Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

by Zora Neale Hurston

  There are numerous accounts of Simon’s grief at the loss of his goat. He used to weary his listeners with his memories of the feats of Simalo in military campaigns. It was plain that he considered the goat more than beast, more than man, more than just a friend. There was something of worship there.

  It is said that one Sunday after the death of Simalo, Simon had the cabinet members and several other persons of importance assembled at the palace. He delivered one of the orations that he delighted to make and having embarrassed himself by making a faux pas, dismissed them. But a few intimates were allowed to remain and wander about informally. The President was moving towards his private apartments when he ran into the Minister of War, General Septimus Marius. He stopped suddenly as if he had seen a ghost and then broke into tears and said, “My dear Marius, as soon as I see your long beard, I think of my dear Simalo.” And he wept so hard that the other guests felt that they had better weep with him.

  There seems to be no doubt that Celestina and Simon enjoyed their places of power in the palace. Also that the young Amazon stirred something heroic in the hearts of Haiti for a time. She brought a whiff of the battle field with her as she came and made virile men think again of Christophe and Dessalines.

  But soon the tales of the “services” in the palace, the sacrifices at Mountain House, the cruelty of Celestina and the affairs of the goat filled Haiti’s cup of disgust to the brim. Insurrections began. Simon and Celestina confident in their loa marched out to conquer as before. Simon beat down one uprising only to be met by others. He was living over the life of Macbeth and his lady, both betrayed by their mysteries. After many harried months, he bowed before that which he could no longer oppose with conviction. So Simon like many other presidents of Haiti sailed for Jamaica.

  In his exile the peasant who had become a soldier, then a general, then a governor, then a president must have thought about his march from himself into the capital, into other men’s hopes and schemes. In a foreign land there he had no army, no importance, no daughter, no goat. He had nothing but time for weapons and friends and the chances are he had never learned how to use time in bulk. Probably he used what he could of it in remembering, and no doubt he remembered the days when he was governor of Aux Cayes, when he, his priestess daughter and his goat were happy rulers, before ambition tricked them into the palace.

  “Oh, well,” they conclude, “what can you expect? One cannot expect to prosper who breaks his vows to the loa. If President Simon had not killed Simalo—”

  Ah Bo Bo!

  CHAPTER 9

  DEATH OF LECONTE

  This is the story of the death of President Leconte the way the people tell it. The history books all say Cincinnatus Leconte died in the explosion that destroyed the palace, but the people do not tell it that way. Not one person, high or low, ever told me that Leconte was killed by the explosion. It is generally accepted that the destruction of the palace was to cover up the fact that the President was already dead by violence.

  There are many reasons given for the alleged assassination, and each one of these motives has its own cast of characters in the tragedy. But the main actors always remain the same. These men were ambitious and stood to gain political power and what goes with it in Haiti by the death of President Leconte.

  For example, some tell a story of the little son of Leconte who was said to be a love child. He loved the boy with a great love, but that seemed not to be reason enough to cause him to marry the mother of his child. She belonged to a high caste family and there was said to be a great deal of hard feeling between the family of the young woman and the President. Those who contend that this friction was behind the assassination point out that the child was not in the palace when the explosion took place. He was at the home of his mother’s people.

  All the other reasons given for his alleged assassination were political. The only differences in the accounts were, whose political aspirations were being choked off by Leconte’s actions.

  It is not to be inferred from this that Leconte was a tyrant. On the contrary he is credited with beginning numerous reforms and generally taking progressive steps. He was merely in the way of other men’s ambition by virtue of the office he held.

  The first person who told me about it said that he was not even killed in the executive mansion. He said that a message came to the president to visit his little son who was with his mother at the time. He disguised himself and entered the bus driven by the aged coachman of the palace called Edmond, whose loyalty to Leconte was doubtful. Rumor says that they left the palace by the gate called Port Salnave, and that Leconte left the conveyance at the house of the father of his child’s mother, whose father was one of his Ministers, and never came out again. That is, he never came out alive. The family whose honor had been outraged by the refusal of Leconte to marry the daughter of the house had secretly joined forces with the president’s political enemies. Some of them were in the house when Leconte arrived. The arrangements for the body to be carried out on the Plain-Cul-de-Sac to be buried had already been made. It is said that he was killed after a short altercation. The body was wrapped up, placed in the bus and driven out to the estate of one of the conspirators to be buried. The old coachman was rewarded and the palace blown up. The very next person that I told this version to, agreed that Leconte did get into the bus and he did leave the palace by the gate Salnave. But they maintained that he was lured out by the coachman whom he trusted. This Edmond came to the President with a tale of his cabinet gathered at a certain place on the Plain-Cul-de-Sac and plotting the downfall of the president at that very moment. President Leconte must come and see this infamy with his own eyes. The President slightly disguised entered the bus and was driven off. Out on the Plain, the bus was surrounded and he was killed and buried out there on the estate of a powerful man who himself had presidential ambitions.

