfolds recorded by Drouin.
It would be unwise to insist on parallels between these Saint Do-
mingue cults and any particular Kongo secret society. Accounts of
Bankimba vary, and unlike Ndembo, it was an all-male society, whereas
women clearly were involved in the ceremonies described by Moreau
de Saint-Méry and Drouin de Bercy, even though the latter called
the organization he described a "brotherhood". On the other hand,
the linkage between Bankimba and the rainbow serpent Mbùmba; its
connection with Mayombe and the Loango coast; the way in Africa it
brought men of different tribes together; its association with protection
against sorcerers64; its cult objects, and some aspects of its ritual,
together make for intriguing comparison with the material from colonial
Saint Domingue. Furthermore, the nocturnal policing functions of the
secret societies of twentieth century Haiti, and their association with
tales of flying creatures, provide further echoes of Bankimba (and Palo
Monte Mayombe) 65 .
At the very least, I think we have demonstrated a very strong Kongo
content in what eighteenth century colonists called "vaudou", and which
they linked specifically with the Aja-Fon of the Bight of Benin. In the
62
De Jonghe, op. cit., pp. 12, 38, 60; MacGaffey, op. cit., p. 125. Dapper, op. cit. ,
p. 333, mentions "small studded staffs" representing minklsi in the Loango region.
63
De Jonghe, op. cit., p. 59.
64
Bentley, op. cit., p. 507. }
65
On secret societies in modern Haiti, see Laguerre, Voodoo, ch. 5, where, however,
their genesis is attributed to marronage without any consideration of possible African
precedents. Note also that, though Laguerre, and Jean Keiboull, Le vaudou: magie ou
religion? (Paris 1973), pp. 117-130, suppose the Bizango society is named for people
from the Bissagos Islands (of whom very few came to Saint Domingue), Bizòngo is a
Kongo proper name. Roger Bastide, African Civilisations in the New World (New York
1971), p. 110, also suggests a Bantu derivation, though for different reasons.
36 David Geggus
area of cultural continuities, it is of course much easier to suggest

where something may have come from than to say where it did not.
Nevertheless, we are dealing here, not with isolated lexical items, but
with whole chants embedded in a particular social context. For this
reason, I feel the identification of these colonial practices with the
Kongo culture area can be advanced with confidence.
Furthermore, for the historian of Saint Domingue there should be
nothing surprising in this identification. Although some scholars long
continued to believe that Aja-Fon must have predominated in the slave
trade to Saint Domingue 66 , the work of Gabriel Debien in the 1960s
made clear that "Congos" constituted at the colony's height the largest
single ethnic group in its slave population 67 . More recent research
reveals that West Central Africans were even more numerous in Saint
Domingue than was shown in Debien's samples, which underrepre-
sented the coffee-growing regions and particularly the North Province.
In the 1780s they accounted for almost sixty per cent of the African
slaves in the North, and Aja-Fon for only twelve per cent. In the plains
of the West Province Aja-Fon and Yoruba each then formed sixteen
per cent of the Africans; Central Bantu thirty-two per cent, and in the
surrounding mountains, fifty per cent. The South Province resembled
the North in ethnic composition rather than the West68. This prominence
of "Congos" was not solely a late colonial phenomenon. As far back
as records currently go (i.e. the 1720s), they formed one of the major
ethnic groups in Saint Domingue, while at no time did the Aja-Fon
constitute more than twenty per cent of the African slaves 69 .
Why, then, is the Aja-Fon legacy the most visible in modem voodoo,
having contributed the major deities and ceremonies, and most of the
vocabulary of African origin? The best answer remains that of Sidney
66
Métraux, op. cit., pp. 20, 22; Courlander, op. cit. p. 8; Laguerre, Voodoo, p. 24;
Katherine Dunham, Dances of Haiti (Los Angeles 1983), p. 1; James Leyburn, The
Haitian People (New Haven 1941), p. 137.
67
This work was summarized in Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census
(Madison 1969), and Gabriel Debien, Les esclaves des Antilles françaises aux XVÌle et
XVllIe siècles (Fort-de-France 1972), ch. 1.
68
David Geggus, "Sugar and Coffee", table 8; idem, "The Demographic Composition
of the French Slave Trade": Proceedings of the 13 th!14th Meetings of the French Colonial
Historical Society ed. P. Boucher (Lanham 1990), table 7.
69
David Geggus, "Sex Ratio and Ethnicity: a Reply to Paul Lovejoy": Journal of
African History 30,4 (1989), pp. 395-396; also below, note 74, and Charlevoix's comment
around 1730 that Congos, Aradas, and Sénégalais made up the slave populations^ three
main groupings: op. cit., vol. 4, 366.
Mintz and Richard Price: in the creation of creole cultures the initial
phase was often of paramount importance70. During the formative
years of Saint Domingue slavery before 1720 Aja-Fon slaves were
presumably much more numerous than they were later. Other factors,
suggested by scholars to explain the relative erosion of Bantu culture
in Brazil and Cuba, may also have played a part. Aja-Fon and Yoruba
influence supposedly overrode that of Bantu slaves, because the former
derived prestige from association with powerful African states; their
languages (some say) were relatively easier to learn; and they had a
structured pantheon of gods, whereas the ancestor-worship emphasised
by the Bantu was disrupted by enslavement71.
The small physical stature of the West Central Africans conceivably
may have helped lower their status in the slave quarters, as well as
in the eyes of many planters72. At least as regards learning creole,
"Congos" were considered good linguists and Arada poor ones, which
may indicate differing, attitudes to acculturation73. And if women had a
disproportional influence on cultural transmission in slave society, the
high sex ratio of "Congo" (but not Arada or Yoruba) slaves in Saint
Domingue is another factor to consider 74 . Finally, in Kongo religion
there is no stress on word-perfect recitation of texts; this doubtless
facilitated the adoption of ritual in foreign tongues75.
70
Sidney Mintz, Richard Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American
Past (New Haven 1976), pp. 25-26. Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l'oncle, pp. 100-101, and
Trouillot, op. cit., p. 31, suggest that Arada maroon or rebel leaders imposed their culture
on others but the fact is none has been identified as an Arada. Even in the Cul de Sac,
where they were most numerous, the most prominent African leader in the Revolution
was the (Ketu?) Yoruba Halaou.
71
Cabrera, Reglas de Congo, pp. 105-106; Bastide, op. cit., pp. 105-106. However,
there is not doubt that the Kingdom of Kongo, albeit essentially defunct by the eighteenth
century, still was a focus of pride for "Congo" slaves in Saint Domingue, Cuba, and
Brazil. See for example the special association between "Congo" festivals and Epiphany,
the day of the kings: Métraux, op. cit., p. 292; Cabrera, Reglas de Congo, pp. 58,
93-94; also, Mary Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro (Princeton 1987), p. 19. In
the Haitian Revolution, the (Kongo) rebel chief Macaya declared he owed allegiance to
three kings, those of France, Spain, and the Kongo: Thomas Madiou, Histoire d'Haiti
[1848] (Port-au-Prince 1989), vol. 1, p. 182.
72
See Geggus, "Sugar and Coffee", for data on average height (table 9), and for
ethnic stereotyping.
73
MSM, pp. 51, 53.
74
David Geggus, "Sex Ratio, Age and Ethnicity in the Atlantic Slave Trade": Journal
of African History 30, 1 (1989), table 4.
73
Janzen and MacGaffey, op. cit., pp. 5-6.
38 David Geggus
However, an additional answer regarding the shaping of modern

