The Mackandal Affair

Mackandal was formerly enslaved on a northern plantation owned by Sieur Tellier and he often worked for Lenormand de Mezy in the Limbé district.⁶ Though one source identifies Mackandal as a Mesurade from the Windward Coast, an often-cited account from 1787, Extrait du Mercure de France: Makandal, Histoire Véritable, explains that Mackandal was brought to the colony at age 12 from the Upper Guinea region of West Africa, and that he was a “Mahommed,” or a Muslim, who had at least some Arabic linguistic competency.⁷ He was a distinctive character, with acquired skills and gifts in music, painting, sculpting, and herbal medicine. He attempted escape from enslavement several times before his final retreat into the mountains after losing a hand in a sugar mill and later tending to animals. Mackandal’s 18-year escape into the Limbé mountains is where he developed a strong following as a charismatic leader. He claimed himself to be immortal and was considered a prophet who secretly traversed plantations spanning the northern plain, from Fort Dauphin to Port-de-Paix, to speak during night-time assemblies or in an “open school,” as Moreau Saint-Méry described it. Early descriptions claim that Mackandal foretold the overthrow of enslavement, using different colored scarves as a metaphor to illustrate that the island once belonged to the “yellow” indigenous Americans, was under domination by white Europeans, but would soon be under the control of black Africans. Legend states that he aimed to rid the colony of whites by producing and distributing packets of poisonous mixtures that slaves could use to kill their owners and other enslaved people who were perceived as being in solidarity with whites.⁸ Mackandal infiltrated plantation systems by recruiting an underground network of people who were willing to transport packets of poisons, potions, or remedies. The goal of this campaign, as he communicated at the evening religious gatherings, was to overthrow enslavement by poisoning the white colonials.

Court documents from the Mackandal case associated the macandal packets with gris-gris from the “langue mennade” – a direct reference to the Mende linguistic origins of gris-gris amulets produced by Muslim marabouts in the Upper Guinea region, which Pierre Du Simitière also observed in Léogâne (Figure 2.5). These amulets were leather pouches that contained written scriptures from the Qur’an for protective purposes. Clients ported gris-gris underneath head wraps; around their necks, arms, waists, ankles or knees; they could be mounted over doors or placed under beds.⁹ In François’ case, he wore his gris-gris or macandal under a hat. He combined other artifacts and prayed over the materials with what seemed to be an Islamic incantation of “Alla[h], Alla[h],” which he claimed invoked the power and blessing of Jesus. These sacks were composed of human bones, nails, roots, communion bread, small crucifixes, and incense that were bound together in holy-water soaked cloth and twine.¹⁰ Individuals who had the expertise to compose the macandals and to invoke the spirits embedded in the sacks were considered to be of the first order, or the highest leadership rank among the community of ritualists. Each macandal was named after an individual who occupied a rank, which was delineated by knowing secret phrases or names of macandal producers. Those who gave the name of “Charlot” were of the first order, indicating women played indispensable roles within the network.¹¹ The macandals could be used for strength, to attract love, to protect a person from a slave owner’s whip for committing marronnage, or to make the slave owner confused or the target of misfortune. After granting supplicants’ requests, the macandals had to be “re-charged” with food left for them to eat, an antecedent to the ways that contemporary Haitian Vodou practitioners sacrificially “feed” the lwa, or spirits.

The anonymous letter Relation d’une Conspiration Tramée par les Nègres estimates that as many as 30–40 whites, including women and children, and about 200–300 other enslaved people and animals were killed in the Mackandal conspiracy. A man named l’Éveillé agreed to poison his first owner, an upholsterer named Labadie, as well as the wife of a slave owner, and a surgeon from Limonade. In Le Cap, a merchant named Mongoubert and Mme. Lespes were both poisoned by black women who were convicted and condemned to death. Several other cases emerged: Marianne, the “chief poisoner” at Le Cap was connected to Mackandal through his wife Brigitte. Marianne, Jolicoeur, and Michel poisoned a hairdresser named Vatin, because he would not allow them to partake in a Sabbath dinner in his kitchen. A woman who previously lived with Jolicoeur poisoned the wife of Rodet and wanted to kill Jolicoeur’s enslaver, Millet. Henriette was accused and convicted of poisoning her female enslaver, Faveroles. Cupidon allegedly poisoned another black man named Apollon, as well as two Decourt women, and the owner himself. The following were also suspected of poison: black men and women belonging to M. Hiert, M. de la Cassaigne, Lady Paparet, Sieur Delan, and M. le Prieur. Thélémaque was condemned for poisoning with “vert-de-gris,” or the green leaf that was the container for poison and synonymous with macandals, that he hid in a dish of sprouts, resulting in nearly all the houseguests becoming sick.¹² On April 8, 1758, three people, Samba, Colas, and Lafleur, were sentenced to death for their part in the poisonings that occurred in the northern department, and six slaves on a Limbé plantation were executed as punishment for allegations of poison.¹³

African-Atlantic Ethnic Solidarities

People associated with François Mackandal’s poison network represented various ethnicities originating from Senegambia, the Bight of Benin, and West Central Africa, suggesting his prophesy of black rule was not merely rhetoric but was based on the lived experience of building a diverse network of Africans and creoles – even free people of color – who collaborated based on shared principles and common practices. Mackandal’s speeches about restoring racial justice to the colony were particularly important in cultivating a sense of collective consciousness and solidarity among enslaved Africans of varying backgrounds. Solidarity can be thought of as a sense of loyalty, shared interest, and identification with a collective that enhances cohesion, and advances the idea that the well-being of a group is of such great importance that it will yield widespread participation in collective action (Fantasia Reference Fantasia1988; Gamson Reference Gamson, Morris and Mueller1992; Taylor and Whittier Reference Taylor, Whittier, Morris and Mueller1992; Hunt and Benford Reference Hunt, Benford, Snow, Soule and Kriesi2004). François Mackandal was probably indeed a Mende-speaker of Senegambian or Sierra Leonean origin from the widespread Guinea region, as early sources have suggested, and had some familiarity with Islam – which had been the driving force of the Futa Jallon and Futa Tooro anti-slavery movements in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.¹⁴ Given the dire circumstances of enslavement, he collaborated with Africans of different ethnicities, such as his Kongolese associates Mayombé and Teyselo, whose fundamental worldviews were probably not incompatible with his own, particularly since Africans generally did not restrict their religious beliefs to fixed orthodoxies.¹⁵

Inter-cultural exchange within the sacred realm is a window through which we can begin to understand how collective consciousness and solidarity were forged within African descendants’ ritual life, Mackandal’s actions, and his network of Senegambian, Bight of Benin, and West Central African poisoners. The calenda, vaudoux, and other sects with which Mackandal was familiar shared commonalities of (1) levels of initiation, (2) herbal medicine practices, (3) spiritually charged objects, (4) divination and prophecy, and (5) anti-slavery sentiments. We might think of François Mackandal as an African-Atlantic “creole” from the Upper Guinea region whose early exposure to Islam in Africa, and later to West Central African practices in Saint-Domingue, provided him with socio-cultural and linguistic flexibility (Landers Reference Laguerre2010) to interact with Africans of varying backgrounds and assert a racially themed prophesy of impending upheaval. Sugar plantations in the northern plain tended to have more ethnic diversity than coffee plantations, which West Central Africans increasingly dominated midway through the eighteenth century.¹⁶ Some individuals, like Mackandal, would have participated in foreign rituals and had flexibility with sacred symbols from varying cultural groups, contributing to a wider appeal to the masses. Mackandal’s main associates, Teyselo and Mayombé, like him, originated from a region that was dominated by or had ongoing contact with monotheistic, Abrahamic religions – Christianity in the Kongo Kingdom and Islam in the Senegambia region. For example, Mackandal incorporated small crucifixes into his gris-gris artifacts to invoke blessings from Jesus, which would have appealed to Africans from the Kongo Kingdom who either were already baptized before their arrival in Saint-Domingue or who later embraced Christianity.

Enslaved women who worked within the domestic sphere acted as bridge leaders, constituting the main poison transporters.¹⁷ François Mackandal’s wife Brigitte seems to have been his main courier and was knowledgeable in the ritual process involved in creating macandals, stating “God knows what I do, God opens the eyes to those who ask for eyes.” Brigitte transported macandals between François and Marianne, a woman who was the “chief of the poisoners of Le Cap.” A Poulard woman named Assam, a domestic on the LaPlaine plantation in Acul, admitted to witnessing a Bambara man named Jean transport poison between several plantations using other women as couriers. The two women, Marie-Jeanne and Madeleine, were Niamba and Nagô, respectively. In Petit Anse, a Yoruba man named Hauron was accused of giving poison to other slaves. Assam’s testimony – combined with a spontaneous confession by an enslaved man named Medor in Fort Dauphin who admitted that the goal of the conspiracy was to collaborate with free people of color in destroying the colony so the enslaved could escape and be free – was what eventually exposed the network and led to François Mackandal’s arrest in November 1757.¹⁸ A number of women and three free people of color were among the 140 arrested for allegedly following Mackandal and providing arsenic to poison slave owners in support of slaves gaining manumission.

The Politics of Death

Those arrested in connection with the Mackandal affair were noted to have sung a song in Kreyol: “ouaïe, ouaïe, Mayangangué, zamis moir mourir, moi aller mourir, [… my friends are dying, I will die …] ouaïe, ouaïe, Mayangangué.”¹⁹ The words of the song reveal a sense of shared fate, and perhaps hopelessness, in response to the overwhelming volume of deaths among enslaved people. It might be argued, however, that death was not necessarily viewed as a condemnation, but as a path to freedom from bondage, a return to the homeland “Guinea,” and an entry into the spirit world where there was an opportunity to further influence the natural world. Mackandal’s wife, Brigitte, may have transitioned into the world of the lwa as Maman Brigitte, who has authority over cemeteries.²⁰ Mackandal’s claim that he was immortal, and the imminence of death reflected in the song were possibly more than spiritual messages – they could have been threats to unleash the power of the dead on the living. If we consider that Mackandal was a Mende speaker, as his familiarity with gris-gris would suggest, it appears that aspects of Mende cosmology fit Mackandal’s profile. Within the Mende were decentralized structures, including societies based on ritual knowledge and the principles of justice, retribution, and secrecy. Mende leaders held the power of life and death and inflicted punishments on intruders or those who committed offenses against individuals or the whole community. Moreover, women were indispensable in Mende societies – even those that were male dominated – and were needed to mediate the human and spirit realm, which helps explain women’s centrality in Mackandal’s inner circle.²¹

After his initial arrest in November 1757, Mackandal escaped jail and was again free until he was later seized at a calenda ritual dance gathering at the Dufresne plantation in Limbé, then burned at the stake in Cap Français on January 20, 1758. Witnesses claimed that Mackandal’s body evaporated before the flames engulfed him and converted him into a mosquito, a plague of which he had earlier prophesied would bring destruction to the whites. Several African belief systems include notions of an afterlife, the transmigration of spirits from one physical entity to another, or the elevation of a human into a pantheon of revered spirits.²² Enslaved Africans’ reaction to Mackandal’s death, and the “ouaïe, ouaïe, Mayangangué” chant, can be considered part of a larger mortuary political stance, the “profound social meaning from the beliefs and practices associated with death … employed … [and] charged with cosmic importance – in struggles toward particular ends” (Brown Reference Brown2008: 5). Death was ubiquitous in Saint-Domingue – nearly half of incoming Africans perished within five years – as were attempts to prevent it, symbolize and commemorate it, or inflict it. African Diasporans’ belief in Mackandal’s immortality was not merely a sense of mourning and reverence, but one that connected private emotions and conceptions of death and the afterlife with wider concerns about enslavement and freedom. Moreover, the macandal packets that he and others assembled and sold contained fragments of human bones, suggesting the dead carried sacred powers that were important and effective for navigating the natural world.

Mackandal’s death supports the notion that funeral rituals involve both grieving and burying the dead, and provide time and space to address social, economic, and political issues (Tamason Reference Tamason1980). In pre-colonial African societies, especially those of the Bight of Benin and West Central Africa, spiritual leaders were revered and often held important political positions. Vincent Brown has argued that since enslaved ritualists “drew their most impressive power from the management of spirits and death, the prohibition [of ritual practices] amounted to a strategy to limit the prestige the enslaved could derive from association with the spirits of the dead, while maximizing the power of the colonial government’s ‘magic’” (Brown Reference Brown2008: 151). The ability to communicate with or marshal the spiritual energy of the dead, to protect oneself or others from death, or to inflict death translated to a type of community-endorsed political power that transcended colonial authority and therefore was a threat to the social order. Mackandal – and as we will see with several poisoners who followed him, organizers and participants of calenda ritual gatherings, and later the midwife Marie Catherine Kingué – negotiated matters of life and death and at times relayed messages condemning racial slavery, which elevated them to the level of political significance. Mackandal’s message regarding racial stratification, power, and control over land and resources infused into Africa-inspired rituals a politicized awareness of and oppositional attitude toward the oppressive colonial situation. This melding of the sacred and material worlds would not have been foreign to the bondspeople of Saint-Domingue, especially those of African origin from places like the Bight of Benin or the Loango Coast, where religion informed political and economic shifts and vice versa. The enslaved population likely would have welcomed such an articulation to facilitate comprehension of the new world into which they had been violently thrust, and as such revered Mackandal and his legacy.

