Creole, Vodou, and Francois Mackandal
Africans of all clans, yoked and
naked, stolen from their homeland, possessionless and powerless, nevertheless
resolutely refused to relinquish their inner independence. In defense of their
very humanity, God-given liberty to life which their captors denied, the shiploads
of slaves shoved ashore on Saint Domingue found ways to unite and fight back
even with hands bound in chains.
Captured all over the Dark
Continent, these thousands of out-of-Africans did not share the same language, bloodlines,
or beliefs. Yet as impatient French pronunciation disregarded their names,
discarded their histories with their needs and freedom, consequently these
thousands of immigrants forged new identities. The next-generation French born on
the island were now commonly called “Creoles,” so the desperate-to-survive
Africans began to identify themselves as “Haitians,” allying with the oppressed
natives who had been used and abused by domineering white men. Instead of bowing
broken backs beneath the cotton sacks or cowering before the overseer’s whip, the
oppressed African-Haitians refused to be depressed. While most of European
colonists drooped in the afternoon heat, their intellects and integrity lapsing
into laxity, the slaves’ brains sharpened with their cane-cutting machetes, and
instead of dropping exhausted onto meager cots each night, they worked long
hours in the darkness, employing themselves in the second-job of escape-plotting
and vengeance-scheming.
These African-Haitians invested in deception, proved exceptional actors and actresses who before their French masters wore masks of adoring devotion or the stoicism devoid of emotion, before they shed these masks with the completion of daily tasks to secretly reconvene with their compatriots from neighboring plantations, others who dared defy the Black Code and meet after hours without passes from their owners. Slaves had not the right to assembly, either, and gatherings of two or more warranted punishment, never mind suspicion from viciously defensive white minds.
However, the majority of
small-minded emigres being fanned, fed, and fondly tended by their
faithful Negroes did not consider their black beasts capable of cleverness. Donkeys
and horses could no more conspire than could their slaves, who must be kept
in-hand, as a strict father might raise his child. Thus their own racisme
worked against the French-Creole colonials: the extreme minority on an island
of perhaps 700,000 slaves. They never could have imagined, for example, the
ingenuity of their “child-minded” beasts of burden in finding compromise among
their hundreds of differing tribal cultures. Slavers and masters alike
purposely purchased Africans from various regions to ensure their isolation,
maintain barriers of language and practice. Yet on the common ground of Saint
Domingue, chained together on the same tether, men and women whose nations
never mingled forged new bonds. Brotherhood now tethered them together and they
mingled their differing African dialects to invent a new language, formed
almost mockingly with lots of phonetic French, and fragments of other European
remnants left behind on the island after centuries of pirates and
conquistadores and the Arawak originals. This linguistic improvisation is all
the more remarkable for the majority of slaves were illiterate. (Of course,
this would also contribute to the lack of consistency in Haitian Creole orthography
even into the 21st century.)
Empowered by their common tongue,
their knowledge and cunning grew; they threw themselves into their
surroundings, adapting to the wild jungles, rocky mountains, flat plains, camouflaging
cane fields. They learned the local weapons, the herbal remedies and poisons,
the toxic reptiles and insects. Their already-tropically-adroit constitutions
largely immunized them to the swampy sicknesses, including the dreaded Yellow
Fever. While the Europeans hid in the coolness of their houses, complained of
the sweltering heat while demanding cold beverages and constant manual fanning,
their slaves, whenever they could slip away, grew familiar with Saint
Domingue’s secrets, knew her intimately, and hid the knowledge away for the
right opportunity.
Opportunities they discussed at
clandestine gatherings, when slaves from different plantations met under the
trees, in swampy glades, under the moon, in religious rituals as inventive and cohesive
as the new Creole language. Some Africans were Moors of the North who
worshipped Allah; many were of polytheistic persuasion and called on different
gods for specific purposes. Virtually all of the nighttime rebels were owned by
ostensibly Christian men, yet some may have adopted the Gospel as their
own despite the dreadful hypocrisy and cruelty demonstrated by these
“Christians.” The ancestral spiritualism from Mother Africa twined with
Catholic and Islamic faiths to bear another new fruit unique to Saint Domingue:
the religion of vodou. A pantheon of spirits, called lwa in
Creole, were distinguished with distinct personalities and vocations, including
Baron Samedi, the god of death and Lord of the Crossroads; the beautiful
possessively jealous Venus-like lover of men Erzulie Freda; and the all-powerful
Damballa Ouedo, he who lived in the sky and had serpent for both symbol and
servant. If so inclined, the lwa could do good things for good people, or
terrible and wicked things to enemies.