voodoo would stress that the Bantu contribution has been greater than
generally recognized. Voodoo's Congo rite probably has lost ground
this century as regional temples are devoted less and less to a particular
rite. Eighty years ago, Eugène Aubin wrote that followers of the Guinea
(Arada, Nago, Ibo) and Congo (Congo Franc, Petro, Caplao) rites were
about equal in number, although the former had had more influence on
doctrine, the latter on witchcraft 76 . Especially important here is the vio-
lent, and very eclectic, Petro rite that now rivals Rada in contemporary
voodoo. Although Alfred Métraux noted the similarity between Congo
and Petro dances, Petro was often considered a "wholly creole" (i.e.
novel) creation, notwithstanding Aubin's (neglected) observations77.
Beginning with Jean Price Mars and Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain, who
indenti fied forty per cent of voodoo vocabulary as Kongo-derived,
scholars have come more frequently to insist on Petro's Kongo content,
especially in its ritual and association with magic 78 .
Petro was first described by Moreau de Saint-Méry, who believed it
was founded in 1768 by one Don Pedro, a free black of Spanish origin 79 .
"Pedro", however, the name of seven Kongo kings, was probably the
most common name borne by "Congo" slaves in Saint Domingue 80 ,
and this was precisely the period when they came to dominate slave
imports. Interestingly, the chalky bila of Jérôme Poteau, reappear in
modern Petro ceremonies 81 . So, too, does the combination of rum and
gunpowder, found in those of Jérôme and Drouin de Bercy's account.
76
Eugène Aubin, En Haïti (Paris 1910), pp. 43-51. Cf. Dunham, op. cit., p. 49;
Courlander, op. cit., pp. 18, 317; Trouillot, op. cit., p. 39.
77
Métraux, op. cit., pp. 32, 171; Bastide, op. cit., p. 141; Jean Kerboull, op. cit., pp.
60-62, 198; Louis Maximilien, Le vodou haïtien (Port-au-Prince 1945), p. 154; Maya
Deren, The Voodoo Gods (Frogmore 1975), pp. 18, 68; Howard Sosis, The Colonial
Environment and Religion in Haiti, Ph. D. diss., Columbia University, 1971, p. 15.
7β
Price-Mars, "Lemba-Petro"; Comhaire-Sylvain, op. cit., p. 15; Janzen, op. cit., pp.
279-298. Similarities also exist in drumming style, mode of sacrifice, and deities of the
modem Congo and Petro rites.
79
MSM, 69. C i Descourtilz, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 181; Drouin de Bercy, op. cit., pp.
175-6.
1,0
This is my impression from reading several hundred slave lists.
81
Milo Rigaud, La tradition voudoo (Paris 1953), p. 212, records this cryptic chant,
partly in creole and Kongo, that was addressed to a priest while he arranged small
piles of seeds, food, and powder, and anointed them with liquids: "Neg Kassa Bambila,
Bila Congo, Bila Louvemba/Saluez moin Gangan/Caille moin senti foulah, o Toutou
Bilango/Macaya, m senti foulah". Luvemha means "chalk"; macaya, "leaves" (or a
personal name); tutu, "container"; bilongo, "sacred medicines" or "offering to an nkisi".
According to the latter, moreover, carrying a large stick was one of a