Poison Post-Mackandal: 1760s–1780s

Mackandal’s case inspired fear among the colonists and was a watershed event that altered the structures of the colonial order as the courts developed ordinances and divisions of police to further control and repress the enslaved population (Sewell Reference Sewell and McDonald1996a). On April 7, 1758, the Council of Cap Français issued an ordinance regarding the policing of enslaved people in response to the Mackandal affair. Articles banned affranchis and enslaved people from making, selling, or distributing garde-corps or macandals, and issued a fine of 300 livres for any planter who allowed drumming or night gatherings on their property.²³ Yet, these codes were not fully enforced and therefore did not stop people from using Africa-inspired technologies to empower themselves to solve personal and public problems associated with their oppression. Enslaved people in the northern plain viewed poisoning as a successful repertoire tactic, given the political impact of the François Mackandal affair on the colonial order and on witnesses to his execution, and they adopted the tactic for themselves. After the execution, Mackandal’s name became synonymous with certain religious leaders, dances, medicinal blends, and poisons most specifically.²⁴ Poisoning allegations continued in the wake of Mackandal’s death, especially in northern Saint-Domingue, setting off a heightened repression of social and religious activities that were not explicitly Christian, such as using poisonous herbal blends and the calenda gatherings. Both enslaved and free black people were banned from practicing medicine in April 1764, which indicated a fear that free blacks with skills in medicinal practice and access to materials like arsenic used it to distribute to the enslaved and facilitate the poisoning of whites.²⁵ Repression did not hinder Africans and African descendants from partaking in sacred ritual artifacts or attending ritual gatherings. However, rather than hand over poisoners to the courts as in the Mackandal case, political authorities relinquished the responsibility for punishing poisoners to slave owners themselves. As poisoning accusations continued in the 1760s and 1780s, enslavers increasingly used torturous means to obtain confessions, while the colonial government abdicated its protection of the enslaved.²⁶

Across the northern plain, enslaved people and maroons were implicated as poisoners between the 1760s and 1780s, suggesting a diffusion of collective consciousness about Mackandal, the acts of marronnage and poison, and solidarity with the political ideas he represented. On April 2, 1766, a Kongolese man named Eustache was reported missing from Mr. Boyveau’s plantation in Dondon.²⁷ Not only had Eustache escaped, he had begun to assume the name “Makandal” in recent years, which can be attributed to a sense of connection, solidarity, or shared identity the former felt toward François Mackandal. Perhaps Eustache “Makandal” had been initiated in François Mackandal’s network and was given his name before he escaped the Dondon plantation. Even if Eustache was not an initiate, he was more than likely aware of François Mackandal’s life and influence given the proximity of Dondon to Limbé, less than 50 kilometers, where Mackandal was formerly enslaved.

In May 1771, a group of enslaved people went to Cap Français to complain that their owner was torturing accused poisoners, burning five women and men alive and killing two of them.²⁸ Another enslaved woman living with a white man, M. Beaufort, was accused of wanting to poison her owner, Madame Raulin, and going off as a maroon.²⁹ In 1774, a young man was arrested and arsenic was found in his bag; a black pharmacist was implicated but was dead by the time of the judgment.³⁰ Three enslaved domestics poisoned the manager at the Fleuriau plantation in Cul-de-Sac in 1776. A young boy warned the Fleuriau manager that his soup was poisoned, so they gave the soup to a dog and it died immediately. The three perpetrators admitted their actions and that they also poisoned M. Rasseteau, a former attorney; they were imprisoned and later burned alive.³¹ In 1777, near Cul-de-Sac, a man named Jacques was arrested and burned alive for poisoning one hundred of his owner Corbieres’ animals with arsenic over an eight-month span.³² That same year, another police ruling was issued prohibiting enslaved people from meeting during the day or at night under the pretense of weddings or funerals. The ruling expressly forbade drumming and singing, and, in 1780, African descendants were again banned from making or selling any medicinal substances.³³ Colonists saw a connection between the ritual gatherings and poison, since these packets were often sold and distributed at the assemblies.

An alleged poisoner from Limonade, 33-year-old Marc Antoine Avalle, nicknamed “Kangal,” was questioned on June 30, 1780, and jailed in Le Cap. Among other vices, Antoine and his accomplices Bayome, Palidore, and Pierre were accused of poisoning 25 black people and 49 animals, including mules, cattle, and horses in 1776, and were imprisoned in Le Cap.³⁴ Despite the 1780 ban on selling medicinal substances, a black apothecary was arrested in 1781 for selling a lethal drug to an enslaved person who used it to commit suicide – a common individualized response to the trauma of enslavement.³⁵ An overseer at Cul-de-Sac caught a washerwoman attempting to dump a poisonous powder into his water in 1782.³⁶ In 1784, a woman named Elizabeth “Zabeau” attempted to poison her owner with substances in his food and drink.³⁷ On May 8, 1781, an advertisement was placed for a griffe creole named Jean-Baptiste, born in Ouanaminthe. Fifteen days before the advertisement was placed, Jean-Baptiste escaped a plantation owned by M. Lejeune in Plaisance, a parish near Limbé, and was reported as a “thief” and a macandal.³⁸ In contrast to Eustache, the 1766 absconder who deliberately took the surname “Makandal,” Lejeune described Jean-Baptiste as a macandal to indicate the more general crime of poisoning. Perhaps Jean-Baptiste had killed or attempted to kill someone on the Lejeune plantation, then escaped to avoid inevitable punishment. The advertisement details could have indicated the beginning of a real conspiracy, because two enslaved people on Lejeune’s property allegedly killed his nephew later in 1783.³⁹ The advertisement also implies a long-standing paranoia about poison on the Lejeune property. Jean-Baptiste likely escaped from the same coffee plantation that became the center of controversy in March 1788, when the plantation owner’s son, Nicolas Lejeune, nearly tortured to death two enslaved women named Zabeth and Marie Rose and executed four others. Lejeune accused the victims of poisoning nearly 500 bondspeople on the Plaisance plantation over the course of 25 years. Lejeune so brutally tortured the two women that 14 other enslaved Africans strategically used provisions of the 1784 Code Noir to file charges against him in Le Cap.⁴⁰ Laws to prevent assemblies and to keep black people from possessing medicinal and other ritual items were an ineffective means of repression against poisonings, however the torture of Zabeth and Marie Rose may have signaled to ritualists that poison as an individualized act of resistance was no longer an effective repertoire tactic. Enslaved and maroon ritualists continued to utilize sacred technologies for individual usage, but they also relied on organizing networks to inspire broader forms of insurgency.

“Dom Pedro”

The contemporary petwo pantheon of spirits in Haitian Vodou is typically attributed to the petro dances observed by Moreau de Saint-Méry, who distinguished the petro from the vaudoux ritual dance, stating that the former was more dangerous, powerful, and had the potential to foment rebellion among the enslaved population. Nearly two centuries later, Haitian anthropologist Jean Price-Mars (Reference Price-Mars1938) witnessed a petwo ceremony and linked it to the Lemba society of West Central Africa. Recently uncovered archival material about Pierre “Dom Pedro,” the originator of the petro dance, seem to support Price-Mars’ thesis that Dom Pedro and members of this spiritual sect were connected to the Lemba of the eighteenth century. The Lemba society was a closed but vast network of initiates and family members who regulated local markets in the region and practiced healing rituals to counterbalance the negative effects that the slave trade inflicted upon West Central African communities. The Lemba emphasized fairness and justice, and imposed harsh punishments on those who violated their peacekeeping code of ethics. As the transAtlantic slave trade weakened the power of coastal kingdoms and their justice systems, public nkisi shrines became increasingly “concerned with adjudicatory and retaliatory functions” to mediate societal imbalances.⁴¹ In Saint-Domingue’s colonial period, the petro sect was associated with thievery and other malevolent acts, which may have been the result of deported Lemba affiliates attempting to rectify the extreme level of exploitation and injustice they experienced as enslaved people.

Pierre “Dom Pedro” emerged as a leader among enslaved blacks living in and around Petit-Goâve by introducing them to a new dance, one that was similar to the established vaudoux dance but adhered to a faster and more intense drumbeat. Participants added crushed gunpowder to their rum to induce a highly intoxicated, frenzied state that was said to have killed some who drank it. As Chapter 1 indicated, items like rum and gunpowder were traded for African captives on the coasts of the continent and were assumed to hold the essence of slave trade victims, thus enhancing spiritual power of ritualists in Saint-Domingue. Pedro’s followers quickly gained the reputation of being the most powerful and dangerous ritual community in the colony; members had the ability to see beyond the physical realm and used herbalism, poison, and secrecy to exact revenge on whites, uninitiated blacks, and animals. An account from an initiate describes a series of tests he had to undergo to prove loyalty to the group. Of importance was his ability to demonstrate strength under torture, discretion in keeping secrets, and willingness to do such oppositional acts as lying, stealing, or inflicting harm on humans or animals.⁴² Another member was asked to hold a piece of hot coal in his hand, seemingly to test if his spirit was capable of absorbing rage, symbolized by the heat, until an appropriate time for it to be released was reached.⁴³ These acts required of initiates might also be seen as examples of Lemba ritual purifications to alleviate symptoms of the human-inflicted evils of slavery.⁴⁴ Authorities arrested 42 people, including some mulâtres and women, in connection with the Dom Pedro campaign. By 1773, several of them were still imprisoned in the jails of Petit Goâve, although it is possible that some escaped after an earthquake on June 3, 1770 destroyed much of the town and Port-au-Prince. In his wake, Dom Pedro became a title applied to any person who was known as a ritual leader who used sorcery to inflict harm and often carried a large stick and a whip.⁴⁵

It was previously believed that Pierre had taken the name Don Pedro, suggesting he was a runaway from Spanish Santo Domingo, but recently discovered documents name him as Dom Pedro, a more common name from the Portuguese-influenced Kongo Kingdom. Between 1768 and 1769, Judge Joseph Ferrand de Beaudiere investigated Dom Pedro for traveling to several plantations in Petit Goâve, Jacmel, and Léogâne and spreading messages of freedom, rebellion, and independence from slave owners. Pedro’s campaign for liberation would have amounted to sedition according to the high courts, and seems aligned with Lemba ethics that deemed slavery and the slave trade as a societal ill. Pedro’s ritual performances, thought of as crude tricks by investigators, would have denoted spiritual efficacy that contributed to his growing following. De Beaudiere’s notes indicate a small uprising of sorts, wherein Pedro subverted plantation power structures by assuring the enslaved that they would soon be free and encouraging them to turn the whip on commandeurs who attempted to uphold plantation violence. He then instructed the commandeurs to stop using the whip on the other enslaved people under their supervision and assured them that there would be no punishment from their owners. In advocating the use of the whip against commandeurs as retribution for their treatment of the enslaved, Pedro promoted a sense of reciprocal or “horizontal” justice and the exercise of force – these were hallmark principles of Lemba society. This type of contestation against existing power relations openly vocalized a sense of discontentment with the violent punishments associated with slavery that bondspeople typically could only have shared in private spaces. In exchange for spiritual and physical protection from slavers’ retribution, Pedro imposed financial charges on his initiates. Similarly, clients customarily paid fees to Lemba priests for their ritual services of initiation, healing, or spiritual consecration.⁴⁶

Pierre Dom Pedro, and his followers, would have understood enslavement in Saint-Domingue within the realm of greed, evil, and witchcraft – issues that needed to be rectified with both spiritual and material actions.⁴⁷ His Kongolese understanding of slavery could not abide the unjust practices that were so regular in Saint-Domingue. Dom Pedro’s seditious resistance to the whip was both a literal repudiation of the non-ethical use of violence in slavery and served as symbol to instigate bondspeople’s reclamation of power from those who sought to maintain slavery. Further, Pierre Dom Pedro’s declarations of himself as “free” were probably not just in relation to slavery in Saint-Domingue; he may have been a freeborn Lemba priest or market trader who, in keeping with local custom, should have been protected from the slave trade. Indeed, in Portuguese Angola the honorific title “Dom” was usually reserved for the political elite, but was also used for freeborn commoners to indicate their status.⁴⁸ Pierre Dom Pedro’s stance against slavery may indicate an association with longstanding Kongolese efforts to protect the local population from the encroaching transAtlantic slave trade and balanced practices related to enslaved laborers. These contributions were important antecedents to the early Haitian Revolution negotiations, when rebels sought more humane work conditions such as the abolition of the whip and modified work schedules.⁴⁹

The Dom Pedro sect arrived in Saint-Domingue not long after the King of Kongo, Pedro V, failed to seize power from Alvaro XI, whose allegiance with local leaders who had large slave armies helps to explain the likely enslavement of Pedro V’s supporters.⁵⁰ Though there is not yet clarity on Pedro V’s relationship with the Lemba network, or his political and philosophical stances on the slave trade, further evidence from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean might shed light on the political implications of Pedro V’s short reign. The actions of Pierre Dom Pedro and his followers critiqued the nature of enslavement and advocated for others to overturn the power imbalances embedded in everyday colonial life. Although these enslaved rebels could no longer alter social, economic, or political realities in their homelands, they attempted to affect change in Saint-Domingue by enacting their own brand of justice against the French colonial plantocracy through poisonings, theft, spiritual prophecy of impending revolt, and retributive violence. The Dom Pedro campaign may be a small window into the nature of the Kongo civil wars, as well as a new way to understand how African events and consciousness shaped anti-slavery positions and activities in the Atlantic world.