  But I kept on talking to people and asking questions about Leconte and they kept on telling me things. So I came to hear from many people a story that was the same in all the essential points. Minor details differed of course. But the happenings that follow were repeated to me by numerous persons.

  Sansarique, Leconte’s Minister of the Interior, was most faithful to his chief and loved him like a brother. He got wind of a conspiracy against the life of Leconte and warned him time and again to be careful. But the President was not inclined to take these warnings too seriously. He knew that he was very popular with the people and went to work building Casernes and planning other improvements. But the conspirators grew bold by seeming immunity. They began to move with more assurance. Rumors of plots and conspiracies increased. Definite plans seemed to have been made and the Minister of the Interior began to be really alarmed and rushed to the President and mentioned names. He accused Tancred Auguste, Volcius Nerette, Chef de Sûreté, and La Roche, Minister of Agriculture, of plotting to overthrow the regime of Leconte and to make Auguste president in his stead. He urged the President to lose no time in arresting Auguste and Nerette. But such was the confidence of Leconte in his well-being that he refused to believe this advice. He put it down to over anxiety on the part of a friend. This was the state of affairs for some time before the night of the explosion.

  One man told me what he saw on the night of August 7, 1912. It was the habit of many men of the upper class to gather at Thibeaut’s Café on the Champ-de-Mars to eat, sip drinks, and play dice, practically every night. This night of August 7th, the crowd who loved a game of chance for moderate stakes gathered as usual. Because, he explained “when the tambour sounds, the hounsi come.” Meaning those who love a thing will follow it.

  But this particular evening, there was to be no dice. Thibeaut served the many social and political lights their coffee and some one called for the dice. Thibeaut’s face went very stern. “Gentlemen, no dice tonight. You will please leave early as I wish to close the Café and get to bed at a good hour. Good evening, gentlemen.”

  The men were naturally surprised at this unusual
announcement. They left the Café reluctantly in little groups and went elsewhere. My informant says that from the Champ-de-Mars, he and three associates looked towards the palace and saw the President standing alone on the balcony of the Palace. “Look at Conte Conte,” somebody said, using the familiar name of affection that the people had made for him. The President was just standing there outlined by the Palace lights as if in deep thought. Across from the Palace and watching it closely was Tancred Auguste mounted on his grey horse.

  The young men balked of their dice game and social evening soon left the Champ-de-Mars and the pensive President behind and went on their way seeking other amusements.

  This is what they say was going on inside the Palace. Some time during the night the Chef de Sûreté came to the Palace accompanied by several men. He sent word to Leconte that he must see him on a matter of vital importance and thus persuaded the President to receive him at such an unusual hour. He said it was a matter which necessitated the greatest secrecy and Leconte hearing this took the party to the telegraph room where Nerette knew he always went when he wished to receive secret reports. This room was not only built sound proof, but it was detached from the Palace building proper for greater secrecy.

  Inside the locked room Nerette began a recital of having discovered a plot against the President’s regime. He began a rambling narrative that not only lacked any evidence of a plot, but the jumble of words was lacking in sense. Leconte asked the Chef to tell him what he meant by these disconnected statements and began to pace up and down, no doubt trying to figure out for himself why he had been disturbed to listen to such a senseless tale. He knew there was something behind it. There were several minutes of silence while Leconte paced up and down, puzzled and annoyed. Nerette and his men huddled at one end of the room, the president pacing up and down. One time when Leconte had reached the end farthest away from Nerette, that plotter whispered to the men, “Qu’est ce que vous attendez?” (What are you waiting for?) The frightened men still huddled where they were and Nerette grew angry, “Eh, bien, Messieurs, Ca n ap’tan?” The armed butchers were lashed into action so that when the President’s back was again turned to them they drew their knives and did what they had come there to do. They did in desperation that which they were afraid not to do. They butchered Leconte.

  When the hacking and slashing was over, the body was removed through the Salnave door and carried to the house of one of the assassins. The work was done. Leconte was dead and his body actually removed from the palace without the faithful guard suspecting that he was not safely in bed. The conspirators most concerned were sent for and came hurriedly to the house to verify the information. The body was carefully examined. There was no mistake. The late President of Haiti was there at the feet of the men who toasted the success of the coup in rum. Then plans for the coming “elections” were rehearsed again. That settled, the final details that would dispose of the body and cover the evidence of the assassination were gone over for the last time. The body was left in the care and in the house of the same man where it now was. He was loyal to the conspirators and they had his assurance that the body would be disposed of as planned. The higher ups might go on and look to the matter of “elections.” He knew they would remember him when making the new appointments. They could rest assured the body would never be seen again. Most certainly it would not be seen by anyone who favored Leconte in his life time. So some of the conspirators hurried away to attend to matters of state while others remained there in the house with the body of Leconte, waiting. It was kept there until a man was found to take it away on a donkey. At first the body was wrapped and thrown across the donkey’s back. But it was too bloody—too apt to attract attention in that way. So the peasant cut it up with his machete and loaded it in a sac paille (straw bag with two huge pockets. A sort of pannier for carrying loads on a donkey) and he was then ordered to dispose of it on an estate on the Plain-Cul-de-Sac. This peasant was paid, sworn to secrecy and dismissed. But soon he was bragging about his part in the crime. He would display his machete and explain proudly, “This is the knife that cut up the body of Leconte.” During the administration that followed Leconte, it is said that he was ordered killed by a strychnine injection. But the President himself died of poisoning before it happened.