Don Pedro's characteristics82.
Marmelade, the newly-established coffee-growing parish where
Jerome lived, had one of the highest concentrations of Central Africans
in Saint Domingue. It was perhaps their overwhelming predominance in
the mountains of the North Province that explains why G. E. Simpson
in the 1940s found Petro to be there fully integrated into voodoo, rather
than being the semi-separate cult it is elsewhere in Haiti 83 . Presumably
in colonial times it had been the cult of the majority, not of "outsiders".
Colonial demography may similarly explain why in northern Haiti Petro
is sometimes called "Lemba", after the north Kongo healing cult from
which some believe it came 84 . Included among the minor deities of the
Petro and Congo rites are Arc-en-Ciel (rainbow) and Boumba 85 .
In the last decade Robert Farris Thompson and John Janzen have
shed much light on the Kongo roots of voodoo cosmology, ritual
designs, and magical practices; Dolores Yonker has extended this
work86. In Afro-American studies generally there has been a trend
toward a réévaluation of the Bantu contribution. Brazilian scholars now
complain of "nâgo-centrismo" in the study of local religious sects, and
a similar over-concentration on the Yoruba has been criticised in Cuban
studies87. In Jamaica, too, the high prestige attached to Akan culture
long served to obscure the Kongo origins of the Kumina cult, and a
comparable phenomenon obtained in Surinam88. This neglect seems
partly due to the low status frequently attached to Bantu origin in
the colonial period being carried over into contemporary parlance. In
Jamaican creole, Congo means "stupid, backward" and in Haiti, too, it is
82
Drouin de Bercy, op. cit., pp. 175, 177.
85
Simpson, op. cit., p. 238.
84
Métraux, op. cit., p. 75; Price-Mars, "Lemba-Petro"; Janzen, op. cit., pp. 273-292.
85
Rigaud, op. cit., pp. 152, 155; Kerboull, op. cit., p. 325.
86
Thompson, op. cit., ch. 3; Janzen, op. cit., pp. 273-292; Joseph Cornet, Robert
Farris Thompson, The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds (Washington,
D.C. 1981); John Nunley, Judith Bettelheim, eds. Caribbean Festival Arts (Seattle 1988),
pp. 147-155.
87
Antonio Riserio, "Bahia com Ή ' - urna le i tura da cultura baiana": Joao Reis, ed.
Escravidäo e a invencào da liberdade (Sâo Paulo 1988), pp. 155-160; Raul Lody, Can-
domblé: religiâo e resistencia cultural (Sâo Paulo 1987), pp. 15-16; Cabrera, Vocabulario,
p. 9; Joel Figarola, "Folklore y teatro en la cultura cubana": Del Caribe 1 (1983), pp.
21-22.
88
Monica Schuler, "Afro-American Slave Culture": Historical Reflections, 6, 1
(1979), p. 127; Richard Price, "Kokóongo and Saramaccan: A Reappraisal": Bijdragen
tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 141 (1975), pp. 461-478.
40 David Geggus
an insult, associated with accomodation to the colonizers and treachery

during the Haitian Revolution89.
It is certainly ironic that Africans whose stereotype in Saint Do-
mingue was one of cheerful adaptation to slavery (despite a penchant
for marronage) should have introduced a cult known for its violent
ceremonies and aggressive intent. If one may speculate on the psy-
chic release such worship brought, perhaps there is a logic in this
combination. However, it may be that subregional cultural differences
underlay this paradox. The Kongo element in Petro probably derived
from peoples north of the Zaire, as did apparently Mbùmba, Lemba, and
Bankimba. Voodoo's mild Congo Fran rite, by contrast, and also the
docile stereotype, were associated with the old heartland of the Kongo
kingdom south of the Zaire 90 . As ancestor worship was much less
prominent among the Yombe than among other Kongo 91 , they presum-
ably paid more attention to deities like Mbùmba, and consequently,
if Bastide's argument is correct92, their religious culture would have
suffered less erosion in the Americas. In Cuba, one might add, the
Mayombe possession trance is regarded as especially violent 93 .
In view of the regional variations in the ethnic make-up of Saint
Domingue's slave poulation outlined above (p. 16), it is quite under-
standable why the term vaudoti was particularly associated with the
West Province and why the two Kongo chants should be transcribed
by colonists who lived respectively in the North and South94. The vital
issue here is whether Moreau and Drouin's accounts confuse quite
different ethnically-based cults, by using vaudou as a generic term,
or whether their descriptions shed light on a transitional phase in the
evolution of Haitian voodoo, when Central and West African traditions
89
Frederick Cassidy, Robert Le Page, Dictionary of Jamaican English (Cambridge
1967); Guerin Montilus, "Guinea versus Congo Lands: Aspects of the Collective Memory
in Haiti": Joseph Harris, ed. Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora (Washington,
D.C. 1982), pp. 164-5; Jean Fouchard, Les marrons de la liberté (Paris 1972), p. 438.
90
See MSM, p. 53, on "les vrais Congos ou Franc-Congos". Dunham, op. cit., p. 49,
noted that some Congo cults including Congo Fran were merging with Rada, while Petro
and some other Congo cults remained radically distinct. Cf. Emmanuel Paul, Panorama
du folklore haïtien (Port-au-Prince 1962), p. 236.
91
Doutreloux, op. cit., p. 227.
92
Bastide, op. cit., pp. 105-106.
" Cabrera, Reglas de Congo, p. 72.
94
Moreau de Saint-Méry lived in Cap Français, and Drouin de Bercy owned a coffee
plantation in Jérémie and a cotton/indigo estate in Nippes: État détaillé de l'indemnité
de Saint-Domingue, 6 vols. (Paris 1828-33).
came together in the same forum. This is very difficult to determine

