The work of Jean Price-Mars provoked a series of articles in local newspapers and reviews. The Bulletin of the Bureau of Ethnology offered a platform for the intellectuals of Haiti—men like François Duvalier (now President of Haiti), Lorimer Denis, Emmanuel Paul, Lamartinière Honorat and Michel Aubourg who devoted themselves to the study of Voodoo and certain aspects of folklore.
Major Louis Maximilien’s work Le Voudou Haïtien may be consulted with profit even if one is not always in agreement with the speculations of the author. Although Milo Rigaud’s book La Tradition vaudoo et le vaudoo haïtien is dominated by occultist preoccupations and thus remains outside the anthropologist’s scope, it nevertheless contains excellent descriptions of ceremonies and copious, very exact information not to be found elsewhere.
Certainly Voodoo is still waiting for its Homer, or more modestly a good folklorist who will take the trouble to record the rich oral tradition of its pantheon. But an effort has been made in this direction by M. Milo Marcelin who has devoted two books to some of the outstanding Voodoo gods.
Among the foreign anthropologists who have concerned them-selves with Voodoo, Melville T. Herskovits appears in his rightful place as a pioneer. His book Life in an Haïtian Valley, written in 1936, is still the best source of information on Voodoo, and if subsequent works—notably those of Mme Odette Mennesson-Rigaud—have completed it on several points, they have nevertheless revealed no mistaken observation or false interpretation.
The American musicologist, Harold Courlander, starting from study of Voodoo songs and rhythms, went on to draw up a list of gods and dances. The sociologist E. Simpson, also American, undertook the study of the Plaisance region. He is the author of many articles on Voodoo rites as they were celebrated in the north. In this very brief catalogue of our principal sources a very particular place must be reserved for a book written by the American film camerawoman, Maya Deren, who in Divine Horsemen proved herself to be an excellent observer, though her book is burdened with pseudo-scientific considerations which reduce its value.
Voodoo today is less frightening than it was. The Haitians look upon it more and more as ‘folklore’—which seems to dispel the harm those practices do to the reputation of their country. Has not every country its ‘folklore’? It is therefore normal and desirable that Haiti should also have its own. People in other countries who say to their friends ‘Don’t go to Haiti: Voodoo is something diabolic, it is the worship of snakes and black magic’ are becoming rare. Distrust and disgust are giving way to curiosity which itself is gradually turning into indulgent sympathy. But prejudice is tenacious. Only anthropology, in explaining the true nature of Voodoo and in throwing cold light on the facts, can make this religion emerge from its cloaking shadows and free it of the nightmares which it still inspires in many honest but misinformed people.
Certain Haitians will no doubt be saddened that a foreigner whom they welcomed so warmly has, like so many before him, felt the need to write a book on Voodoo which they look upon as one of the most embarrassing aspects of their national culture. Let them understand that I have not given way to a wish to exploit a subject of which the mere mention is sufficient to stimulate the curiosity of the public; nor have I wished to obtain personal notoriety at the expense of their country. Throughout the vast domain of anthropology I have always been interested by religious phenomena and in the formation of syncretic cults. Voodoo in this respect proved a particularly fertile field. I am not its apologist and I know that sooner or later it must disappear. My purpose has been to describe Voodoo as it appeared to me. It remains for other anthropologists to decide if I was mistaken or not. I shall feel satisfied if, in approaching the study of Voodoo seriously and with patience, I have helped to make known the ordinary people of the Haitian towns and countryside, whom I learnt to love and respect.
LANGUAGE
The language of Voodoo is Creole which in Haiti is spoken by everyone except the haute bourgeoisie. It is not a coarse patois, as has often been said, but a comparatively recent language derived from French, just as French is derived from Latin. It has preserved phonetic habits and grammatical structures which, in origin, are clearly African. Most writers who have concerned themselves with Voodoo transcribe Creole according to French spelling. In so doing they make it easier to understand terms which are not too remote from the original, or which, intrinsically, have even maintained their French form. The disadvantage of this system is that it conveys the sound of Creole only very imperfectly and it tyrannizes over the language wherever it has in fact evolved to a state of independence from the parent stem. It might, therefore, have been logical to use some kind of simpler and more exact phonetic spelling for Creole. If I have followed in the track of those who have gone before me it is because this work is meant for non-specialists. It was important not to put readers off with renderings which would keep them from recognizing a French word. Who would suspect that ‘pwè’ is merely a way of writing ‘point’ and ‘balâsé’ of ‘balancer’? In giving Creole words an exotic appearance I would have been reproached with pedantry.