In December 1781, three months after Pedro V’s remaining allies were driven out of São Salvador and the slave trade from West Central Africa increased, another “Dom Pedro” surfaced in Saint-Domingue and gained the attention of local authorities; this man was referred to as Sim dit Dompete.⁵¹ Sim’s name may indicate association with the Kongolese simbi nature spirits that controlled rain, and fertility, and that are recognized contemporarily as part of the Haitian petwo rite. In West Central Africa, the simbi spirits protected rocks, rivers, pools, and waterfalls, and were ruled by the mother spirit, Bunzi. The Bunzi priest had the critical responsibility for the spiritual installation of the King of Loango.⁵² Sim Dompete was a runaway from Cayes and an alleged animal poisoner, perhaps using his ritual knowledge to enact poison ordeals. He was so well known in Nippes, southwest of Port-au-Prince, that members of the maréchaussée targeted him for capture as they were eager to demonstrate their disdain for Africans and African-based culture. During the expedition, the freemen hid in the woods for days until they saw Sim pass by carrying a sword, a white hat under his arm, and a macoute. Along the Loango coastlands, the makute was made of a piece of palm raffia cloth about the size of a large handkerchief; it was traded as currency and often used for ritual healing purposes.⁵³ As Sim appeared, the hunters attacked and they all fought for hours while Sim attempted to reach into the macoute to open its contents. The hunters believed he had a gun, and eventually shot and beheaded Sim then took his sword and bag. The macoute contained several small packets covered with red, blue, and white cloth and animal skin, with feathers, bones, and glass sticking from the bags. There were also black tree seeds and a small piece of white wax.⁵⁴ These contents match the description of the garde-corps, or “bodyguards” that Mackandal and ritualists in Marmelade created and distributed.⁵⁵ During the Haitian Revolution, Colonel Charles Malenfant also reported discovering macoute bags on the bodies of the few rebels he killed. The sacks contained writings in Arabic, which were probably Qur’anic prayers used in protective gris-gris amulets.⁵⁶

West and West Central African ritualists like Mackandal, Dom Pedro, and Sim Dompete used their status as spiritual authorities to exercise political power among Saint-Domingue’s enslaved communities and utilized a range of sacred practices, including poison, to bring about change in their immediate social world. Enslaved blacks and maroons produced and exchanged ritual artifacts clandestinely while people performed their work-related tasks – such as the female domestic laborers who delivered macandals – as well as in free spaces to arm and empower themselves against the everyday forms of violence embedded in the slave society. Gris-gris, macandals, ouangas, which were charms categorically close to nkisis, and macoutes were all small sacks containing varying materials that were prayed over and charged with comporting the spirits of non-human entities to grant the user’s requests. These requests usually sought to alter slave owners’ behavior – most commonly to prevent punishment for marronnage and for owners to grant emancipation after death from poison. Pouches of poison and other spiritual assemblages aided enslaved people, no matter their ethnicity of origin, in redressing power differentials in their everyday lives.

Not only did ritual leaders leverage sacred objects for individual usage, they also used marronnage to organize calendas, which were simultaneously spiritual and militaristic gatherings, and to propagate notions of liberation. Mayombo sticks empowered carriers, mostly men, to fight with enhanced spiritual power. Higher-ranking calenda fighters and organizers held more sacred power and were most associated with insubordination. The sacred packets, fighting sticks, and garde-corps were “popular” culture artifacts that represented the “raw materials” for free space ritual performances. Used by most enslaved people in the colony, sacred artifacts and those who produced them derived meaning from their African origins to shape individuals’ responses to the colonial situation and guide social actions (Harris Reference Harris, Mansbridge and Morris2001; Johnston Reference Johnston and Johnston2009).⁵⁷ Songs such as those sung by François Mackandal “ouaïe, ouaïe, Mayangangué” and the KiKongo “Eh! Eh! Bomba, hen! hen!” chant were other forms of cultural artifacts that operated as discourses of contention, or ways of communicating collective understandings and visions for social transformation through dialogue (Hall Reference Hall, Howard and Becker1990; Steinberg Reference Steinberg1999; Kane Reference Kane2000; Pettinger Reference Pettinger, Paton and Forde2012). The ritual songs and chants helped build solidarity by encoding information about the power of spirits to end slavery and, later, were part of the unfolding of the revolutionary process itself (Sewell Reference Sewell1996b; Johnston Reference Johnston and Johnston2009).

Calendas

Enslaved Africans’ collective and oppositional consciousness was already shaped and politicized by their experiences of war, capture, and commodification in Africa and during the Middle Passage. Rebels leveraged free spaces, such as calenda dances, designated for cultural and political practices as organizational structures to enhance the meanings enslaved people assigned to their conditions in a racially organized society and further develop insurgent potential. Maroons were central figures in cultivating these spaces and in recruiting participants from various plantations. Ritual gatherings were among the only social spaces under the control of enslaved people, making them what social movement scholars call indigenous organizational resources that draw on collective consciousness and do the micromobilization work of insurgency (McAdam [1982] Reference McAdam1999; Morris Reference Morris1984; Morris and Mueller Reference Morris, Morris and Mueller1992). These free spaces were appropriated and politicized not merely due to the overlap of religion and politics in various African societies, but because of the powerful symbols invoked by connecting sacred understandings to wider issues (Harris Reference Harris, Mansbridge and Morris2001). Moments of acute social, economic, or political crisis, for example the Kongo civil wars in the case of Dom Pedro, can influence those affected and transform existing structures, cultural and religious practices, and identities into vehicles for change (Fantasia and Hirsch Reference Fantasia, Hirsch, Johnston and Klandermans1995). Saint-Domingue’s black cultural “toolkit” included ritual objects, spirit embodiment, song, dance, and martial arts that were both sacred and political, and animated mobilization (Pattillo-McCoy Reference Pattillo-McCoy1998).

Calenda ritual gatherings held in the 1760s and 1780s were likely the product of an influx in the number of West Central Africans brought to Saint-Domingue’s ports, which nearly doubled between 1781 and 1790 (Table 1.2) due to resumed fighting in the Kongo Kingdom between Pedro V, who attempted a coup in the early 1760s, and forces supporting his opponent Alvaro XI. Prisoners of war were sold through the Loango ports that were most used by the French. Former soldiers would have been trained in the sacred martial art tradition using mayombo sticks that Moreau de Saint-Méry described and which were seen in Cap Français in 1785. Kongolese fighters often preferred these types of personal weapons to larger bayonets for closer combat, which stood in contrast to European fighting styles. Calendas might then be considered training grounds that reinforced spiritual and military organizational knowledge that former Kongo civil war soldiers brought with them to Saint-Domingue.⁵⁸ Participants in the calendas imbued material culture artifacts with spiritual power to enhance their effectiveness as self-protective armaments. Further, training in combat combined with declarations of liberation and the power of Africans and African descendants indicated their anticipation of and preparation for events that would eventually lead to the dismantling of the enslavement system.

Sacred Martial Arts

In northern Saint-Domingue and other French Caribbean colonies, kalendas, or calendas, were not just ritual dances of enslaved people, they also included African martial art-styled stick fighting practices similar to West Central African kilundus or kilombos.⁵⁹ Stick and machete fighting traditions existed in the Bight of Biafra, West Central Africa, and the Bight of Benin, and they were used as mechanisms for warfare training, rites of passage, and, in the case of Dahomey, to train “Amazon” women fighters.⁶⁰ Enslaved women were not known to have participated in stick fighting, but T. J. Desch-Obi claims that “unarmed pugilism and head butts … were gendered female in Saint-Domingue.”⁶¹ African kings and high-ranking soldiers commanded kilombos, militaristic communities that spread throughout West Central Africa in the seventeenth century, particularly in preparation for warfare. These fighters relied on hand-to-hand combat, and constantly performed mock battles, drills and other training exercises, and war dances to prepare for impending conflict. The war dances, as well as the movements associated with fighting styles during non-combative ritualistic gatherings, invoked spiritual meanings and reflected West Central African sacred understandings of the cosmos. Ancient ritual specialists performed specific movements like inverted kicks to invoke the power of ancestors who resided on the opposite side of the kalunga, the body of water that separated the worlds of the living and the dead.⁶² With sacred power imbued in physical movements, the martial arts could be used to heal the living as well as “helping bondsmen’s souls make return journeys across the kalunga.” For example, the Mounsoundi (Musundi or Mousombe) of Kongo were noted for their association with stick fighting, as well as the belief in Africans’ ability to fly away from enslavement back to their homeland.⁶³ A song that likely originates from the revolutionary era indicates the legacy of militaristic cultures of this West Central African ethnic group in Saint-Domingue:

Overlap between sacred knowledge and military skills continued across the Atlantic via the collective memory of slave trade captives and resulted in similar practices emerging in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue.

Moreau de Saint-Méry described calenda stick fighting as serious conflicts, usually occurring over jealousy or an offense to one’s sense of honor, self-image, or self-worth. It was not uncommon for combatants to strike each other with forceful head blows that drew blood. The fights began with a salute and an oath, wherein both participants wet their fingers with saliva then touched the ground, bringing their fingers back to their mouths, then pounding their chests while looking toward the skies. Saint-Méry was both impressed and entertained by the dexterity with which fighters handled their “murderous sticks,” likening the fighting contest to fencing. Each delivered their blows quickly, using their sticks to defend against the other’s and to issue offensive strikes. Possession of a fighting stick was a symbol of honor among participants, and the more decorated sticks were highly valued because of their spiritual power. The fighting sticks, called mayombo, were filled with a limestone-based powder, maman-bila, and were sold along with red and black seeds called poto. Nails inserted into the blunt end of the stick for additional force indicated one’s position of leadership within the closed network of fighters. These materials match the description of elements used in West Central African nkisi bags and they were used to imbue the sticks with sacred power that would protect users against opponents who were not similarly armed.⁶⁵ In addition to mayombo sticks, other weapons, such as machetes and blunt metal-headed clubs, were used during the calenda gatherings. While Moreau de Saint-Méry described armed conflicts at calenda events as legitimate fights, he simultaneously dismissed them as a form of play associated with slave dances, void of any necessary training or potential usefulness in military combat.⁶⁶ The assemblies were not merely ritual performance activities; the sacred influence on expertise in hand-to-hand combat and non-firearm weapons gleaned from calendas was a significant contribution to success during the early phases of the Haitian Revolution uprisings.⁶⁷

Figure 3.1. “Négres Jouant au Bâton, Archive Nationales d’Outre-Mer”

Police rulings prohibited assemblies of enslaved people during the day or night, and drum playing and singing were forbidden in the wake of the Mackandal affair, but calendas were continually held in the north especially around the dates of Catholic celebrations.⁶⁸ On August 5, 1758, a plantation manager in Bois l’Anse, a section of Limonade, was fined 300 livres for allowing a calenda to take place at Habitation Carbon on July 23.⁶⁹ This calenda was held three days before the Catholic recognition of Sainte Anne and Saint James the Greater on July 25–26 in Limonade. These dates correspond to a contemporary popular pilgrimage for Sèn Jak (Saint James), the Haitian Vodou-Catholic manifestation of Ogou Feray, in Plaine du Nord just east of Limonade.⁷⁰ While Ogou (or Ogun) is the Yoruba god of war and iron, Saint James was the de facto patron saint of the Kongo Kingdom. Saint James celebrations in sixteenth-century Kongo included offerings and petitions to the saints, dancing and spirit embodiment, and decoration of the pilgrimage space. Ritual martial art performances were also witnessed in eighteenth-century Central Africa, and were often held to initiate newcomers on the Saint James feast day or prior to war.⁷¹ We might then presume that activities at the 1758 calenda were militaristic in nature, revering spirits that presided over war – Ogou and Saint James – and creating solidarity among the participants by combining the spirits of the Nagô/Yorubas and the Kongolese.

A 1785 report from the Chamber of Agriculture described the calenda and mayombo sticks as a pervasive problem that encouraged the growing hostility among the enslaved population. Cap Français was deemed to be a troublesome environment where blacks openly displayed acts of insubordination and outright animosity toward whites:

That same source made several claims of acts of aggression – a group of blacks blocked a white couple from the sidewalk along Rue Espagnole, telling them “Motherfucker, if it was one hour later, you wouldn’t dare say anything. You’d step aside yourself.” Another man chastised a group of blacks for making too much noise in front of his home and was met with the response that “the streets belonged to the king” accompanied by a large rock being thrown at him, barely missing his face.⁷³ This verbal and potential physical assault against a white person was a clear violation of colonial codes and could have resulted in the execution of the agitator. Based on these reports and what is known about the nature of calendas, we can speculate that the calendas reinforced an awareness among enslaved people that they had the capability – politically, spiritually, and militarily – to overturn Saint-Domingue’s racialized power dynamics at will. This account indicates that the open contempt toward whites from enslaved blacks in Le Cap stemmed from a sense that the city belonged to them given the population imbalance between blacks and whites, and especially at night and on the weekends when enslaved people from throughout the northern plain descended there for celebrations and to trade food at the weekly market. The diverse population of Le Cap, including the growing community of well-to-do affranchis, gens du couleur, as well as runaways from other parishes, may have signified to the enslaved that freedom, status, and power were fluid categories that could and did change quickly. The ability to congregate among themselves somewhat freely provided space to enhance oppositional consciousness and act on that consciousness in ways that countered common mores, behavioral expectations, and power structures. The ethos of these calenda gatherings involved sacred understandings of fighting and weaponry, which connected enslaved people to a range of African cultural symbols and emboldened them to disrupt the colonial order that rendered them powerless.

Maroons Mobilizing the Calenda

While most calenda participants were enslaved people, several were runaway maroons. Fugitive slaves could move about with more latitude than most enslaved laborers, which allowed them to visit different plantations or parishes and effectively recruit and mobilize participants for ritual gatherings. In 1765, a special division of the rural police was established with specific orders to eradicate marronnage and calendas, indicating authorities had some sense that the two forms of enslaved Africans’ agency were interrelated, yet the implementation of this structural constraint on ritual life did not stymie their activities.⁷⁴ Several calenda attendees, dancers, and musicians appeared in Les Affiches américaines (LAA) runaway advertisements, exemplifying an intersection between ritualism and efforts to self-liberate. In April 1766, a 25-year-old mulâtre who claimed to be free, but was owned by the Pailleterie plantation, was witnessed going from plantation to plantation in Trou under the pretense of being invited to (or inviting people to) a calenda.⁷⁵ Though the advertisement does not provide enough information about the specific conversations and actions taken by this escapee during his eight days of marronnage, it is likely that he was engaging in some form of seditious speech against slavery given his proclamations of freedom and the political, spiritual, and militaristic nature of the calendas. While most of Saint-Domingue’s mixed-race population were part of the landed gens du couleur, some were indeed enslaved, but used skin color to attempt to elevate their status in society. Conversely, this runaway used his skin color to pass as free, not to advance the political and economic interests of the gens du couleur, but to attempt to organize the bondspeople in his immediate vicinity. On September 16, 1767, an advertisement appeared for a 20–22-year-old Nagô male named Auguste with the branding “Lebon.” Auguste was described as a merchant from Le Cap who enjoyed calendas, and who used his ability to travel as a merchant to his advantage in escaping.⁷⁶ Nagôs originated from the Bight of Benin region, so this example further counters accounts by early writers that African ethnic groups intentionally segregated themselves and antagonized each other. A Kongo man named Jolicoeur was described in a June 1768 advertisement after escaping Cassaigne Lanusse’s plantation in Limbé. He was described as a good enough drummer, possibly meaning he was a key musician in ritual gatherings.⁷⁷ Another musician, named Pompée, who played the banza very well, escaped in November 1772 from Fort Dauphin and was seen near Ouanaminthe claiming to be free.⁷⁸

In April 1782, an unnamed commandeur was accused of holding night-time assemblies and spreading superstition, for which he was condemned to a public whipping before being returned to his owner:

Commandeurs were responsible for maintaining productivity and order among the atelier work gangs. They also, at times, had to bear the weight of executing punishments for transgressions, which put them in a position of authority above the enslaved laborers. The announcement described the meetings as indulgent of the superstitions of the blacks, and as providing a way for this commandeur to use his position to swindle money from believers.⁷⁹ However, this is just one of several examples of commandeurs and other relatively privileged slaves operating in collusion with the field workers. Commandeurs like the one above had two faces, one for whites and one for blacks, and likely used their relative privilege among enslaved workers to invite people from different plantations and to organize rebellious activities.