- unfortunately, as the question has important bearing on the role of
religion in the revolution of 1791-1803.
Clearly the two chants to Mbùmba were Kongo; so, too, it seems,
the packets/poisons given to initiates, the vocabulary and ritual ob-
jects employed by Jérôme Poteau, and perhaps also the ritual staffs
mentioned in the account of Drouin de Bercy. On the other hand,
the term vaudou king and queen, and the presence of a live snake
suggest Aja-Fon influence. The point has been disputed, but on balance
it does not appear that live snakes (as opposed to snake deities) were
worshipped in West Central Africa 95 . Some doubt must linger, however,
as Lydia Cabrera reports that a Bantu cult in Cuba kept a pit of
snakes into the 1950s 96 . The term bamboula reported by Drouin (and
Descourtilz) for a large drum is inconclusive, and little else in his
or Moreau's descriptions - the possession crises, oath-swearing, the
clothing worn, etc. - seems to point one way or the other 97 . Howard
Sosis's confident identification as Rada ceremonies those described by
Moreau and Malenfant seems quite unwarranted. So, too, is Michel
Laguerre's claim that all the contemporary accounts of slave cults
reveal the presence of the emblematic poto-mitan center-post and veve
designs 98 . According to my reading of the texts, none does.
It is quite conceivable that Drouin and Moreau simply applied the es-
tablished term vaudou to archaic Kongo ceremonies involving a snake.
Or, more likely, they may wrongly have linked a commonly heard
(Kongo) chant that they did not understand to stories about sensational
(Aja-Fon) religious practices. Nevertheless, it is certainly tempting to
read these late-colonial accounts as demonstrating the incorporation
of the numerous "Congo" newcomers into established Rada sects. The
overarching emblem of the rainbow snake could have provided common
ground to bring together Kongo worshippers of Mbùmba, adepts of
95
Joseph Williams, Voodoos and Oheahs (New York 1933), pp. 6, 83; Dapper, op.
cit., pp. 356-357.
96
Cabrera, Reglas de Congo, p. 59.
97
Descourtilz, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 181; also MSM, p. 82. Bómboiò means "large size"
in Kongo, and in Mbundu bombo means "large drum". In Rada ceremonies the small
drum is called boula. In Bastide, op. cit., p. 173, bamboula appears as a Bantu dance in
New Orleans, and in fact it was widespread in the Caribbean.
Sosis, op. cit., pp. 264, 270; Laguerre, Voodoo, p. 32. Strikingly absent, too, prior
to 1791 is any mention of sacrifice, bar Moreau's comment that warm goat's blood
sometimes was used to seal oaths. Perhaps this reflected the slaves' poverty.
42 David Gcggus
West African snake cults, and Dahomean devotees of the sinuous Da

principle. It is also relevant that, while Drouin de Bercy thought le
Vaudou and le Don Pedro were different types of individuals, he implied
they formed one association99.
If this interpretation is correct, it would provide almost the first
concrete piece of evidence that voodoo actually did bring together
slaves of different origins during the colonial period. The various ethnic
rites of modern voodoo - (Rada, Congo, Ibo, Siniga, etc.) of course
show - albeit not unambiguously - that Africans of different cultures,
or their descendants, at some point found religious common ground.
However, in the period 1799-1803 the botanist Descourtilz seems to
have thought that vaudoux of different nations worshipped separately,
and he and others noted that even slave "dances" were organized on
ethnically-exclusive lines 100 . Another colonist writing at the same time,
claimed that the slaves "do not worship the same gods; they hate
one another and spy one upon the other" 101 . As is well known, the
black leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines both
persecuted vaudouisants102.
Although voodoo is often depicted as a unifying force that helped
make possible the great uprising of 1791 103 , really not much is known
about its participants' identity. Solely the contemporary observation
that Arada slaves were "particularly" connected with it suggests the
presence of other ethnic groups - but perhaps also that that presence was
limited. The cultural syncretism voodoo has come to display does not
prove that slave religion helped forge political unity prior to the Haitian
" An interesting generational difference emerges in his description of Don Pedros

and Vaudoux that may in fact have been an ethnic one, The former were young, as were
most Congos, while the latter weTe generally found among the aged slaves, who included
many Aja-Fon.
100
Descourtilz, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 180-187, 196; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,
Manuscrits, NAF 14879, 127.
101
"Essai sur l'esclavage," cited in Lucien Peytraud, L'esclavage aux Antilles
françaises (Paris 1897), pp. 370-1. Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l'oncle, p. 172, and others
state this document dated from the mid-eighteenth centuTy, yet it is dated "germinal
an VII", i.e. 1799. On the Loango coast, Olfert Dapper observed that worshippers of
different minkisi sometimes would not even drink together: op. cit., p. 338.
Madiou, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 112; Métraux, op. cit., p. 41; Hoffmann, op. cit., pp.
125-129.
103
Below, note 107; Fouchard, op. cit., pp. 358-9, 524; Odette Mennesson-Rigaud,
"Le rôle du vaudou dans la guerre d'indépendance d'Haïti": Présence Africaine (1958),
pp. 43-67. According to Laguerre, Voodoo, p. 25, slave religions were "a symbol of racial
solidarity" and "no ethnic boundary could prevent anyone from taking part".
Revolution. The Revolution itself must have enormously advanced the