It is a different matter with the Creole texts which are quoted out of regard for scientific accuracy. For these the use of a phonetic spelling was essential. I have employed the one which was introduced to Haiti by the Protestant missionaries and which has been recommended by linguists. It follows the principles of all phonetic transcription. For every sound there is a single symbol. The rule has only one exception: the sound corresponding to the French ch (sh in English) has been rendered by two letters simply to avoid a diacritical sign on s. Nasalization is conveyed by a circumflex accent on the vowel (â: French an, en) (ê: French ein, ain, in). The accent grave (‘) indicates an open vowel; the accent aigu (ʹ) a closed vowel. The vowel u is pronounced like the French ou. We have thus simplified the so called Laubach orthography which maintains the ou and the gn for the palatalized n which in this work is represented as in Spanish (ñ). Fragments of African languages, which have survived in Voodoo liturgy under the name of langage, have been transcribed according to this same system.
1—THE HISTORY OF VOODOO
ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF THE VOODOO CULTS
The history of Voodoo{1} begins with the arrival of the first batches of slaves at Saint-Domingue in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Writers such as Moreau de Saint-Méry, who described the social and economic conditions of Saint-Domingue at the end of the colonial age, took pleasure in listing the numerous African tribes represented on the plantations: Senegalese, Wolofs, Foulbe, Bambara, Quiambas, Aradas, Minas, Caplaus, Fons, Mahi, Nago, Mayombe, Mondongues, Angolese etc.{2} Looking at these lists one might believe that the whole of Africa had contributed to the population of Haiti, but, in company with Herskovits,{3} I very much doubt if the tribes of the interior had much share in this forced migration. And Voodoo is not, in fact, a hotch-potch of mystic displays and ritual practice borrowed from all parts of Africa.
The available censuses of slave population do not give much indication of the relative proportions of the various black nations represented in the colony. It would be possible to make precise estimates only by a meticulous breakdown of slavers’ bills-of-lading, of deeds of sale and of notices in the local press. Such research would demand a lot of patient effort, but it would result in more than the mere satisfaction of a scholarly curiosity. In fact until it has been done, it will remain impossible to reconstruct the history of Voodoo without wasting attention on regions and cultures which have never contributed to the formation of the people and civilization of Haiti.
But, until such an inquiry has been undertaken, we may deduce from the historical evidence available and from the many surviving African characteristics to be found in Haiti, that most of the slaves came from the region of the Gulf of Benin, known till quite recently as the ‘Slave Coast’. Certainly Congo and Angola were forced to contribute by the French slavers of Saint-Domingue, and so too were Senegal and Guinea but the annual intake from the
African coast consisted mainly of Blacks from Dahomey and Nigeria. The whole of the Gulf of Benin area had advantages of which slavers were well aware. The native population was very dense, as it still is today, and it seemed to offer an inexhaustible supply of men. Transactions were mainly with princelings who had long-standing trade-relations with the Whites and who were thirsting for European products—arms, glass beads, cotton materials, metal implements and brandy. To take the best known example, in the kingdom of Dahomey the slave trade had become a national industry. The economy of the whole country was based on annual expeditions against neighbouring peoples. The king kept a monopoly of the many thousand prisoners and sold them to the Whites, keeping back only those due to be sacrificed to the ancestors or those who as agricultural labourers had to fill the gaps in the Dahomean population caused by annual war. In 1727 the king of Dahomey ‘smashed’ the little kingdom of Whydah (the ‘Juda’ of the old travel accounts) and turned its capital into a huge slave emporium which was frequented by slavers right up to the second half of the last century. It has been reckoned that 10,000 slaves were sold annually at Whydah. To cross the few miles of dune and marsh which divides this town from the coast, is to fall prey to a vision of those long caravans of men, women and children who here took their last steps on the continent of their birth. The beach of Whydah is today deserted; there is nothing to recall the brutal scenes which took place whenever a slaver embarked its pitiful cargo to the sound of whips and screams. But surely the sadness which emanates from this desolate landscape has something to do with the memory of so much anonymous suffering.