  The conspirator to whose house the body of Leconte was taken before it was finally disposed of, from a nothing and a nobody, was given a government position immediately after the next administration came to power. Even his grandmother was given a pension. Indeed, the man is said to hold a government position at this moment. He seems to have fared better than anyone else who figured in the murder plot. For the candidate alleged to be at the bottom of the whole matter was himself assassinated by poisoning less than a year after taking office. Volcius Nerette was one of the 167 who were butchered in the prison by Sam and Etienne in 1915. The eight men with knives who did the actual killing of Leconte were arrested on a trumped-up charge and taken out side of the harbor in a boat and killed and their bodies thrown overboard. The man who cut up the body and hauled it away became an idiot. He still goes about the city laughing his laugh and showing the machete and gloating. But nobody listens.

  When the word came back to the conspirators waiting in the house that the body had been disposed of, the brains of the plot hurried forth to find the man to carry out the final detail to cover up the murder of Leconte. He called on a young electrician named Faine (no relation to the well-known writer Jules Faine) and dragged him from his bed. Faine was told nothing about what had gone on before. He was ordered to blow up the palace at once or die. It is to be remembered that great stores of ammunition were hoarded in the palace. He was forced to rig up a device to set off this immense hoard of explosives. It is said that only fear of certain death persuaded the young man to do the work.

  Thus early in the morning of August 8, 1912, the city of Port-au-Prince was rocked by an explosion that completely wrecked the palace. Other buildings near by were also injured. People were thrown out of their beds in Belair and even in Pétionville, approximately six miles away. Nearly three hundred soldiers, the palace guard, were belched out of the eruption, headless, legless, armless, eyes burnt out by the powder and just bodies and parts of bodies, mangled and mingled.

  The people of Port-au-Prince awakened like that out of their sleep all rushed out doors because everybody thought it was an earthquake. When they got outside they saw it was the palace and came running, putting their cries of surprise and terror with the hurt and harmed who were crawling off from the wreckage. Sansarique rushed into the ruins seeking his friend Leconte, who was not there and would not have been able to answer him if he had been. Nobody could stop the Minister of the Interior. He tore off the hands that held him. He rushed about through the smoking ruins calling Leconte, hoping he could save him. He kept crying out that he had warned him against his enemies. Finding no way to help Leconte, finding nothing in the likeness of his friend, he wept for him bitterly. He was like old David at the gates when they brought home Absalom. They say that the friendship between Sansarique and Leconte was a beautiful thing. Here was another Damon and Pythias, another David and Jonathan. He alone of all those near to Leconte was not concerned with his political future. He had rushed into the ruins to do those things which become a man and a friend. No matter who tells the story and how, they dwell on the nobility of Sansarique. And indeed, it is a thing to make songs about.

  When the daylight came they picked up something that nobody could say with any certainty was President Leconte and held a funeral. But then the way things were nobody could say the formless matter was not the late president either. So they held a state funeral and buried it.

  All that being settled, right away, Tancred Auguste, with the help of his friends, was elected President of Haiti. Perhaps he could feel that divinity had pointed him to power. One day there had been Leconte occupying the palace, popular with the people, and going on about building things like Solomon. Seemingly this man w
as to occupy the national palace for many years to come. The people willed it to be that way. They had elected him and turned their thoughts towards peace.

  But evidently God did not agree with the Haitian people, for behold God repudiated their candidate by belching him out of the palace. The poor taste of the people was corrected, and Tancred Auguste became their ruler. The sight of the explosion must have affected him deeply if rumor is true that he took to talking to himself. Also, they say he disliked to pass the ruins and avoided doing so until one day he attended a wedding and the carriages were passing the ruins before he realized it. The sight of the tragic spot must have touched his compassion too deeply, for he began to mutter aloud and almost left the carriage. At any rate, the palace food proved too rich for him, for less than a year after he had taken office he died of a digestive disturbance that his enemies called poison. So God must have changed His mind about him also. And while he was being buried, even before his body left the Cathedral for the cemetery, the mourners heard shots being fired from different parts of the City of Port-au-Prince. The successor to Tancred Auguste was being “elected.”

  This is what they say in Port-au-Prince about the death of President Leconte, who built the great Casernes.

  Ah Bo Bo!

  PART III