assertion of racial identity over narrower "tribal" identities, yet one
often finds at grass roots level Africans organized along traditional
ethnic lines, albeit usually part of larger pan-African or creole-led
groupings104. Tensions and fighting between locally-born creóles and
Africans described as "Congos" persisted down to the eve of Indepen-
dence105. Charles Malenfant's comment that creole and creolized slaves
(except voodoo priests' children) rarely participated in voodoo and
mocked it 106, should give one pause before ascribing great importance
to it in a revolution dominated by creóles.
Apart from the ambiguous evidence of the two chants, then, there
is little beyond supposition to support the thesis that the religious
practices of Saint Domingue's slaves became increasingly uniform in
the forty years before the Revolution, and therefore of themselves pro-
moted political cohesion107. Hénock Trouillot broke with earlier Haitian
writers on this question, and pointed to the continued fragmentation
of religious organization into the national period. Michel Laguerre,
too, makes this point, but attributes fragmentation to regionalism rather
than ethnicity108. Both nonetheless argue, along with most writers, that
voodoo "allowed the unification of slaves", as well as provided them
with a revolutionary ideology and leaders109.
104
See A. N„ Paris, Colonies, F3/197, letter of 13 juin 1792; Madiou, op. cit., vol. 1,
pp. 96, 235; Descourtilz, op. cit., vol. 3, pp 177-178; Fouchard, op. cit., p. 549.
105
University of Rorida Library, Special Collections, Rochambeau Microfilms, lot
132, Roume to Forfait, 3 vendémiaire X; 1801; Madiou, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 395-396,
468-470, 496-498, etc. This "Congo" label was used in a vague sense, but it is possible
it was substantially accurate, since all these bands were located in the mountains, where
West Central Bantu had been most numerous.
106
Malenfant, op. cit., pp. 215-217. Trouillot, op. cit., pp. 59, 61, echoes the point. This
sounds dubious, but it is possible that creole slaves under colonial domination were more
influenced by European attitudes than were their descendants after 1804, notwithstanding
their greater familiarity with African culture. The mulatto Jérôme Poteau learned his craft
from his father: letter cited above, note 56.
107
This view is associated with Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l'oncle, pp. 100-101, 173;
Paul, op. cit., pp. 221-247; Maximilien, op. cit., p. 154; and in its most extreme form,
Lorimer Denis and François Duvalier, in Oeuvres essentielles du Dr. François Duvalier
(Port-au-Prince 1968), vol. 1, pp. 172-173, which attributes the achievement of Haitian
Independence to voodoo.
108
Trouillot, op. cit., pp. 30-31,45, 65; Laguerre, Voodoo, pp. 22, 68; above, note 103.
Laguerre wrongly lumps Trouillot with the noiriste scholars on this point. I believe he
is wrong to downplay ethnicity, and right to emphasise regionalism, though he nowhere
elucidates how "ecological" factors promoted difference.
109
Laguerre, Voodoo, pp. 68-69; Trouillot, op. cit., pp. 52 -67.
44 David Geggus
While this was probably true, I believe the linkage between voodoo
and resistance to slavery has been rather exaggerated, and that innac-
curacies in the historiography have hindered a proper assessment of its
role in the Haitian Revolution and colonial period. In several earlier
articles I pointed out that the connection between voodoo and marro-
nage (the activities of fugitive slaves), which most Haitian historians
since Price-Mars assert almost as an article of faith, actually rests on
very little evidence; so, too, the connection between marronage and the
1791 slave revolt 110 . Laguerre, for example, quite wrongly implies that
the ceremonies described by Moreau and Malenfant were conducted by
maroons. He also claims the maroon leaders Santiague and Padrejean
as voodoo chiefs, and the eponymous Don Pedro as a maroon, without
any supporting evidence 111 . Similarly, Fouchard provided no proof at
all for representing certain rebel leaders such as Macaya, Jean-Pineau,
Guiambois, and Candy as voodooists, or for claiming that many others,
including Jérôme Poteau, had been leaders of maroons 112 .
It is perfectly plausible that most maroon or rebel leaders were
also religious leaders but no one has shown this. Of the three most
important, Jean-François and Toussaint Louverture clearly were not;
Boukman possibly was, although his identification as such begins
late in the historical literature. Jeannot, the fearsome Médecin-Général
of the insurrection's first few months apparently was a sorcerer, yet
Madiou describes him, and Biassou and Lamour Dérance, only as using
sorcerers as subordinates. Ironically, the one figure clearly identified as
a religious leader, Hyacinthe Ducoudray, played a very ambiguous role
and became a policeman for the slave regime 1 !3 . As an organizational
110
David Geggus, "Voodoo, Marronage, and the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt of
1791": Philip Boucher, ed. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Meeting of the French Colonial
Historical Society (Lanham 1991); D. Geggus, "Vaudou, marronage et le soulèvement de
1791": Actes du congrès international sur Haïti et la Révolution française, Port-au-Prince
1989, forthcoming; idem, "On the Eve of the Haitian Revolution": Gad Heuman, ed. Out
of the House of Bondage (London 1985); D. Geggus, Slave Resistance Studies and the
Saint Domingue Slave Revolt (Miami 1983).
111
He similarly gives no source for his claim that voodoo temples first appeared in
maroon settlements or that voodoo groups became cells of revolutionary organization for
blacks and free coloreds: Laguerre, Voodoo, pp. 29, 33, 34, 71, 132.
1,2
Fouchard, op. cit., pp. 365, 359, 453-4, 462, 524; above, note 110. Jérôme Poteau
did become a fugitive but only after his arrest was ordered.
113
Geggus, "Voodoo, Marronage". Policing the plantations of the West in 1792,
Hyacinthe personally meted out to slaves punishments of 100 lashes: University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Southern Historical Collection, Caradeuc Papers, letter of
13 novembre 1792.
factor, slave religion no doubt promoted cohesion at the grass roots