The Mahi and Nago (Western Yoruba) were the traditional opponents of the Dahomeans. The raids of which they were the victims are today the reason why in Haiti the rada (Dahomean) rite is never celebrated without the performance of Mahi dances and without honouring and invocation of Nago gods.
The Dahomeans of today have not forgotten their cousins, taken away, over the seas. When they offer up sacrifices on behalf of their royal ancestors, they do not forget those who once were sold to the Whites. Melville T. Herskovits{4} writes that as soon as the blood of the sacrificial victim flows, a voice from behind a curtain may be heard singing: ‘Oh, ancestors, do all in your power that princes and nobles who today rule never be sent away from here as slaves to Ame’ika, to Togbomé, to Gbulu, to Kankanu, to Gbuluvia, to Garira. We pray you to do all in your power to punish the people who bought our kinsmen, whom we shall never see again. Send their vessels to Whydah harbour. When they come, drown their crews, and make all the wealth of their ships come back to Dahomey.’
As this was said, an old man called out, ‘And is that not a just payment for what they have taken?’ To this the reply, in which all joined, was: ‘Yes, yes, yes! And it is not enough. The English must bring guns. The Portuguese must bring powder. The Spaniards must bring the small stones which give fire to our firesticks. The Americans must bring the cloths and the rum made by our kinsmen who are there, for these will permit us to smell their presence. Long live Dahomey! You have not succumbed to slavery here, act so that those three...who died for the cause of our country in Brazil be kept in the memory of all Dahomeans, and give us news of them by White strangers to come to Abomey.’
Philology helps to confirm the data of history and tradition. The very word ‘Voodoo’ puts us on the track. Some people, in their anxiety to whitewash the Voodoo cults, saw it as a corruption of ‘Vaudois’ (the name of a sect founded in the twelfth century by Father Valdesius), but which had finally become a term applied vaguely to heretics and sorcerers. However, in Dahomey and Togo, among tribes belonging to the Fon language-group, a ‘Voodoo’ is a ‘god’, a ‘spirit’, a ‘sacred object’, in short, all those things which the European understands by the word ‘fetish’. The servants of the divinity are ‘hunsi s’ (from the Fon hu—a divinity, and si—a spouse); the priest is the hungan, that is to say the ‘master of the god’. Objects used in ritual are still known by their Dahomean names: govi—pitchers, zin—a pot, asson—sacred rattle, azein—holy emblems, hunto—drum, etc.{5}
If, turning for a moment from liturgy, we look at the list of Voodoo divinities, we find that the most important of them belong to the Fon and the Yoruba. Legba, Damballah-wèdo, the Aida-wèdo his wife, Hevieso, Agassu, Ezili, Agwé-taroyo, Zaka, Ogu, Shango, and many others, still have their shrines in the towns and villages of Togo, Dahomey, and Nigeria.
It is true that in the catalogue of Haitian loa one may also find the names of deities from the Congo and other parts of Africa, but most of these rank far lower in popular piety than the great loa of ‘African Guinea’ (L’Afrique Guinin).
Moreover, as we shall see when we study the Voodoo pantheon, the main divinities are still classified according to the tribe or region from which they originate. Thus we have Nago gods, Siniga (Senegalese), Anmine (Minas), Ibo, Congo and Wangol (Angolese) gods. Some gods even carry as an epithet the name of their African place of origin: for instance Ogu-Badagri (Badagri is a town in Nigeria) and Ezili-Freda-Dahomey (Ezili of Whydah-Dahomey).
Haitians and Dahomeans look very alike which is the more remarkable that for one hundred and fifty years their lot has been very different and no contact has been maintained between them; the Haitian peasant thinks of Guinea and Dahomey as mythical countries and virtually looks upon himself as an original inhabitant of Haiti. Yet the culture of Dahomey survives not only in the domains of religion and aesthetics, and in certain aspects of economic life, but also in such subtle forms of behaviour as gestures or facial expressions. And although the vocabulary of Haitian Creole, with the exception of a few African and Spanish words, is entirely French, the phonetics and grammar have much in common with those of the Dahomean and Nigerian languages.