During the years of nocturnal rebellion
the scheming slaves prayed protection for themselves and retribution for their oppressors
as they gathered around a fire. Their drums haunted the Caribbean night,
beating like an anxious pulse, sometimes like the call to war. Their feet that
should have been beaten and weary with the fatigue of field labor danced
heartily. Their voices joined Creole words to ancient melodies. The blood of
pigs and cocks fed the ground or filled a gourd to pass around. Some attendees
or houngan priests were possessed by a lwa and shrieked unknowable
secrets or committed impossible feats like eating coals plucked from the fire
without pain or fear. With proof of such supernatural endowment, congregated
slaves made careful plans, combining their new knowledge of the land with past
patterns of African poison. It was poison with which Francois Mackandal would attain
such deadly success.
For six years Mackandal headed a
conspiracy movement intended to eradicate the French. For six years after his
escape from the cattle fields of his master’s plantation, Mackandal committed
himself to the creation and distribution of poison, managing anonymous other
slaves, both free and in captivity, to administer his toxic brew; through them
he slew thousands of white folks and their livestock. For six years Mackandal lived
outside society, off the grid, and evaded capture by French authorities. When
he was finally arrested, his execution was meant to be a depressing spectacle
to instill fear and quell rebellious notions in witnessing slaves. But
Mackandal seemed to defy whites even from beyond the grave.
Since he had fled his own
plantation of imprisonment, Francois Mackandal had harbored hatred for the
white race and plotted vengeance. White people were certainly the clear reason for
most of Mackandal’s suffering. He had been seized from Africa at the tender age
of twelve, carted away across the waves to the West Indies and sold as a slave
on Saint Domingue. Once there, no one cared what his life had been, whether he
was educated, who his family was or what gods he adored. This boy was awarded instead
among the most odious and lethal tasks on the plantations: partaking in the
sugar-mill maintenance. Most unfortunately, like so many poor souls before him,
Mackandal fell victim to the greedy grind of the sugar mill, run at rapidly
risky rate by greedy overseers, and lost his left arm.
Probably an impressive physical specimen
before, this one-armed young buck dropped drastically in value. Yet despite
being damaged goods, he was a purchased asset nonetheless, and Mackandal was
kept on in chains, assigned meaner labor as a livestock herder. He was now prey
to even greater disdain by imperious masters who saw the only beast worse than
a Negro a partially formed quasimodo Negro.
Subjected to such bestial
treatment, one little wonders Mackandal held no loyalties for any masters or
overseers, any free or poor whites. Seemingly he received naught but
ill-treatment and unconceivable cruelty from those white people he encountered.
Unlike some of the famous Founding Fathers who would follow in the future,
then, Mackandal leaves no impression of belief in redemption, of eventual peace
between black and white men. He day-dreamed instead of escape and retribution, and
he schemed of serving the colony’s white masters their own bitter medicine in
turn.
 |
| Land of Mountains (photo credit: myself, 2016) |
Attempts by the French at taking these maroon-run forts had constantly been in vain, and never, in the bloody history of Saint Domingue, would these well-trained, highly-equipped soldiers succeed in ousting these belligerent liberated blacks, nor often of even discovering where they hid in the myriad folds of the Land of Mountains still rife with jungle vegetation. Maroons camouflaged in the jungles, fortified themselves in the mountains, and bred new generations of black islanders born free in these hidden fortresses of Saint Domingue. Even as the French increased restrictions in attempts to control their immense slave population, the numbers of marrons increased, and those who remained in chains on the plantations fed on the legends these rebel bands who fought for freedom.
The maréchaussée
police could not keep up with the number of runaways, never mind compete with
the sneak-attacks and plantation robberies maroons executed under cover of
darkness. No matter how many accused rebels they executed, how many potential
informants they tortured, the immense cruelty and duress of the increasingly
desperate French-Creoles could not stem the maroon tide, could not flush them
out of their mountain forts. These forts seemed to disappear with the mists
like the Isle of La Gonave, rendering themselves invisible at the will of their
inhabitants. The marons who dwelled in these mysterious cloud-shrouded
mountains were cautious, defending their refuge as soldiers. They dug pits
fitted with sharpened pikes, kept strict codes of secrecy about their wild
lifestyle. Rites of initiation into maron communities were also a clear
reflection of African societal heritage, participation in which was intensive
and demanding but imperative to the continued existence of communities,
essential to infrastructure and the preparation of future generations.