level. Even if limited by ethnic or local boundaries, religious cere-
monies presumably brought together physically and spiritually slaves
from different plantations. It is much less clear, however, that slave
cults constituted a network or provided major leaders.
Of central importance to this question is the famous Bois Caiman
ceremony that immediately preceded the great 1791 uprising. Historians
of all persuasions have generally located the Bois Caïman on the
plantation where Macandal had lived (hinting thereby at a local tradition
of resistance). However, the two places were at least ten miles apart.
The ceremony is generally assumed to have been Petro, because of its
aggressive intent and the sacrifice of a pig. Modem voodoo chants also
link it with the Zandor/Petro deities114. Alfred Métraux, on the other
hand, related both the pig sacrifice and the resulting blood pact with
Dahomean tradition. It may be therefore that at this critical juncture we
find further evidence .of ethnic mixing." 5
Nevertheless, the organization of the 1791 insurrection did not
depend on the Bois Caiman meeting, which merely served to sacralize
a political movement that had already reached fruition. The decision
to rebel had been taken one week earlier at a secular meeting of
mainly creole "elite" slaves, a large feast held with the planters' per-
mission 116 . Such occasions had probably always provided opportunities
for subversion; colonial legislation made little mention of religious or
magical practices before the late 1790s, but it frequently forbade dances
and nocturnal meetings 117 . These often may have involved religious
elements, but religious ceremonies evidently were not a necessary
precondition for political organization. The struggle to create Haiti
emerged out of a crisis caused essentially by the French Revolution,
and from very early on it was directed by a secular, creole, leadership
that
114
Text cited in Mennesson-Rigaud, "Role du vaudou", p. 60. This group includes
Congo Zandor and Lemba Zaou. Zándu means in Kongo a medicinal or nkisi packet.
The term Záu is applied to powerful mintisi.
115
Métraux, op. cit., p. 35.
1,6
Geggus, "Voodoo, Manronage". This is also the interpretation of Pluchon, op. cit.,
pp. 125-6, 137. Most writers, confuse the two meetings.
117
When Moreau de Saint-Méry wrote that slaveowners banned the Petro dance, he
presumably meant informally. Although the rural police broke up voodoo meetings, the
word vaudou did not appear in a colonial decree until 1797.
46 David Geggus
utilized but also sometimes clashed with grassroots, messianic, African,