But what has become of the other African tribal groups in Haiti? Documents and oral tradition witness the one-time presence of Congolese, Senegalese, Minas; but these must have been merged in the main mass of Fon and Yoruba, enriching the Voodoo pantheon with a few gods and adding to the liturgy their own peculiar dances and rhythms. Such additions have not appreciably altered the nature of Voodoo which in structure and spirit has remained essentially Dahomean. Moreau de Saint-Méry{6}, speaking of Voodoo in the last years of the eighteenth century, records that ‘it is the Aradas Negroes (that is to say the Blacks from Dahomey) who are the real devotees of Voodoo, keeping up its spirit and rules.’
The various ethnic groups of the Gulf of Guinea have basically a common culture in spite of linguistic differences and deep antagonisms. Resemblances were increased by reciprocal influence and frequent contact. All the slaves who came from that culture area had no difficulty in combining their respective traditions to build up a new syncretic religion.
The religious systems of West Africa, of which Voodoo is often merely an impoverished example, could hardly be described as primitive. They have kept alive beliefs and rituals inherited from the ancient religions of the classical East and of the Aegean world. Witness the part played by the labrys—the Cretan double-axe—in the worship of the god Shango.
Dahomean religion is full of subtleties. The Geomancy of Fa (divination by palm nuts) is so complex and so refined in its symbolism that it could only have been evolved by a learned priesthood with leisure for theological speculations. If we try to analyse, generally speaking, the idea Dahomeans formed of the supernatural world, then we find a supreme god, of uncertain sex, Mawu, and other gods related to him, grouped in pantheons and sometimes in hierarchies. A special place in this mythology is held by Fa, the personification of Fate. In addition to the major gods of nature there is also a multitude of divine beings: ancestors of clans, gods of vassal tribes, monsters and aborted royal foeti. Music and dance are so closely woven into the cults that one could almost speak of ‘danced religions’. Dance is itself linked with divine possession—the normal mechanism by which a divinity communicates with the faithful. Gods are represented by ‘fetishes’—stones, plants, vases, bits of iron and other symbols. In Dahomey th
e representation of the divinity by an anthropomorphic image is much less common than in Nigeria and this it is which surely explains the rarity of idols in Haiti, though in Brazil, where the Yoruba are numerous, anthropomorphic representations of gods are quite common. The cult of which the vodû are the object is celebrated by priests, many of whom profess to be the descendants of the divinity itself, or of a line of priests who have been in its service since the beginning of time. Each divinity is also ‘served’ by its vodû-si (consorts of the Voodoo) that is to say by people, generally women, who have been consecrated to that divinity and initiated in a ‘convent’. They dance for the vodû, are possessed by him, wear his colours and look after his sanctuary.
As far as can be deduced from ancient documents, the Dahomean religion of today is not substantially different from that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries except of course in the matter of human sacrifice which was then practised on a large scale.
The transplanting of the cult of the vodû, from Dahomey to Haiti, raises many problems which have usually been disposed of in summary fashion. For a long time the apologists of the slave trade tried to establish a theory that slave cargoes were made up merely of the dregs of Africa which was then all the healthier for being rid of them. In fact most slaves were prisoners of war, or people guilty of some ‘crime’—a word which covered lèse-majesté and sorcery, as well as common wrong-doing. Consequently the holds of the slavers contained representatives of all classes of Dahomean society. The formation of Voodoo in Haiti can only be explained by the presence, in the labour gangs, of priests or ‘servants of the gods’, who knew the rites. Otherwise the religious systems of Dahomey and Nigeria would have deteriorated into incoherent practices or simple rites of black and white magic. Instead, what do we find in Haiti? Temples, organized clergy, a rather complicated ritual, sophisticated dances and rhythms. In spite of brutal uprooting from their own social milieu, the slaves contrived to resurrect, in exile, the religious framework in which they had been brought up. Bokono (magicians) and vodû-no (priests), trained in Africa, taught the following generations, born in slavery, the names and characteristics of the gods and the sacrifices required.
Voodoo in Haiti Page 2