In December 1784, an advertisement was published for an escaped coachman, who may have been a calenda organizer:

Like the unnamed commandeur who held night-time gatherings in 1782, Cahouet used his relative privilege within the slave community, and his role as a coachman, to contact people on several plantations and disseminate the word about the calendas. Cahouet’s rank in the labor hierarchy may not have protected him from the typical ravages of slavery, meaning he may have sought freedom for the same reasons as other absconders. Alternatively, perhaps he felt he could be a more effective organizer if he were “underground” or off the plantation. Being of the Mesurade nation did not preclude Cahouet from taking part and having a leadership role in calendas. The evidence of ritual calenda gatherings persisted despite the May 1772 judgment banning free people of color from holding calendas, and the reiteration of this ordinance in March 1785.⁸¹ A Kongolese cook named Zamore, who escaped in July 1789, was described as a full-time drummer for the dances since he was last seen in Port-de-Paix.⁸² Jean-Pierre, a mulâtre drummer, was also a shoemaker in Le Cap used his French skills to pass as a free person of color in May 1790.⁸³

These examples demonstrate that African descendants of varying statuses (free or enslaved), race (mulâtre or black creole), occupations within the slave hierarchy (merchants, commandeurs, cooks, and coachmen), and African ethnicities (Nagô/Yoruba, Mesurade, Kongo, Mondongue) participated in what were labeled as calendas. Calenda participants, and often the leaders of those gatherings, embodied a liberation ethos by liberating themselves from enslavement. Ritual work within spaces like calenda dance gatherings built racial solidarity through identification with several African symbols that were expressions of several cultural identities. Combined with the racial boundaries of colonial structures, Africa-inspired ritual participation, and other forms of collective action like marronnage, a collective racial identity began to emerge. Runaway advertisements indicate that calendas and other Africa-inspired ritual gatherings were a constant presence in the colony and provide piecemeal data that demonstrate ritualists were among the many who escaped enslavement and acted as micromobilizers, linking enslaved people from various plantations to free space ritual gatherings. We do not have a fully accurate account of how many calendas took place in Saint-Domingue, their exact locations, exactly how many people participated, or their identities. However, accounts of calendas in the few years leading to the Haitian Revolution might be a window through which we can understand ritual gatherings as politicized free spaces.

Ritual Rebels

Maroon-organized calenda ritual gatherings spread oppositional consciousness, through the invocation of orishas, saints, and the ancestral dead; the propagation of liberatory ideas; physical preparation for armed combat; and the inclusion of various enslaved people of varying ethnic groups and rank within the plantation regime. Colonists’ fears that antagonistic sentiments among blacks would spread from cities like Le Cap into the rural areas came to fruition in 1786. On June 3, the Superior Council of Cap Français banned blacks and free people of color from participating in “mesmerism,” a pseudo-scientific trend that had taken hold in Saint-Domingue. This ban was in response to several reports of calendas occurring in banana groves at the Tremais plantation in Marmelade, a northern district dominated by enslaved Kongolese Africans on newly formed coffee plantations. Four men: Jérôme dit, or “the so-called,” Pôteau and Télémaque from M. Bellier’s plantation at l’Ilet-à-Corne near Marmelade; Jean Lodot of Sieur Mollié’s Souffriere plantation in Marmelade; and Julien, a Kongolese of the Lalanne plantation also in Marmelade, were charged with orchestrating secret assemblies that frequently drew as many as 200 participants. In addition to facing charges for organizing the outlawed gatherings, several witness testimonies asserted that the men were known for selling nkisis and performing other sacred rituals at meetings insiders called mayombo or bila.⁸⁴

Jean Lodot was known as a runaway who frequented the Souffriere plantation work gangs in Marmelade, carrying a small sack containing a crucifix, pepper, garlic, gunpowder, and pebbles. Witnesses saw him leading at least two ceremonies, including one when an overseer saw him in his hut among a small gathering kneeling in front of a table covered with a cloth and holding two candles. Jean held up “fetishes,” or unspecified ritual objects, in front of the table, which was an altar. Two machetes, crossed over each other, were laid on the ground in front of Jean. In a second meeting, participants drank a rum concoction containing pepper and garlic, which induced a sedative state from which Jean would raise them with the flat end of a machete, symbolizing participants’ death and rebirth, and connecting machetes to Africans and African descendants’ sacred world. Finally, a third witness, an enslaved man named Scipion, stated that Jean and his followers covered themselves with cane liquor, put gunpowder in their hands and lit themselves aflame.⁸⁵

Witnesses testified that Jérôme and Jean were close associates who hosted these gatherings together. On several occasions, Jean disappeared from Molliers’ plantation and sometimes he stayed on the land of Belier, who had enslaved Jérôme. Jean and Jérôme Pôteau, a man of mixed racial descent, were responsible for selling the mayombo sticks containing the maman-bila and the poto seeds – the possible source from where he assumed his surname, Pôteau. Jérôme performed demonstrations for audiences, and sold sacred objects based on demand. In his small sacks, he carried little stones, rum, a horn full of gunpowder, pieces of iron, and pieces of paper. Like Pierre Dom Pedro, Jérôme added gunpowder to the rum to stimulate participants and induce a state of excitement. For healing purposes, pepper and a white powder were combined with the rum to treat people with fevers. The red and black poto seeds helped to identify macandal poisoners and thieves.

Jérôme and Télémaque were also close associates; they had been in bondage on the same plantation from which they both eventually escaped. Belier’s neighbor, Deplas, testified that numerous assemblies occurred on this property – one of which caused such alarm that Deplas went to disrupt the meeting. He stated that Télémaque was leading the ritual assembly and upon dispersal of that gathering, Télémaque threatened Deplas’ servant saying, “you think you’re still in Gonaïves, but you will soon know the negroes of l’Ilet-à-Corne!” Deplas claimed that the servant mysteriously died the next day from a violent colic, insinuating that Télémaque’s supernatural abilities caused the death. Télémaque and Jérôme were also accused of preaching liberation and independence at the gatherings, attempting to instigate rebellion among the enslaved. A mass revolt would indeed occur five years later, but without any known contribution from the four men. In November, Jean was charged with disturbing the public and having been armed, during his marronnage, with a hunting knife, an iron stick, and a false passport so he could pass for free. His execution took place at the public market of Marmelade; the executioner strangled Jean until death ensued and exposed his body for 24 hours, then planted a small tree in the place where the body had lain. Julien was forced to attend and assist with Jean’s execution, since the two had been arrested together in October; after this, he was returned to his owner. Télémaque and Jérôme were never captured but were ultimately hung in effigy.⁸⁶

Women and Midwifery

Though there are few accounts detailing women’s roles in ritual activities, it is highly improbable that they were not present and centrally engaged as significant contributors to enslaved people’s sacred practices – especially given women’s indispensability in West and West Central African religious systems. Similar to the queen mothers of Dahomey or West Central African women like Queen Njinga and Dona Beatriz, enslaved African and African-descendant women translated cultural and religious knowledge and practices into political power “to facilitate liberation from various forces of oppression” even as they experienced marginalization in patriarchal and racialized societies (Kuumba Reference Kuumba2006: 120). Black midwives and hospitalières, or the lead medical practitioners among the enslaved population, deployed their sacred ritual skills and deeply embedded knowledge pools for medicinal purposes in ways that subverted plantation power structures. Men generally constituted the majority of the enslaved population, but women were increasingly targeted as slave trade captives in the years leading to the Haitian Revolution: West Central African men were 65.9 percent of French slave ship captives to Saint-Domingue in 1789, down from 74.9 percent in 1775.⁸⁷ Compared to creoles, and compared to men, Africa-born women were more likely to work in field gangs and did not have many opportunities for upward mobility. Mixed-race women were generally favored for domestic labor and other specialized positions.⁸⁸ However, women who were hospitalières relied on expertise in African and European healing methods to treat illnesses, injuries, and provide care for new mothers. As such, it is likely that Africa-born women with knowledge of healing methods practiced on the continent were primed for such a role. Hospitalières played a significant role on plantations that employed them; they were considered “trusted” slaves who had privilege and power.⁸⁹ Despite or perhaps due to these conditions, an Africa-born woman, Marie Catherine dit Kingué, came to be revered and feared as a powerful, dangerous threat in Saint-Domingue’s northern department.

The case of Marie Catherine Kingué is found in the papers of François Neufchâteau, the attorney general of Cap Français in the late 1780s.⁹⁰ Kingué was likely a hospitalière who performed the duties of a midwife, healer, diviner, herbalist, and supposedly a vaudoux queen. Records identify her as being 36–40 years of age and as Kongolese, having two to three marks of her homeland on her cheek below her eye. She was known to claim to be free, and this was also signified by her use of an African name, suggesting that she renounced the forced naming practice that was part of the enslavement process. Her assumed name, Kingué, might indicate that she was from Kinguélé, the seat of the KaKongo Kingdom 35–40 miles inland from the Malemba port.⁹¹ This renaming represented a self-fashioning of identity and a reclamation of personal power in a society where most African women were relegated to the lowest status; it also made her African origins – and the spirits with whom she was associated – recognizable to those who would become part of her following.⁹² Inhabitants of the area north of the Congo River were not Christianized as scholars have previously believed, so it is possible that Kingué was a victim of judicial enslavement that targeted witchcraft or “fetisheurs.”⁹³ When in Saint-Domingue, it is also possible that Marie Catherine attempted escape once; a December 1774 advertisement was placed in Le Cap for a woman named “Keingue” and a “nouveau” African man bearing a Maltese cross tattoo on his stomach and a tattoo of his country, Moinsa.⁹⁴ We do not yet have concrete evidence linking the runaway Keingue with the midwife Marie Catherine, but the possibility is compelling.

Nevertheless, by 1785 Marie Catherine Kingué was enslaved on a plantation owned by Sieur Caillon Belhumeur in Port Margot, near Le Cap, and she was known throughout Limbé and Plaisance for selling garde-corps, or nkisis. Kingue had a live-in partner and lieutenant named Polidor, also Kongolese, from the Labauche plantation in Pilate, Plaisance. Her following amassed quickly and to the extent that whites, including Belhumeur himself, were part of her clientele. Local planters sharply disparaged her in racialized and sexualized terms, describing her as a monster and a “hussy,” and those who followed her as “weak-minded imbeciles.” Several planters in Plaisance, writing to Neufchâteau in 1785, complained to Belhumeur about Marie’s activities, even going to the high courts at Le Cap. They requested a special brigade to seize her, stating that the maréchaussée – the militia of free men of color responsible for chasing runaways in the colony – and whites could not be trusted because of their reverence toward her. Named in the letter were the Chailleaus; Mr. Marsan; Mr. Vazou; Saumice; Jean and Bernard Cherisse and Pironneau – three mulâtre planters of Plaisance; a surgeon named Pudemaine; as well as trusted enslaved commandeurs who all expressed concern about her “vagrancy, superstition, charlatanism, and other criminal and dangerous acts.” Belhumeur promised to reprimand her, but planters bemoaned “il n’en a rien fait” – he did nothing. Apparently, he was paying her a monthly fee for her services.⁹⁵

From as early as 1784, Marie Catherine established a reputation for her ability to identify and cure the effects of macandal poisonings, a valuable skill for any planter worried about his or her unpaid workforce dying from poison. Accounts from his neighbors claimed that Belhumeur had overworked his slaves, causing a few of them to die. Rather than accept overwork as the cause of death, he consulted Kingué to find out if the slaves had been poisoned and to locate the perpetrators. She “did a certain sleight of hand,” or performed a ritual in front of Belhumeur and told him of an alleged conspiracy in his house. Documents also allege that Belhumeur proceeded to torture and kill the accused poisoners without a trial.⁹⁶ In another instance, Kingué was called to assist a pregnant woman who was sick and who had possibly had been poisoned; upon birthing, a dead snake emerged instead of a baby.⁹⁷ Other letters indicated that performances such as delivering a dead snake inspired Africans to revere Kingué as a god who had the power to kill and resurrect, and to heal all kinds of diseases. In addition to earning money by selling garde-corps or nkisis for 10 to 12 gourdes, Kingué amassed spiritual power and notoriety in the neighborhoods of Plaisance. One letter expressed anxiety that, “everyone wanted to consult her experience … the fanaticism … became to a point that the greatest disorder would arise in the work gangs.”⁹⁸ A fourth anonymous letter, dated October 7, 1785, seems to suggest that Marie gathered one hundred men from a work gang and incited them to prepare to revolt against their owner. Marie Catherine also used her power to silence her detractors. When she performed rituals on the Marsan plantation, her former initiates Jean, Bernand Cherice, and Pironneau were threatened from testifying against her. Another woman who was witness to Kingué was alledgedly tormented before she could speak out. On the Chailleau plantation, she had accused the first commandeur of being a poisoner.⁹⁹

Though Marie’s actions of helping Belhumeur to identify poisoners may have served to help maintain the workforce on plantations, her spiritual assistance to enslaved people aimed to provide them with health and care. Ultimately, Marie Kingué dealt directly with matters of life and death: childbirth, healing the afflicted from poison, and, if the accounts of her position as a vaudoux queen were true, summoning sacred power from the non-physical world. Her abilities and reputation raised her profile among the enslaved communities – and whites – of Port Margot, Limbé, and Plaisance. Planters felt that any such form of power exhibited by an enslaved person, especially a woman, would override white male authority and potentially lead to a revolt against the hierarchical nature of society. Despite enslavers’ gender biases about black women’s power, the enslaved people whom she served would have recognized Kingué’s sacred authority as normative. Marie Kingué seems to have been either a Kongolese nganga, a kitomi of the Mbumba tradition, or part of the Mpemba midwifery movement originated by a woman with special techniques and powers.¹⁰⁰ One wonders what larger spiritual significance the snake would have for Kingué’s Kongolese followers, since the snake spirit Mbumba was associated with Jesus Christ and “decentralized and democratized power.”¹⁰¹ The symbolism of these events hints at why Kingué was seen as a god who facilitated the birth of a Christ-like spirit which, to her followers, may have represented the coming of a new polity.