elements' 18 .
Did voodoo embody a revolutionary ideology? Three pieces of
evidence are sometimes used to support this proposition. The translation
"We swear to destroy the whites", etc., variously applied to the two
chants discussed above, is, we have seen, bogus. The prayer in which
Boukman supposedly attacked the white man's religion at the Bois
Caïman ceremony is similarly of questionable authenticity119. Insofar
as the black Revolution expressed an attitude to Christianity and the
Catholic church, it was surprisingly favorable 120 . Finally, there is a
memoir, usually assigned to the mid-eighteenth century, that describes
cult leaders using trances in the hatching of plots (which, it adds, were
almost always betrayed). It dates, however, from 1799, and thus is of
uncertain relevance to pre-revolutionary Saint Domingue 121 .
What Moreau de Saint-Méry, writing before the Revolution, had
feared was the power that religious leaders wielded over their fol-
lowers, rather than their activities or any revolutionary message they
propagated. Medicinal charms could be used for both vengeance and
protection, and in the case of Macandal and the Drouin de Bercy
account, we find them associated with poison. However, though Pierre
Pluchon insists (perhaps too much) on the linkage between voodoo
and poison, he dismisses the stories about Macandal's revolutionary
conspiracy. As Hilliard d'Auberteuil observed, Macandal killed many
slaves but few colonists 122 . Jérôme Pôteau was accused by a planter of
preaching "independence", but this should be understood, I think, as
"self-assertion" rather than "the independence of the entire black race"
1,8
To be sure, leaders were "led" by the black masses at certain criticai junctures, such
as December 1791, when Jean-François abandoned peace negotiations; spring 1794, when
Toussaint Louverture changed sides; and summer 1802, after the leadership surrendered:
David Geggus, "The Haitian Revolution": Franklin Knight, Colin Palmer, eds. The
Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill 1989).
' 19 It derives from a poem in Hérard Dumesle, Voyage dans le Nord d'Haïti (Les Cayes
1824), and is discussed in Geggus, "Voodoo, Marronage".
120
Geggus, Slave Resistance, pp. 14-15. The reference to blacks destroying churches,
in Laguerre, Voodoo, p. 36, is somewhat misleading. The text cited merely notes that
most were burned in the revolution (the fate of many colonial towns), and it actually
describes most ex-slaves as pious.
121
See above, note 101.
122
Pluchon, op. cit., pp. 177, 181-182; [Michel-René] Hilliard d'Auberteuil, Con-
sidérations sur l'état présent de la colonie française de Saint-Domingue, 2 vols. (Paris
1776-1777), vol. I, p. 137.
that Adolphe Cabon suggested 123 . The fact Jérôme was sentenced only
to the galleys, and his accomplice to the pillory, indicates their judges
did not regard them as a very dangerous threat.
Religion, of course, can defuse as well as stimulate political ten-
sions. The anthropologist Métraux thought that a major and underrated
function of voodoo was the dissipation of social bitterness. A magical
reading of the universe also tends to promote magical rather than
political remedies to real world problems. Even an ardent proponent of
the marronage/voodoo thesis like psychiatrist Willy Appollon suggests
that voodoo functioned as escapism for plantation slaves 124 . Local
whites had tolerated Jérôme Pôteau's meetings for some time, one
should remember. Even after the Revolution, some white commentators
continued to see voodoo as apolitical and harmless125.
By then, however, the potential for subversion sensed by Moreau de
Saint-Méry had been realized. Implicated in the Fort Dauphin massacre
of 1794 was Mme Pageot "La Vierge", who administered Petro-like
concoctions of blood and gunpowder 126 . Vaudou meetings were banned
by name for the first time in 1797 (by Civil Commissioner Sonthonax),
and again in 1800 (by Toussaint Louverture), along with all nocturnal
gatherings. On the latter occasion it was because they were associated
with talk of massacring anciens libres (the former free coloreds) 127 .
In 1803 a colonist described vaudou as an obscene dance used to
encourage murder128. One might argue that this was because voodoo
in these years was more publically practised and therefore became
m
Adolphe Cabon, Histoire d'Haiti, 4 vols. (Port-au-Prince, nd), vol. 2, p. 453.
124
Willy Appollon, Le vaudou: une espace pour les "voix" (Paris 1976), p. 75.
125
Malenfant, op. cit., p. 216; Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 123. Malenfant, a plantation
manager, permitted assemblies on his estate.
126
Public Record Office, London, WO 1/65, 809. On ifie female contribution to the
Revolution, see D. Geggus, "Slave and Free Colored Women in Saint Domingue",
forthcoming in D. Barry Gaspar, Darlene C. Hine, eds. Black Women and Slavery
(Bloomington 1992).
127
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Manuscrits, NAF 14879, 145. This source mentions
three male cult leaders arrested in Port-au-Prince named Sainte Jésus Maman Boudier,
Sainte Catherine, and Saint Jean Père l'Eternité. Like the well-known case of Romaine
la Prophétesse, these instances reveal an emerging syncretism with Christianity. We find
also the same curious tendency for male leaders to adopt female names. The rebel leader
Mamzelle is another example.
128
Maurice Begouen Demeaux, Stanislas Foäche, négociant de Saint-Domingue (Paris
1951), p. 223.
48 David Geggus
better known 129 . Yet it is difficult not to believe that it became more
politically-oriented with the Revolution itself. At the very least, caution
is required in projecting back into the colonial past evidence taken from
the revolutionary period.
Even if voodoo was not intrinsically political, and did not as, Jean
Fouchard observed, express an ideology of liberation130, it is clear
that during the Revolution magico-religious beliefs served to mobilize
resistance and foster a revolutionary mentality. Numerous are the
accounts of at least some rebels who believed they were invulnerable
because of their use of amulets, or that death in battle would return
them to Africa. Clearly this was an explosive force. However, its
contribution to the Haitian Revolution needs to be put into perspective.
Such beliefs were not causal but ancillary. Prior to 1791, Africans
seeking to return to their homelands had committed suicide or fled;
after that date they took up arms. Those who acquired amulets had used
them for protection against enemies but rarely, before Bois Caiman, in
battle. My impression is, moreover, that cautious guerrilla tactics more
than suicidal fervor characterized the great insurrection in the North
Province. It was in the West, where the slave revolution developed most
slowly, that religious leaders were most in evidence, and then (as with
Jeannot) only briefly. There the planter de Jumécourt, who managed
to co-opt the voodoo priest Hyacinthe, was credited with clairvoyant
abilities by the slaves of the Cul de Sac, while the French Civil
Commissioners were said to be sorcerers and therefore invulnerable131.
Belief in magic thus could have strange implications.
To return to the two eighteenth century chants: there is one aspect,
overlooked by all commentators, that seemingly reinforces the "resist-
ance" thesis. That is that the deity Mbùmba was, among other things,
a war god. In Mayombe it was invoked when warriors departed for
battle132. This finding would fit splendidly with Césaire's version of the
Bois Caïman ceremony', except that there is no evidence the chant was
129
According to some contemporaries, the Revolutionary upheaval caused a genuine
increase in all types of religious activity: above, note 120; Adolphe Cabon, Notes sur
l'histoire religieuse d'Haïti (Port-au-Prince 1933), p. 92.
130
Fouchard, op. cit., p, 358.
131
Geggus, Slave Resistance, p. 17.
132
Doutreloux, op. cit., pp. 217, 221-222; Cyril van Overbergh, Les Mayombe (Brux-
elles 1907), pp. 291-292. The Mbùmba priest blew smoke through a shell to immunise
the warriors, who then passed through the legs of the chief's wife.
sung there. It should be emphasised, moreover, that Mbùmba had many