Africans newly estranged from their
Homeland, still trailing their chains, could more readily assimilate into the marronage
life than could Creole slaves, long-time islanders accustomed to the strictures
of plantations and some of the conveniences of colonial lifestyles. Nevertheless,
anyone who could reach the gates could join the maroon clan. The clans were not
unlike their pirate forebears, those motley crews of multiethnic runaways
pursuing new avenues. Some might think of them, too, like Robin Hood and his
group of gallant ruffians: outlaw heroes cleverly hidden in forest camps,
always out of view of pursuing soldiers. However one chooses to describe them, the
maroons were certainly impressive, these men and women rebels who took back
their freedom, proved their mental equality, if not superiority, to their
increasingly racist white captors.
photo credit: Alchetron, https://alchetron.com/Le-Marron-Inconnu
For the unfortunate truth we see is not that the African Slave Trade began from long-ingrained ideas of values of the color scale, where from ancient times those with the lightest skin which burned easily, turned red during labor under the sun, were God’s chosen, His most divine men meant to reign over the rest. Rather the reverse is true: that from the explosive growth of the slave trade, the staggering black tide of dark-skinned men and women made captive in Africa and condemned to terminal servitude around the white world, racism grew. Bitter seeds of the most poisonous sort sported roots that dug deeply, quickly, greedily, eagerly, spreading parasitic vines like pervasive kudzu ivy. Racism ran thorny tendrils around everything, corrupting with its coverage, choking the life out of healthy tolerance like the ropy northern Bittersweet. Racism thrived with the slave trade, so by the third century of its existence, Mackandal’s time of the 1750’s, it was firmly rooted as God’s own truth that some men were blessed with rights of dominion while others bore God’s wish for their submission.
In Saint Domingue, the white
Europeans were God’s favored heads, while the black Africans were the lowest
beasts of burden. Like the ancient Egyptians dwarfed by the Hebrews, the
minority whites feared above all black reprisal, rebellion by those Africans
who outnumbered them one hundred to one on sprawling plantations. Yet as much
as they feared and loathed their captives, these white owners were at once
fascinated by their physicality and dismissive of their mental capacity. They
could not believe that such savages could foment organized warfare or carry out
a poisonous conspiracy. Certainly they could not perceive how Mackandal, a
one-armed runaway, had managed not only his own survival but
Needless to say, the French police
force was severely relieved to catch Mackandal and duly eager for his speedy
demise. However, they also wanted his death to serve as a lasting lesson to his
fomenting rebel comrades, and any other slaves considering rebellion. They
thought that public execution, burned at the pyre, would prove sufficiently
vividly gruesome to staunch the steady ebb of unrest and revolt, as well as put
to rest the pesky Mackandal himself for good. To their lasting dismay, the
clever intentions of the French authorities backfired, for the funeral fire
intended for Mackandal served instead as fiery inspiration for thousands of
slaves.
On that January day in 1758 the maréchaussée
did not kill a man but created an undying legend.
The witnesses in the Cap Francais square where they tied Mackandal to be burned watched at close range as he wriggled from the ropes and leaped free of the flames. The guards gaped in disbelief, probably, before springing into sprinting pursuit and seizing the one-armed man again. They secured him to a plank and rejoiced as the flames claimed him.
The whites would swear he died there, quickly expiring for lack of air.
But the black audience would claim
Mackandal made a second escape, far more miraculous than the first. After the
guards bound him again and left him for dead, Mackandal called on his lwa.
They surely granted his desire, the blacks were assured, for the next moment
Mackandal was transformed into a mosquito, a tiny buzzing insect ropes had no
hope of holding. The mosquito flew free of the smoky square and who knows where
he went next? As that nearly-invisible creature Mackandal might spread deadly Yellow
Fever to his enemies.
Whatever truly happened in that square
in 1758, which European records claim concluded in Mackandal’s termination, is
less important than what ensued: the heightened brewing of revolution. Master
and slave alike feared the invincibility of martyrs like Mackandal who carried
on the crusade for freedom more fiercely than before when human form hindered
his movements, whether as an insect or inspiration.
Although forty years would pass before
the official Slave Rebellion of Saint Domingue began, Francois Mackandal’s conspiracy
and slaughter places him among the Founding Fathers. Whether by his endurance
as a slave, his bravery under amputation, by his guerilla tactics, intelligence,
botanical and toxicological prowess as a maroon, or by his dignity at his
execution and his mythic second flight to freedom, Mackandal modeled many qualities
of a strong soldier. His legacy sparked greater courage in restless young men
who dreamed of freedom, men who would one day be the officers of the
Revolution.
Works Cited (so far):
https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/quotes/antonio-de-montesinos-christmas-eve-sermon-of-1511-on-just-treatment-of-indians
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bartolome-de-Las-Casas
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus
http://columbuslandfall.com/ccnav/crew.shtml
http://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP024
http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0111
http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0066
https://library.brown.edu/haitihistory/1sr.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marquis-de-Sade
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/montesinos-antonio-de-c-1530
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Dominic
http://zeerovery.nl/history/tortuga.htm
https://revolution.chnm.org/d/335/
http://columbuslandfall.com/ccnav/v1.shtml
https://www.peacepalacelibrary.nl/2017/08/the-treaties-of-ryswick-1697/