Women like Brigitte Mackandal and Marie Catherine Kingué demonstrated the “radical implications of black women’s spiritual politics” by embracing acts of “woman-centered preservation,” such as poison, healing, and midwifery, that fundamentally opposed racial capitalist exploitation of black women’s bodies (Sweeney Reference Sweeney, Jenkins and Leroy2021: 56, 68). Midwives such as Kingué were seen as necessary evils that were required to help enslaved women reach their fullest reproductive capabilities in order to grow the enslaved population. They had some flexibility in the slave hierarchy, but were often demonized and accused of infanticide by using herbs to spread mal de mâchoire, a tetanus-like disease that locked a child’s jaw and affected their ability to ingest food.¹⁰² The hysteria may or may not have been valid, given that infanticide was a gendered form of resistance throughout the Americas – some women preferred not to see another child brought into the horrors of enslavement and therefore took matters into their own hands.¹⁰³ A midwife named Arada on the Fleuriau plantation in Cul-de-Sac, where poisonings occurred in 1776, was put in a rope collar with 70 knots representing the number of children she had been accused of killing. In 1786, a midwife owned by Madame Dumoranay was suspected to have been the source of high infant mortality, yet no concrete evidence against her was presented.¹⁰⁴

Whether the midwives deliberately caused mal de mâchoire as a way of protesting forced breeding, or the disease was an unintentional result of unsanitary conditions, the women undoubtedly relied on African-based technologies and often gave counsel to European doctors.¹⁰⁵ Midwives’ role in the plantation hierarchy made them valuable and privileged, but racial and gendered oppression (undoubtedly including sexual exploitation) made them a target. Several midwives escaped enslavement altogether, including a 55-year-old creole midwife named Zabeth who escaped from the Duconge plantation in Port-de-Paix. Zabeth fled on January 10, 1786 after being accused of killing over 30 infants and 11 other children who all suffered from the same disease.¹⁰⁶ In October 1778, a mulâtresse named Manon was announced to have escaped six weeks before. It was suspected that she left a Limonade plantation for the house of Dame Couttin in Le Cap where she trained in midwifery.¹⁰⁷ A Kongolese woman named Lise was the midwife for her plantation owner in Le Cap and escaped in 1784.¹⁰⁸ Though not a midwife, another Kongolese woman escaped from Saint Marc. In the colony, she was known as Diane, but her African name was Ougan-daga, which may be connected to the ouangas that were discovered in the Mackandal trial and became outlawed in post-revolution Saint-Domingue, suggesting that Diane was proficient in Kongolese ritual technologies.¹⁰⁹ As the gender imbalance came to parity approaching the Haitian Revolution, we begin to see women more prominently in gendered roles such as midwives and ritualists. The case of Marie Catherine Kingué and other maroon midwives establishes a precedent for understanding women like Cécile Fatiman – the vaudoux queen who presided over the Bwa Kayman ceremony just days before the Haitian Revolution uprising – and, more broadly, the ways black women leveraged their cultural and religious practices to advance liberation struggles.

Gender

One of the widest imbalances among the maroon population was that of gender. Men over the age of 16 were the majority of runaways, accounting for nearly 80 percent of the 12,857 individuals described in the newspaper advertisements as shown in Table 4.1. Men were the largest proportion of the early transAtlantic slave trade captives and the enslaved population of the French colonies, but sex ratios were almost even leading up to the Haitian Revolution.³ Still, men were slightly over-represented in the distribution of the enslaved population, accounting for their high proportion among runaways. Men were also more likely to occupy artisanal labor positions that allowed them a certain amount of latitude during the workday. As will be discussed below, coopers, carpenters, shoemakers, fishermen, and other artisans ran errands, apprenticed and were leased by their owner to other plantations, or hired themselves out to earn their own money. As such, men could take advantage of quotidian labor-related tasks to escape without immediate detection. African men probably adapted to acquiring these proto-industrial work skills since, in several African societies, particularly the Loango and Angola coast regions, women performed agricultural work. For example, male captives in Portuguese-controlled Angola rejected agriculture-based slavery – seeing it as demeaning to their masculinity – and fled in response.⁴ Therefore, it is possible that African men who were field workers in Saint-Domingue were more likely to escape as a masculinist rejection of “women’s work.”

Conversely, enslaved African women in Saint-Domingue were over-represented as field workers and performed the most physically taxing jobs. While creole and mixed-race enslaved women were likely to be artisanal laborers or were found in the domestic sphere, most Africa-born women were under strict surveillance throughout the workday and therefore did not have as much flexibility to travel beyond the plantation.⁵ There is a disproportionately low number of women reflected in the runaway advertisements, with women representing only 14.45 percent of the reported runaways. Some historians (Gautier Reference Gautier1985; Fick Reference Fick1990; Moitt Reference Moitt2001; Thompson Reference Thompson2006; Blackburn Reference Blackburn2011) postulate that women were more likely to commit petit marronnage, and though planters did not report these missing cases, women acted as bridges between plantations and communities of escaped people and helped to create the mobilization structures necessary for organizing the Haitian Revolution. Conventional ideas about women’s marronnage also suggest that child-rearing responsibilities precluded many of them from taking the risk involved with escape on a permanent basis. Additionally, creole women were more likely than their male counterparts to receive legal manumission, often resulting from bearing a child biologically connected to white slavers due to mostly involuntary sexual relations. But, when we explore women’s resistance and look at their escape strategies, we see that some women did commit marronnage and at times did so with their children in tow. Some women who took flight were accompanied by young children, and 30 women escaped while with child.

We do not know much about the experience of childhood in Saint-Domingue, however it is important to note that black children below the age of 16 were enslaved and escaped bondage, either with a parent or another adult but sometimes alone. Gender patterns in marronnage among children generally mirrored those of adults (Table 4.1). Male children escaped over twice as often as female children: 3.98 percent compared to 1.68 percent, respectively. Plantation inventories show that boys tended to begin work around age eight, tending animals, working as domestics, or working in the field. Girls worked as nurses, domestics, and field hands.⁶ But Moreau de Saint-Méry observed that creole girls tended to have children at an early age, as young as 11 or 13, which temporarily delayed their entry into the workforce until after their first child was born.⁷ Adult women were slightly more likely than men to run away in a heterogeneous maroon group – 16.5 percent compared to 14.7 percent respectively – (Table 4.3) and this is probably because of those who escaped with their children such as the case of Nanette, a Monbal woman, her creole daughter Marie, and one-month old grand-daughter from the Raar plantation.

Thinking about women and children, and the ways in which enslaved women’s reproductive capabilities birthed hereditary racial slavery and hierarchies of racial capitalism (Morgan Reference Morgan2018) can give us an indication of the familial ties that existed between Africans and creoles, including bi-racial mulâtres. When African women’s children fathered by African or creole men were born in the colony, the children were called creole nègres, or blacks, which automatically inserted racial difference between mothers and children where there may have otherwise been a previously existing ethnic similarity. Creole women’s children were similarly black, but when an African or creole woman’s child was a product of coerced sexual encounters with white men, the children were born bi-racial mulâtres. If a creole black woman had a child with a mulâtre, then the child was a two-thirds black griffe. Less common were quarterons, those who were one-quarter black. Therefore, when enslaved women reproduced, their children usually were described as being of a different race. For example, Genevieve, a mulâtresse, who escaped with her daughter Bonne, a quarteronne in March 1786, were categorized differently based on phenotype and parentage.⁸ Different ethnic or racial identifiers did not inherently signify separation between enslaved people, who were likely related to an African person, given their overwhelming representation among bondspeople. Though women and girls were not highly represented as maroons, their rates of social network ties to family, a plantation-based relationship, or contact with other runaways or free people of color during marronnage were slightly higher than their male counterparts. Thus, enslaved women were indeed deeply connected within the landscape of the enslaved, marooned, and freed people of African descent (Table 4.11). Analysis of marronnage, as this chapter will show, is a way to highlight the nature of those interactions that can begin to complicate the ways we understand how race, ethnicity, and solidarity functioned at the micro-level in a colonial society that was stratified and fragmented by race, gender, occupation, and status, then became an independent nation where blackness was the primary qualifier for citizenship.

Race and Ethnicity

A significant intervention that this chapter, and this book, seeks to make is to disrupt not only the idea that enslaved people were “socially dead” without meaningful interpersonal relationships among other things, but the notion that differentiation and contention characterized and overdetermined the relationships that indeed existed among people of African descent. Early observers and subsequent scholarship regard maroons, slaves, Africans, creoles, mixed-race people, and free people of color as disparate categories of actors who were singularly self-interested and self-segregated. They also describe an internal hierarchy in which creoles occupied a higher status and carried an attitude of superiority toward recently arrived Africans, even though many creoles and mixed-race people shared kinship with older Africans. Moreau de Saint-Méry’s accounts, as well as those from the priest Jean-Baptiste Labat in the early eighteenth century, describe the enslaved population as a group divided by labor tasks and according to skin color, ethnicity, language, and religion. Indeed, the runaway advertisements themselves attest to the vast diversity of the enslaved population, over half of which were adults born in Africa representing over 100 “ethnicities.”⁹ These ethnic delineations were usually specified in the advertisements, but may not have been entirely historically accurate due to the imprecise nature of European–American slave trading documents. Some African captives were labeled based on the port from which they were shipped like the Capelaous (Cape Lahou), while others were based on broad coastal regions like the “Congos.”¹⁰ However inaccurate these labels might be, they represent the closest identifiers presently available to help us understand African origins.

There were 3,122 black creole runaways in the advertisements, so they comprised 24.3 percent of the runaway population (Table 4.2). This is a slight under-representation with respect to their number among enslaved people, which was closer to 33 percent (one-third), likely due to the possibility of gaining freedom through other means. Though a relatively rare occurrence, enslaved creoles could purchase manumission with their labor, and men could join the military and maréchaussée fugitive slave police. Duty in the armed forces was a way for colonial authorities to co-opt marronnage, creating an option for legal emancipation. Similarly, mixed-race people described as mulâtres, griffes, and quarterons were few in number among runaways, since as a group they were more likely to be gens du couleur libres rather than enslaved. However, these findings nuance understandings of Saint-Domingue’s free population of color by demonstrating that not all mixed-race people were privileged by their white fathers’ wealth. The sample was comprised of 4.2 percent mulâtres, 1.1 percent griffes, and 0.3 percent quarterons, meaning over 5 percent of runaways had some degree of white admixture in their lineage. Several advertisements do not describe the runaway’s race or ethnicity at all, but only include the person’s name and the name of the planter. Though we can assume that the runaway was a person of African descent, it is not entirely possible to accurately gauge the person’s racial category – or their geographic origins in Africa – without this information.

Continent-born Africans comprised approximately 62 percent of the runaway population and well over half of these were West Central Africans, which corroborates other historical data that indicate they were the majority regional group in late eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue. The most numerous of these were generally labelled as “Congo” (hereafter Kongo) without further specification.¹¹ Most French slave trading in this region was at the ports of Malemba and Cabinda on the Loango Coast, while Kongolese captives from Angola, where the Portuguese had long-standing relations and control, were filtered north by the Vili traders.¹² But, since the region was comprised of several independently operating kingdoms, such as Loango and KaKongo, there are yet unanswered questions as to the true origins of those described as “Congo” in Saint-Domingue. Despite the mislabeling of most Kongos, there were also significant numbers of West Central Africans like the Mondongues, Mayombés, and Mossoundis from the Loango Coast interior. Only eight ‘Angoles’ and sixteen Congo-Francs were listed, both groups that originated from Angola, providing evidence, albeit thin, of the small presence of Kongo Kingdom captives.¹³

Although they were the ethnic majority of the enslaved population in the early eighteenth century, by mid-century Bight of Benin natives were a distant second-place African group in Saint-Domingue, comprising 8.9 percent of runaways. Both Nagôs and Aradas were groups conquered by the Dahomey Kingdom, which actively captured and traded slaves along what was referred to as the “Slave Coast.” Though some members of the Dahomey Kingdom did become enslaved due to warfare, only three runaways were described with terminology specifically referencing the kingdom – Dahomet or Dahomey. Nagôs, also referred to as Yorubas in other parts of the Atlantic world, were the largest number of Bight of Benin Africans, with 432 people in the sample. Aradas were the next largest Bight of Benin group, accounting for 372 runaway persons; they were also called by their linguistic grouping of “Fon,” but only 27 Fon absconders appear in the advertisements. There were more Tiambas/Chambas than Fon – 119 – making them an important but less considered component of the Slave Coast population.¹⁴ Natives of the Senegambian/Upper Guinea region were the third largest regional group, totalling 5.2 percent of reported runaways. The Mandingues were the highest number of Senegambians, with 212 runaways, followed by 179 Bambaras and 143 Wolofs. Biafrans comprised 3.1 percent of the sample, and most of these were Igbos. The much smaller numbers of Bibi and Moco were Bantu-language speakers who were exported from Biafran ports.¹⁵ Most southeastern Africans were from Mozambique, where the French had begun trading in the 1770s.¹⁶

Africans from the Gold Coast, Windward Coast, and Sierra Leone were the least represented among runaways – even fewer than southeastern Africans from Madagascar and Mozambique, who numbered 1.3 percent of reported runaways. There were 153 Minas in the sample, making them the largest group of Gold Coast Africans. One hundred and two Cangas were in the sample, making them half of the number of Windward Coast natives. Sierra Leoneans, from a neighboring region to Senegambia, included Sosos, Mendes, and Timbous. Together, Sierra Leoneans made up 0.5 percent of the sample, the smallest number of runaways. Newly imported Africans, whose ethnicity was not yet logged, routinely escaped from ports or plantations before they underwent “seasoning.” Since they were not fully integrated into the plantation system, these runaways were simply referred to as nouveau in the advertisements. Nouveau fugitives would have been conspicuous, having just disembarked a slave ship – perhaps without clothing but with chains binding their necks, feet, and wrists. Still, they made up 3.1 percent of the runaway population, the same as the number of Biafrans represented in the sample.