attributes, as was typical of the oldest Kongo deities, and other snake
gods. Its connection with war apparently derived from its protective
powers. Its connection with initiation seems to provide the context in
which we find it in Saint Domingue.
There is, however, a curious printed text, somewhat lurid in tone,
which refers to Chant 1 being sung at the time of the Revolution by
black and mulatto girls who were pupils of the nuns of Cap Français
convent 133 . Beginning with one girl, "later to lead a company of
Amazons", many became initiated into the "vaudoux" sect and often
were heard singing the chant with increasing agitation. After the slave
revolt broke out in the surrounding northern plain, the nuns spied from
the convent window some of the girls dancing naked amidst the rebels
led by the "voodoo king and queen" (with their snake) and Zamba
Boukman, who, surrounded by the groans of the dying, is quoted
as per his Bois Caiman prayer. Written in the 1880s, this account is
based in some measure on convent documents contemporary with the
events 134 . However, it also incorporates so much detail from Moreau
de Saint-Méry and Hérard Dumesle that one wonders if this is really
an independent version of the chant 135 . It would certainly be naive to
regard this text as confirming the authenticity of Boukman's prayer.
The above discussion is intended to suggest that the argument linking
voodoo and resistance has not always been solidly grounded. It has
often been shaped by a penchant for romanticism or a nationalist
desire to stress indigenous as opposed to external causes of the Haitian
Revolution 136 . Close examination of the two chants does provide new
133
The account comes from Lettre annuelle de l'Ordre de Notre-Dame (Bordeaux
1889), pp. 203-204. It seems the only extant copy is in Haiti. It is reprinted in Jean
Fouchard, Les marrons du syllabaire (Port-au-Prince 1953), p. 39, and other works. In
the text of the chant, "moune" is replaced by "mousse", probably a misprint. MSM, 424,
noted complaints about relaxed discipline and racial mixing at the convent.
134
This is apparently the first text to apply the title "Zamba" to Boukman, which may
be the Kongo sámba (commander, chief), though Boukman himself was probably creole.
A northern plain coachman, he lived in the most creolized part of the colony and had a
job almost never performed by Africans: Geggus, "Sugar and Coffee", table 11.
135
Boukman's speech was probably not taken directly from Dumesle's rare book, but
from Victor Schoelcher's Vie de Toussaint L'Ouverture, published that year.
134
Extreme examples that dismiss the influence of the French Revolution are Appollon,
op. cit., pp. 61-74; Emmanuel Paul, Questions d'histoire (Port-au-Prince 1955). The
question has tended to divide not only French and Haitian historians, but also noiriste
and mulâtre "schools" of Haitian history.
50 David Geggus
material for advancing this interpretation, hinting at the joining together

of people from West and Central Africa in the worship of an aggressive
deity. In general, however, I would suggest it remains moot whether
in the colonial period slave religion promoted resistance more than it
defused tensions, or reinforced ethnic divisions. With the coming of the
Revolution, voodoo (broadly defined) contributed leaders, organization,
and collective fervor, but not, it seems, to a decisive degree. As the
wisdom of the Haitian countryside continues to teach, "Konplo pi fo
passe wanga" (Conspiracy is stronger than a magic charm)137.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article examine plusieurs types de témoignages qui concernent

les pratiques magico-religieux des esclaves de Saint-Domingue, et
surtout deux chants que des contemporains européens ont dénommés
"vaudoux". Bien que les colons du 18e siècle et les érudits modernes
soient d'accord que le peuple Aja-Fon de la Baie de Bénin a eu une
influence culturelle majeure sur le vaudou, le lexique magico-religieux
de l'époque coloniale s'avère être issu de la langue kikongo de l'Afrique
Ouest-Centrale. Les implications de ce paradoxe sont explorées en ce
qui concerne la formation de la culture haïtienne et le rôle de la religion
des esclaves dans la résistance à l'ordre colonial.
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht eine Reihe unterschiedlicher

Quellenzeugnisse zu den magisch-religiösen Praktiken der Sklaven
von Saint-Domingue, wobei zwei Gesänge im Vordergrund stehen, die
von europäischen Zeitgenossen dem Bereich des Voodoo zugerech-
net wurden. Obwohl die Siedler des 18. Jahrhunderts mit modernen
Wissenschaftlern darin übereinstimmen, daß der wichtigste kulturelle
137
Cited by Glen Smucker in Charles Foster, Albert Valdman, eds. Haiti - Today
and Tomorrow (Lanham 1984), p. 45. Wanga, the creole word for a maleficent charm
derives from the Kongo mbwanga, the most powerful of the small minkisi: Janzen and
MacGaffey, op. cit., p. 37.
Einfluß auf den Voodoo-Kult von dem in der Bucht von Benin (El-
fenbeinküste) beheimateten Volk der Aja-Fon ausging, läßt sich die
Herkunft des magisch-religiösen Vokabulars der Kolonialzeit aus der
Kikongo-Sprache des westlichen Zentralafrika nachweisen. Was dieser
paradoxe Tatbestand bedeutete, wird hier mit Blick auf die Heraus-
bildung der haitianischen Kultur und auf die Rolle der Religion der
Sklaven bei deren Widerstand gegen die Kolonialordnung untersucht.

Haitian Voodoo Origins

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Haitian Voodoo Origins

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Haitian Voodoo in the Eighteenth Century:

Language, Culture, Resistance

Along with other Afro-American religions in Brazil and the Carib-

Domingue with a superficial familiarity with Christianity, the product

The first chant appeared in Moreau de Saint-Méry's Description de

Moreau observed that vaudoux might be performed publicly as a

in the western Congo basin. I offer below a modern transliteration of

Eh! eh! Bomba, hen! hen!

Lamma samana quana

E van vanta vana docki

protection against the influence of and evil deeds of wicked spirits

also appears in an (untranslated) invocation of the Kongoderived Kumina cult in Jamaica:

is common in Kongo 40 . Among the various meanings of lama the

clearly to belong to that Kongo tradition in the Americas described by

sorcery" 62 . Holes were made in a stick to contain powder, snakeskin,

area of cultural continuities, it is of course much easier to suggest

However, an additional answer regarding the shaping of modern

According to the latter, moreover, carrying a large stick was one of a

an insult, associated with accomodation to the colonizers and treachery

came together in the same forum. This is very difficult to determine

West African snake cults, and Dahomean devotees of the sinuous Da

" An interesting generational difference emerges in his description of Don Pedros

Revolution. The Revolution itself must have enormously advanced the

factor, slave religion no doubt promoted cohesion at the grass roots

utilized but also sometimes clashed with grassroots, messianic, African,

sung there. It should be emphasised, moreover, that Mbùmba had many

material for advancing this interpretation, hinting at the joining together

Cet article examine plusieurs types de témoignages qui concernent

Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht eine Reihe unterschiedlicher

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