Saint-Domingue’s enslaved population was diverse according to the ways slave traders and colonial social norms categorized individuals in terms of race, ethnicity, and birthplace. However, these markers of identity were not discrete categories that separated people from one another – for example, one could simultaneously be a mixed-race person or creole born in the Americas to an Africa-born woman. The categories that whites imposed were often unstable and an imprecise reflection of captives’ self-defined identities or their interpersonal relationships. The claims of writers like Moreau de Saint-Méry and Jean-Baptiste Labat, that enslaved creoles segregated themselves from Africans, harken to the false distinctions that late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Spanish colonists made between ladinos and bozales to attempt to predict and control one group’s propensity to escape and rebel over the other. These efforts to reify the differences between enslaved creoles and Africans were not based on actual cultural, linguistic, regional, political, or religious differences, but were mechanisms of obfuscating the conditions of enslavement and bondspeople’s inherent opposition to it. As the Spanish colonists found, and as the analysis of runaway advertisements below demonstrates, colony-born bondspeople were not significantly more or less likely to rebel than were Africans of various backgrounds, and in many cases they did so in concert.

Collective Identity: Homogeneous Group Escapes

Homogeneous group escapes among Africans were more common than not. Homogeneous escapes were significantly more common among West Central Africans, especially those labeled with the generic “Kongo” identity – at 31.87 percent – since they were the largest African ethnic group in the colony. Other ethnicities similarly escaped with their kith and kin, probably because they were freshly arrived from the slave ports and were most familiar with each other. Hausas escaped with each other at a high rate as well: 33.72 percent. Nearly 39 percent of Côte d’Or, or Gold Coast, Africans escaped together. Sosos also escaped together at a rate of 29.8 percent; and 27.45 percent of Cangas group escapes were homogenous. This type of identity cohesion may have contributed to developing effective means for escaping, such as: six Nagô men and three Nagô women who escaped in 1786; six “new” Aradas – Hillas, Alexandre, Antoine, Content, Colas, and Tu Me Quitteras – who fled on January 17, 1776; eight “new” Mondongues, who were reported missing for several months in October 1769; the seven Soso (Sierra Leone) runaways in 1787; or the five Igbo absconders in 1788.²⁰

The label of “new” was also used in cases where the runaways’ ethnicity was not yet known because the captives had not yet been fully integrated into the plantation system. The two women and six men described as “new” who escaped the Defontaine plantation at Gonaïves were not assigned names nor were their ethnicities detailed, but we can assume that they were from the same background.²¹ Runaways whose ethnic identity was unknown because they were new to the colony were most likely to escape together, since they escaped immediately after arrival. Sixty-seven per cent of group escapes among nouveau Africans were with other nouveaus, further demonstrating that shipmate relationships were sustained beyond the ports.

Black creoles had the easiest time finding other creoles to escape with, since 21 percent of creoles’ group escapes were homogeneous. In September 1775, a group of three creole women, Judith, Marie-Jeanne, and Nannette, and six creole men, Apollon, Jerome, Tony, Hercule, Achille, and Polydor, escaped the Fillion plantation at Boucan-Richard in Gros Morne.²² Sully, Thelemaque, Jean-Pierre, Manuel, and Therese were all creoles who left Haut du Cap in February 1786.²³ Among Saint-Domingue-born enslaved people, black creole runaways were most numerous, and thus took advantage of those numbers and their cultural dexterity (if they were born to African parents) to escape with other creoles, Africans, or mixed-race individuals (see Tables 4.5 and 4.6).

Racial Solidarity: Heterogeneous Group Escapes

One of the largest group escapes was a heterogeneous band of 22 Africans who escaped the Duquesné plantation at Borgne in October 1789. Three of the 22 were Mondongues: Rampour, Barraquette, and Pantin; eight were Kongos: Abraham, Midi, Nicolas, Theodore, Emeron, Telemaque, and two women named Printemps and Catherine; three were Minas: Pyrame and two women Thisbe and Henriette; five were Igbos: Alexandre, Victor, Hipolite, Agenor, and Luron; one was a Senegambian woman named Agathe; one was a Bambara man named La Garde; and one was a creole woman named Poussiniere.²⁴ Another large group of 19 Africans fled Petite Anse in 1773. Their group included three Kongolese people: Tobie, Lubin, and a woman named Barbe; four Aradas: Blaise, Jean-Baptiste, Timba, and a woman named Grand-Agnes; a Nagô man named Toussaint; and eleven creoles: three women named Louison, Fanchette, and Catherine, and eight men named Foelician, Laurent, Christophe, Jean-Jacques, Joseph, Hubert, Baptiste and Louis.²⁵ These types of heterogeneous group escape were particularly diverse, considering that they were composed of people from vastly different regions. African runaways usually formed groups based on shared regional background, language, or religion. For example, Kongos and Mondongues seem to have been a common combination since they both were KiKongo speakers; as were Nagôs and Aradas, who shared religious commonalities and a common enemy, the Dahomeans. Similarly, Bambaras and “Senegalais” (Senegambians) were a common pairing, such as the group of a group of two Bambaras and two Senegambians who escaped together in December 1783, since they originated from a similar region in Africa and perhaps also shared the Islamic faith.²⁶

Overall, heterogeneous group escapes were more frequent among Africans than African descendant creoles. Bambaras’ heterogeneous escape rate was 26.82 percent, for Poulards (Fulbe or Fulani) it was 34.21 percent, Minas had heterogeneous group escapes 28.1 percent of the time, Thiambas escaped 26.05 percent of the time with others, and Aguias had the highest rates of heterogeneous escapes with 41.67 percent (Table 4.6). None of these groups had substantial numbers, and therefore may have collaborated with others out of necessity, since comrades from the same ethnicity were not readily available. But, black creoles absconded in heterogeneous groups more than other Saint-Domingue-born people at 15.3 percent (Table 4.5). An example of an heterogeneous group escape of Saint-Domingue-born runaways comprised three mulâtre men – François, Baptiste, and Catherine – and six creole counterparts: Haphie, Zabeth, and Cecile, all women, and three men Codio, Gracia, Hypolite.²⁷ In a separate case, three young women, Marguerite, aged 17, Barbe, aged 15, and Marie-Jeanne, aged 16 were all creoles who brought a four-month-old griffe baby with them during their escape from Gros-Morne.²⁸ Another group was composed of two mulâtresses named Marinette and Labonne, two creole women, Marie-Noel and Lalue, and a creole man, S. Pierre, who escaped the Piis property in Dondon in November 1785.²⁹ A fourth example in 1789 shows that a group of 16 absconders was composed of creole women, men, and children, and one Nagô woman.³⁰ Mulâtres had the second-lowest homogeneous group escape rate, at 3.9 percent, and the second-highest heterogeneous group escape, at 14.4 percent. This is likely because mulâtre children were taken with their Africa-born or colony-born creole mothers, or other family members. Similarly, griffes probably had immediate family members of a different race, making their group escapes inherently multi-racial at a rate of 12.5 percent. Quarterons were not very numerous as enslaved people or as runaways, resulting in them escaping by themselves 79.1 percent of the time and in either heterogeneous or homogeneous groups less frequently. “West” and “East” Indians had the highest level of individual escape, at 88.7 percent, and the lowest group escape rates, 11.3 percent altogether, due to their low population numbers.

Gender and Birth Origin

Compared to Africans, Saint-Domingue-born African descendants were more than 10 percent likely to use family ties, and more than three times as likely to seek old plantation connections to aid their escape (Table 4.11). Creoles were born and socialized in the colony, had more familial relationships, and had more knowledge of the colony’s landscape. Conventional notions that labor hierarchies followed the logic of the colony’s racial stratum leads many to believe that Saint-Domingue-born creoles were preferred over Africans for artisanal labor positions. However, Africans and Atlantic creoles were more likely to have an artisanal trade than Saint-Dominguans; were more than twice as likely to flee to Santo Domingo; and were more than twice as likely to have been harbored by other maroons or free people of color. Perhaps constant movement and migration were normalized among those who were foreign to Saint-Domingue, having been brought from either Africa or other parts of the Caribbean.

The relationship between gender and social network ties does not prove that women escaped in all-female groups as has been suggested;⁴¹ however, it does demonstrate that social networks and mutual aid more generally were an important aspect in women’s patterns of escape (Table 4.12). For example, an Ibo woman named Dauphine escaped as a maroon, taking with her a 13-year-old bi-racial girl named Gabrielle in order to return the child to her mother and siblings.⁴² When adult women runaways who had some sort of destination in mind stole away from plantations, they were more likely than men to have either a family relationship, a plantation-based relationship, or contact with other runaways or free people of color. Twenty-three year old Reine escaped Port-au-Prince, possibly heading to Grande-Rivière where she had a sister who was free.⁴³ Women fugitives were slightly less likely than men to escape to Santo Domingo, since women relied more on their social capital and relationships to abscond.⁴⁴ In keeping with plantations’ gendered divisions of labor, men were more likely to use their artisanal labor as an exit strategy, exploiting travel for errands, market days, or going to other plantations as leased labor as a window of opportunity for escape.

Labor

Enslaved people performed a variety of tasks associated with the sugar, coffee, and indigo plantation regimes, and they experienced varying levels of physical exertion, punishment, position, and privilege. The vast majority were field hands, but a select few were artisanal trade laborers or otherwise domestic workers who performed tasks that were specialized, which often allowed them to travel beyond their immediate plantation to run errands, or at times even learn to read and/or write a European language. These differentials within the enslaved labor pool might indicate a stratification by occupation that would preclude cooperation between field hands and artisanal laborers or incentivize enslaved artisans from escaping at all. However, over 1,600 maroons, or 12.7 percent of the sample (Table 4.9), were described as having a labor-related skill, and according to the Marronnage dans le Monde Atlantique database, 683 distinct métiers or jobs are found in the advertisements. Seamstresses, midwives, fishermen, hairdressers, shoemakers, carpenters, valets, coopers, sugar boilers, coaches, and commandeurs were just a few of occupations that were considered to have a higher rank in the enslaved labor force. These people would have had relative flexibility in their everyday lives compared to bondspeople, whose labor was confined to the plantation fields (Table 4.9). Though they were still enslaved, artisanal bondspeople in more populated urban areas had contact with people of varying walks of life and saw parts of the colony they may not have otherwise seen. Women tended to be seamstresses, hairdressers, and vendors. Merancienne, a creole woman from Martinique, was a seamstress and laundress who fled Le Cap in September of 1767, and was last seen selling eggs and poultry.⁴⁵ Another female vendor was 18-year-old Isidore of Kongo, who sold herbs and flowers on the streets of Le Cap and escaped repeatedly in 1770 and 1772.⁴⁶ Baptiste, a creole man, was both a hairdresser and a violin player who wore a blue vest and black culottes, signifying his relative privilege.⁴⁷ Even commandeurs, members of the enslaved labor force responsible for maintaining order among the work gangs, escaped their bondage. Scipion, an Arada bondsman, also served as a mason for his owner and ran away for the second time in the fall of 1779.⁴⁸

Literacy in European languages dominant in the Atlantic world was another skill and form of human capital that facilitated escape. Reading and writing capabilities would have allowed fugitives to legibly forge free papers. Spoken fluency could allow runaways to present themselves to others as free persons of color whose native home was either Saint-Domingue or another colony. For example, runaways speaking Dutch or English could potentially head to a nearby port to board a ship. Thom, a quarteron from Saint Christopher, escaped in July 1788 and was believed to have “liaisons with the English.”⁴⁹ Marie-Rose, a 14- to 16-year-old girl, spoke very good Dutch and was suspected of hiding out at the coast of Le Cap with a cook who used various alias names.⁵⁰ An unnamed mulâtre from Guadeloupe spoke French very well and used this knowledge to pass for free in Léogâne.⁵¹ Simon, a creole, spoke both French and Spanish, indicating that he may have passed for free in Saint-Domingue or crossed the border into Santo Domingo.⁵² Besides artisanal labor positions, linguistic skills were one of the only forms of human capital afforded to enslaved people, since most did not have access to formal education or other tools that could be translated to economic or political power. Therefore, runaways made use of the resources most readily available to them in the colonial context, including language and their social relationships.

Family and Plantation Ties

Altogether, runaways who sought out known family ties and old plantations comprised 2.2 percent of the sample (Table 4.9). It was not uncommon for enslaved people to have immediate family members who offered them refuge. Though some women attained manumission through their owners, children of these relationships were not always freed. For example, a mixed-race woman named Magdelaine sought out her free mother, Suzanne, in Cap Français.⁵³ Jean-Baptiste was a creole runaway who had escaped for 15 months, possibly reaching his family of free people of color living in Port-de-Paix, where he was born.⁵⁴ Other instances show that family members who were still enslaved also provided shelter, even if only for a temporary visit, for their kin. The parents of Phaëton were based on a plantation in Trou when he absconded to find them; and Venus was suspected to have found her mother, who lived in Port-Margot.⁵⁵ Plantations, especially larger ones with several housing units, could be places of refuge for runaways who were either temporary absentees or lying in wait for a fellow absconder. Père Labat claimed there was a sense of loyalty and cooperation between enslaved people and runaways, detailing the double closets slaves constructed in their cabins to conceal a friend or to hide stolen goods.⁵⁶ Desirée, a Mondongue, belonged to the Charron plantation in Acul, yet it was suspected that for some time she had been staying at the Caignet plantation, also in Acul.⁵⁷ Jean-Baptiste, a dark-skinned creole “having traits of a white” had escaped for more than 15 months, and the advertisement states he was born in Port-de-Paix, where nearly all of his family was free.⁵⁸

Chosen kin ties were also strong, perhaps forged during the Middle Passage, and prompted people to seek out comrades from whom they had been separated. Isidore, a 22-year-old Kongolese stamped T. MILLET and G. ANSE, representing Sieur Millet of the Grand Anse region in the south, stole a canoe that was later found in Petite-Anse in the north. Millet had sold several slaves to the Balan plantation and it was suspected that Isidore was trying to rejoin them.⁵⁹ For some, being sold to an especially punitive planter could be reason enough to seek out a previous owner who was relatively benevolent. Such “master exchanges” existed in the Loango Coast areas, when mistreated enslaved people offered themselves to new owners.⁶⁰ As James Sweet has pointed out, a 16- or 17-year-old Kongolese boy named Cupidon had been missing from his owner for six months, and it was believed he was in his old master’s neighborhood; another 17-year-old boy from the Kongo, Julien, escaped heading to Fort Dauphin, hoping to be reclaimed by his first owner.⁶¹ Godparentage was another example of fictive kin relationships that supported marronnage, such as the case of Marie-Louise, also called Marie-Magdeleine, who left Eaux de Boynes and may have reached Le Cap where her godmother lived at the women’s religious house.⁶² Enslaved people used their family relationships to facilitate marronnage; conversely it also stands to reason that they used marronnage to sustain their familial relationships. Despite the practice of slaveowners selling bondspeople to plantations across the colony and away from their familiars, enslaved people and maroons risked their lives to actively nurture their kin relationships and to aid each other in their attempts to self-liberate. Another potential advantage for escapees was having a connection to free people of color or an established maroon community, since these groups could offer protection, housing, and resources like food, clothing, or arms.

Santo Domingo and Free Communities

Interestingly, escaping to Spanish Santo Domingo and seeking out other communities of runaways or free people of color were the least common destinations – each accounting for only 0.62 percent of the sample observations (Table 4.9). The low reporting of runaways fleeing to Santo Domingo and to self-liberated encampments contrasts with several complaints from planters and accounts by former maréchaussée leaders that attest to the presence of absconders both in Saint-Domingue and across the eastern border. Military sources also indicated that Saint-Dominguan runaways settled in Santo Domingo and married locals.⁶³ This could have been the case with Cupidon and Bernard, both Kongolese men who had disappeared ten years before 1787; Jacques, a Mondongue, who was missing for five years; and l’Eveille, an Igbo man missing for two years. The advertisement speculates that they were in Santo Domingo because the four men had not been seen at all since they escaped.⁶⁴ Others traversed into Santo Domingo to trade with or work for the Spanish, such as Gillot, who was considered very dangerous because he stole horses and mules, then sold them to the Spanish.⁶⁵ A Mondongue woman named Franchette had been at large for three years and was known for her business dealings with the Spanish.⁶⁶ French planters’ concerns about runaways to Santo Domingo will be discussed in more depth in Chapter 6.

Free people of color provided refuge to runaways as well, although they risked losing their freedom for doing so, such as Hercule who was sold to the king of France in March 1768.⁶⁷ The neighborhood of Petit Guinée in Cap Français was a regular destination for runaways to find housing, lease themselves out for pay, and blend in with the growing population of free people of color. While many free people of color were wealthy slave owners themselves, manumitted slaves of the affranchi class maintained biological and social ties to enslaved people and at times offered them shelter, food, clothing, or work. In June 1786, an absconder named Toussaint, along with a group of slaves and free blacks, was accused of theft. Toussaint was flogged and hanged in the public square of Le Cap, and the others were whipped and sentenced to the chain gang for forging free passes and taking up rental rooms for a freeman named Larose.⁶⁸ Marie-Jeanne, a creole woman who disguised herself as a man, escaped from Petit Saint-Louis on March 5, 1788 and was presumed to have been sheltered by free people of color; and in 1771, eight men and two women from the Fessard plantation in the Black mountains were suspected of hiding with free people of color.⁶⁹ Four runaways of the Nagô nation – a man named Jean and three women named Rosalie, Jeanneton, and Marie – fled a Petite-Anse plantation with their work tools and other essential items and were suspected of being concealed by other slaves or free people of color.⁷⁰ A Kongo woman named Zaire was suspected of escaping with a woman from another plantation, as they had escaped around the same time. Zaïre was believed to have been staying in either Limonade, Trou, or Terrier Rouge, where free people of color may have been hiding her.⁷¹ These examples not only indicate the existence of collaboration between enslaved people and maroons, they also highlight the role of some free people of color in aiding efforts for liberation – even at the expense of their own interests.

Passing as Free

Though the Code Noir allowed unmarried slave owners to marry bondswomen and manumit them and their resulting children, most enslaved people in Saint-Domingue had few options for formal emancipation from slavery – even when the law was on their side. For example, a group of six mulâtres were scheduled for manumission by their owner, and soon after his death they parted from the plantation. Unbeknownst to them, he had not actually freed them and they were still considered fugitives. Four of the men were returned, but one woman and her children remained at large. She won her freedom in court, but it was later revoked and the women were re-enslaved.³ For many, freedom dreams could only be fulfilled through marronnage – even though Saint-Domingue’s intendent declared in 1767 that maroons would never be formally recognized as free – maroons embodied liberated identities regardless of legal recognition.⁴ Henriette, a Kongolese woman around 30 years old, escaped her owner in Le Cap during the night in mid-November 1771. Henriette was described as a thin woman with an elongated chin and was noted for her work as a good seamstress, laundress, and ironer. The advertisement placed for her return could not definitively state whether she left as a maroon on the 14th or 15th, meaning that Henriette had effectively slipped away without her absence being detected for at least two days. However, by the time the advertisement was published in Les Affiches américaines two weeks later on November 30, the contact person on the advertisement – Sieur Trutou, a hat maker from Le Cap – had begun to speculate that Henriette was presenting herself as a free woman of color.⁵ Given her expertise in sewing and cleaning clothes, Henriette indeed may have been able to create outfits to adorn herself in a similar style to Saint-Domingue’s free women of color, who were famed for their fashion sense, and to blend into that group as she set out as a self-liberated woman.

The repertoire tactics of marronnage were actions that people knew how use and were feasible given the confines of the context in which they lived. Enslaved people’s awareness of the free population, and its political, economic, and social influence in Saint-Domingue, was part of the societal context within which maroons inserted themselves as liberated people. The most common way fugitives embodied oppositional consciousness and countered colonial era codes was to blend into the population of free people of color, at times by replicating documents or verbally attesting to their non-slave status. Of the total runaway population, 576 people, nearly 5 percent of runaways, either replicated or took free papers, disguised themselves as a free person of color, or took extended liberties with their billets or “tickets,” which were written slips that allowed an individual enslaved person to travel with their enslaver’s permission (Table 5.1). Many advertisements used the phrase “se disant libre” – calls themselves free – to indicate that fugitives were self-presenting or telling people that they were a free person of color. Any enslaved person who pretended to be free but could not produce an eyewitness to verify their emancipation could be fined 3,000 livres and punished by a sentence of three months in prison; and anyone caught in public after eleven o’clock at night would receive 15 whip lashes.⁶ Yet these punishments did not deter maroons from reimagining their status in order to reinforce a sense of dignity, self-respect, and liberation.

Enslaved women like Henriette were much more likely than men to choose attempting to pass as free as a marronnage tactic (Table 5.2). David Geggus attributes the differences in gender and birth origin in passing for free as linked to free people of color and the notion that lighter-skinned women had an easier time blending with free women. Creole women, especially those who were domestic laborers, may have had better access to writing materials and the plantation owners’ files to replicate or take tickets or passes. For example, a creole woman named Rosette had already been missing for three months when an advertisement for her disappearance was published on November 23, 1771. Rosette had lived in France with her owner for ten years and, upon returning to Saint-Domingue, decided to free herself and to articulate her status as such.⁷ The economic power of free women of color in Le Cap and Port-au-Prince would have been an attractive and attainable achievement for a woman like Rosette, whose long-term residence in France would have deepened her cultural competency and language skills, which would have allowed her to become a member, on her own terms, of the gens du couleur. On the other hand, Africanity bore its own relation to freedom pursuits. Clarice, a 45-year-old Arada woman, took her ten-year-old creole daughter as she fled their owner in Port-au-Prince during the winter of 1790. The advertisement announcing their marronnage specified that Clarice had “the marks of her country,” or cultural scarifications, and that her unnamed daughter also had a scar on her upper eyelids. Neither of them had been stamped by their owner in Saint-Domingue, but Clarice did bear the stamp of the ship that transported her from the Bight of Benin to the Caribbean.⁸ The advertisement’s composer highlighted Clarice and her daughter’s scars not just to identify them, but to differentiate them as African, which presumably put them at a disadvantage in the French colony. However, we might consider Clarice’s scars as part of a Fon-based cultural heritage that would have informed her self-declared freedom. If Clarice was born around 1745, the Dahomean-Oyo conflicts were likely part of the context of her adulthood and increasingly shaped her worldview as she and others faced the instability of freedom at the Bight of Benin.

The gendered dimension of passing for free in marronnage, combined with the fact that enslaved women were more likely to be manumitted by their owners than enslaved men, means that even as enslaved women reclaimed their freedom, they in some ways conceptualized freedom within the boundaries of the colony’s legal frameworks. The constrained possibilities for freedom shaped the imagination of what could be actualized. However, enslaved men were also structurally privy to avenues to emancipation through service to the maréchaussée – the police force primarily composed of freemen of color tasked with chasing fugitive runaways – and through self-purchase using funds saved from artisanal trade work. Despite the prominence of free women of color in the port cities, for women passing as free at times meant traversing gender identity and assuming masculinity. For example, a creole woman named Helene from the Paterson plantation called herself free and was described as “disguising herself often as a man,” as did a Kongo woman named Esther who fled disguised as a man.⁹ Similarly, an advertisement posted on August 15, 1789 announced the escape of a creole woman named Victoire, who fled as a maroon from a Grande-Riviere de Jacmel plantation three years earlier and was often seen frequenting the areas between Jacmel and Léogâne. Victoire was described as a beautiful 40-year-old – which may be part of the reason she chose to belie her attractiveness by disguising herself as a man and wearing the uniform of the maréchaussée.¹⁰ For Victoire, the audaciousness of marronnage not only meant assuming the appearance of a member of the free people of color class; it also entailed performing militarized maleness, which was seemingly effective since she was able to avoid capture for three years.

Saint-Domingue-born creoles were more likely (though not considerably so) than Africans and other Atlantic creoles to pass as free (Table 5.3). This is probably because enslaved people from Saint-Domingue were likely to have had closer proximity to the necessary tools to accomplish this aim – such as European language literacy, a trade, or household wares like clothing and writing materials. However, though other Atlantic creoles may not have been fully accustomed to the French language and Saint-Domingue’s landscape, several Caribbean-born runaways seem to have had the advantage of speaking, reading, or writing the dominant languages of the Atlantic world and they used these capabilities to move fluidly from enslavement to self-fashioned freedom. Marc, a bi-racial creole man from Martinique, was a cook who escaped wearing a blue frock coat and his hair in a ponytail. The advertisement stated that Marc was very “clever” and was perhaps carrying a fake ticket to attest to his freedom.¹¹ Emmanuel was a maroon described as a “creole of the Spanish islands,” who had a slim figure, was missing two of his front teeth, and wore a short beard. Emmanuel had escaped his owner in Le Cap on more than one occasion. The first time, he was arrested with several others from the same plantation and they were placed in the jail at Saint Marc. The second time Emmanuel escaped, between the end of October and the first of November 1779, seems to have been the last time he was officially seen: he took his clothes and was passing as free near Fort Dauphin. Emmanuel was also described as speaking English, Dutch, and Spanish, which would have allowed him to traverse into Santo Domingo undetected as a free black man. Language seems to have facilitated his passage into freedom – two years after the first advertisement was published, he had still not been found.¹²

Other cases problematize the question of who had access to self-fashioned freedom that was legible in Saint-Domingue; those born in the Caribbean were not the only ones who were exposed to a wide array of cultural, religious, and linguistic practices. Catherine was a laundress born in the Kongo, who may have experienced relations with Portuguese colonists, traders, and enslavers while in her homeland. When she escaped her owner in Dondon, she set out “calling herself Portuguese, or sometimes Swedish, knowing how to speak Spanish.”¹³ We do not know the nature of Catherine’s familiarity with the Portuguese and the Spanish – it is possible that she was transported to the Caribbean on ships owned by either country – but what is clear is that she used her experiences from the Middle Passage to her advantage. Similarly, Jean, a wigmaker by trade who also was born in the Kongo, was described as calling himself creole since his good French and little Spanish made him “able to play the role of a free negro by his intelligence.” His owners also suspected that Jean had taken several pieces of gold with him as he escaped.¹⁴

Appropriating Material Goods and Technologies

Not only was enslaved labor exploited for no compensation, enslaved people were prohibited from financially benefitting from other types of economic activity such as trading food, sugarcane, or other commodities. To counter being dispossessed of any economic autonomy, maroons gravitated to cities and town markets to participate in “market marronnage” (Sweeney Reference Sweeney2019). Enslaved people in the areas surrounding Cap Français were exposed to many of the luxuries available in the city, which attracted people from all walks of life, especially during the weekend markets. Urban slaves, African, and mixed-race individuals alike purchased their own freedom and in some instances went on to own businesses and real estate. The Petit Guinée (“Little Africa”) neighborhood was composed of gens du couleur and affranchis and was a magnet for runaways, enabling them to socialize and rent rooms as they re-fashioned their lives as free people. During a search of Petit Guinée in the early 1780s, police found over 200 runaways.¹⁵ Le Cap was a rowdy city of 20,000, patrolled by fewer than 20 police officers – leading to the 1785 Chamber of Agriculture report about calendas and other gatherings of slaves (see Chapter 3).¹⁶ In June 1786, colonial authorities flogged and hanged a group of maroons, enslaved people, and free blacks accused of theft in the public square of Le Cap; they whipped and sentenced others to the chain gang for forging free passes and renting rooms from a freeman named Larose.¹⁷ On the night of January 15, 1785, the group had entered the room of a free mulâtress named Catherine and stole furniture and other effects. Included in the court statement were François, an enslaved man who belonged to a free woman named Jeannette; Colas, a slave; Bijou; Alexandre; Jean-Louis, an enslaved Kongolese; Versailles; Jean Louis, an enslaved Mondongue; Anne; Sieur Masse; Hypolite; Cesar, an enslaved mattress maker; Toussaint, a maroon who formerly was enslaved by the free widow Jupiter; and Jean-Louis, a creole wigmaker.¹⁸

The complex strata of race, color, status, and class in Le Cap made these kinds of informal economic activities possible. The population density of the city and the ongoing interactions between enslaved people, free people of color, and runaways facilitated connections between them to circumvent colonial structures through rebellions, conspiracies, and other forms of resistance. Both enslaved people and maroons took part in informal trading of wares and illicit expropriation of resources to bolster a sense of economic independence and freedom. People of African descent attempted to demonstrate economic autonomy and accumulate various amounts of capital, even when it cost them their lives to do so. In January 1775, three men in Le Cap – Joseph Lacroix, who worked as clerk for Sieur Foäche, and two enslaved men named Jolicœur and David – were arrested for breaking into Foäche’s safe and stealing 70,000 livres. While Jolicœur and David were returned to their enslavers, Lacroix received a harsher sentence, death by hanging in the marketplace, since he used his key to enter Foäche’s house.¹⁹ Mardy, a Kongo man, was convicted in 1784 of burglarizing and assassinating his enslaver, for which he was disemboweled on the breaking wheel torture device and decapitated. The authorities exposed his head on a pike at Fossette, outside Le Cap, where enslaved people typically performed their burial rites.²⁰ Two enslaved men and one woman sawed a hole in a white man’s home in Limbé and stole merchandise, an offense for which they were executed in 1786.²¹ A creole man named Cezar, owned by a Capuchin priest, was accused of trafficking enslaved women and men from Gonaïves and attempting to make money from the sales, which was a violation of the 1758 Le Cap ruling. After the discovery of Cezar’s plan, he was condemned to death by hanging; also prosecuted were the proprietor who rented him a room and the free people of color who replicated Cezar’s free papers.²²

Maroons also appropriated resources that could be considered forms of capital that could allow them to participate in the market for trade, or enable them to use materials for subsistence farming and consumption within self-liberated communities. Although many enslaved people attempted to escape spontaneously when they viewed an immediate window of opportunity, others planned their journey as carefully as possible. Careful deliberation was necessary to avoid capture and to reach a chosen destination. Food, money, clothing, or horses – which the enslaved were prohibited from riding – were necessary for survival or to expedite the escape, and over 400 runaways appropriated such items during marronnage. Africans and other Atlantic creoles were over 7 percent more likely to steal items and provisions in order to escape than those born in Saint-Domingue (Table 5.3). In addition to taking flight in boats and canoes to navigate Saint-Domingue’s waterways, maroons also took horses as either a means of transportation or to sell as livestock. Marie-Louise, a ‘Sénégaloise woman,’ and Prince, a Bambara man, fled as maroons from Terrier-Rouge and stole a red horse from a plantation in Trou as they made their escape.²³ Another couple, an unnamed woman and man, escaped Le Cap on a horse as they headed to Jean Rabel.²⁴

A work gang commandeur named Petit-Jean fled a Port-à-Piment plantation on horseback after taking possession of three to four thousand livres worth of gold and clothing that allowed him to pass as free.²⁵ Twenty-five-year-old Azor of the Mondongue nation was a maroon suspected of conspiring with other blacks to steal a chest full of silver, jewelry, handkerchiefs and other articles, and a wallet containing various papers.²⁶ Some runaways seized opportunities to take items that were not necessarily directly needed for survival but may have served a purpose that was more significant – though difficult to discern. Free papers and replicated passes may not have been the only documents of interest to fugitives: for example, a creole man named Andre escaped with an unnamed woman who had been charged with fleeing the prison of Le Cap, taking with them papers belonging to the manager of the Damare plantation.²⁷ Many runaways embodied more than one oppositional action, appropriating plantation materials and arming themselves. For example, Pierre, a creole of Gros-Morne, left as a maroon with a horse, 600 livres, guns, a machete, and was wearing the jacket of his owner Adam Courier.²⁸ Several advertisements were published over the course of four years for a Mozambican runaway named Nérestan, who escaped more than once between 1786 and 1790 and was seen wielding a large machete and claiming to be free. Nérestan had taken refuge among enslaved people from several sugar plantations around Matheux, who brought him stolen goods in exchange for rum that he bought from local drink stands.²⁹

Bearing Arms

Enslaved people were barred from carrying weapons in the colony but did so routinely, for instance, carrying mayombo fighting sticks at calenda ritual gatherings or when they were attempting to free themselves. They used work tools such as machetes and sickles, or stole pistols, hunting rifles, and swords as they faced the imminent danger of their journey. This type of hardware was familiar, or at least suitable, to Africans from regions where hand-to-hand combat was most common in warfare. Africans used swords, battleaxes, spears, firearms like muskets, and poison-laced arrows in their fighting styles and would have made effective use of available tools and weapons as maroons and rebels (Thornton Reference Thompson1999). Sixty-four absconders, mostly Africans and other Atlantic creoles, prepared themselves by illegally carrying some sort of weapon like a gun or a machete, and were considered armed and dangerous (Tables 5.1 and 5.3). La Fortune, an Arada commandeur, was believed to be armed with a machete when he escaped a Marmelade plantation in on July 1, 1790.³⁷ In May 1790, four African men from the “Maquoua” nation, Alerte, Adonis, Azor, and Polite, escaped the Mongirard plantation at l’Islet-a-Pierre-Joseph with guns, pistols, gunpowder, lead and other materials.³⁸ Two creoles, Cambray and Charlot, escaped carrying a sword and a machete.³⁹ Jannitte, a creole man, had escaped for two months in 1767 with a gun, a machete, and other effects.⁴⁰ Pierre Baillard escaped in January 1775 with a machete and two knives.⁴¹ In February 1773, an entire group of armed runaways escaped Quarter Morin in the north: four men, Joseph, Belair, l’Africain, Theodore, and three women, Catherine, Colette, and Leonore; they were all Aradas and each took with them their sickles and hatchets.⁴²

Long-Term Escapes

An important insight the advertisements provide is the approximate length of time the runaways had been missing, which allows us to determine runaways’ relative success at absconding. Out of the 12,857 runaways listed in Les Affiches, 9,888 of them were described as having evaded escape for a particular period of time, which I measured in weeks, without being captured and jailed then returned to the plantation (Table 5.4). The average escape length was nine weeks, or approximately two months. The median was only three weeks, meaning most advertisements were placed less than one month after a person’s disappearance; some advertisements were posted as soon as within the same week. Still, these figures help to distinguish petit marronnage – or temporary truancy from grand marronnage – the intent to permanently escape. The other half of runaways observed escaped for more than one month, which is longer than the few days of absenteeism typically associated with petit marronnage. Five percent of the observations, or 494 runaways, had been missing for 30 weeks, or over six months. Of these, 99 runaways had been missing for over two years. Genevieve, a 30-year-old creole woman, and her two griffe sons Françoise and Paule, had the longest reported escapes – 780 weeks or 15 years.⁴³ Longer lengths of escape clearly indicated a desire to live as a free person, however defined, away from plantation enslavement. Some of these escapees fled to Santo Domingo and intermarried, some found maroon communities in the mountains, and others passed for free in Saint-Domingue’s urban towns.

In addition to openly assaulting their owners and taking their property, the enslaved increasingly sought permanent refuge from the plantation system altogether. The histogram in Figure 5.1 shows a gradual increase in escape lengths over time, proving an escalation of grand marronnage leading up to the Haitian Revolution. The rapid increase of the enslaved population after 1783 also signaled a steady increase of length of runaways’ escapes reported in Les Affiches américaines; more runaways were reported missing for months and sometimes years. People were becoming knowledgeable about how to escape and were applying that knowledge to their freedom treks. A limitation to our understanding of grand marronnage and runaways’ length of escapes is the issue of underreporting. Plantation managers often failed to mention issues of marronnage to planters who lived abroad, likely to avoid questions about mishandling of the enslaved workforce.⁴⁴ While private inventories and other records may indicate that plantations were missing laborers, these runaways do not always show up in Les Affiches advertisements.

For example, a 1775 inventory of the largest of the Galliffet sugar plantations, Grande Place, indicates there were seven people at large: François, a mulâtre missing since 1749; Augustin, age 57, Samuel, 60, and Andre Igbo, 53, all missing for “a very long time;” Mingo age 54; and Mathieu age 53 and Neptune dit Anga, 35, were both missing for four years. Eight years later, a 1783 inventory of the same plantation shows that Samuel, Andre, Mingo, François, Mathieu, and Neptune were still fugitives, or at most they may have been de facto affranchis who were colloquially referred to as libres de savanne. Others mentioned in this list had also committed grand marronnage: Paul, age 33, was missing since September 9, 1775 and Marie-Françoise, griffe, since 1749. The 1783 inventory for Habitation Desplantes, another Galliffet property, shows that Michel, a 45-year-old Kongolese man, had been “en marronnage” for a long time, as well as Alexandre, 26, who escaped in 1778. In the 1786 inventory for Grand Place, Blaise was added to the list of maroons. He was 32 and escaped on September 10, 1784, during a trip to the hospital. It seems that he was probably subsequently captured because, with the exception of Blaise, the original ten Grande Place and Desplantes runaways were still listed as maroons in January 1791.⁴⁵ This case serves as an example of the fact that some plantation managers and owners simply gave up looking for runaways with any real earnest, allowing fugitives to make out on their own for years at a time, potentially having children and reproducing, and forming self-contained maroon communities or passing for free in nearby towns.

Besides plantation managers’ negligence, other factors like group escapes, maroons’ destinations, and their oppositional actions contributed to the ability of individuals to successfully escape. The differences in average lengths of escape between individual maroons and homogeneous and heterogeneous group escapes were not that large (Table 5.5). However, heterogeneous group escapes yielded a slightly longer length of escape of 9.8 weeks. This shows that racial solidarity and the various skills and forms of knowledge runaways carried with them were important resources that contributed to a slightly above-average length of escape. When looking at the average length of escape between runaways using neighborhood ties or journeys to other destinations – family, labor sites, former plantations, Spanish territory, and other fugitives – there was only a statistically significant difference in escape durations between labor/skills and the Spanish territory in facilitating escape (Table 5.6). The difference between them was 21 weeks: labor/skills contributed to an average of 10.6 weeks of escape, whereas those who escaped to Santo Domingo had an average of 31.86 weeks of escape. Thus, on average, runaways who decided to flee Saint-Domingue altogether, though a rarity, were the most “successful” runaways. The second most successful plan was to be harbored at other plantations, runaways hiding at plantations in the living quarters of their comrades had an average of 15.68 weeks of escape. Having family connections and linkages to other runaways had similar success rates of contributing to an average of approximately 14.3 weeks of escape.

The duration of escape for runaways who were passing for free was well above the average for the entire sample, which was 9.03 weeks (Table 5.4), meaning that passing as free oppositional action that contributed to a longer length of escape – 22.8 weeks (Table 5.7). This is a testament to the existence of the modicum of social fluidity in Saint-Domingue that allowed a minority of enslaved people, particularly Saint-Domingue-born creoles, to change their social status from maroon to de facto free person of color. A distant second most influential oppositional action was repeated escape, which led to an average of 8.74 weeks of relative freedom. Though enslaved people who attempted to free themselves repeatedly probably learned new tactics with each unsuccessful escape, their durations of escape were still below average for the entire sample. Similarly, the appropriation of goods and bearing of arms – actions that Africans, Atlantic creoles, and young boys most commonly took – did not result in an above-average duration of escape, which suggests they were less than effective means of escape.

While most runaways were reported within a short window of time, fugitives were slowly beginning to find ways to be more successful at escape. Increasingly, enslaved people were leaving plantations for months and years, rather than days or weeks, at a time. There was a steady increase in the number of outlier durations between the years 1783 and 1786, with advertisements for 416 and 572-week long escapes appearing. Additionally, heterogeneous group escapes were also becoming more frequent, showing that there was a slowly increasing sense of racial solidarity among the enslaved population. The skills, information, and experience shared by individuals from diverse backgrounds was valuable knowledge to add to their marronnage repertoire toolkit. The longest recorded length of maroon escape, 780 weeks or 15 years, was advertised in the year 1789, the same year that saw the largest group escape, composed of 22 runaways who were from widely different birth origins – Kongo, Igbo, Senegambian, Bambara, and creole. This supports the finding that heterogeneous group escapes contributed to a slightly above-average duration of escape (Table 5.5). Before the colonial situation, these groups probably would never have encountered each other on the African continent, but conditions in Saint-Domingue prompted them to interact in work arrangements, living quarters, familial units, and ritual gatherings, forging relationships across cultural, geographic, and linguistic boundaries. For example, Chapter 8 discusses another group of Kongolese, Mina, and creole maroons established an independent living zone on a coffee plantation in Cayes de Jacmel, hiding in plain sight for more than three years without detection.

Repeat Escapes

Fifty-eight runaways were noted to have escaped then were returned on more than one occasion – an offense that could have resulted in whipping, branding with the fleur-de-lys, mutilation of ears or other body parts, or execution. Advertisements were placed for perpetual maroons – people who were captured after an initial escape then ran away again. For example, A Kongolese man escaped in October of 1774 and was quickly captured by the maréchaussée, but then escaped again the following December.⁴⁶ Another Kongolese man named Chaudiere escaped, then was imprisoned for one month, then escaped again after being taken back to Jérémie.⁴⁷ Although repeat escapees constituted only 0.45 percent of the sample, women were more likely than men to be repeat runaways. Other examples of repeat runaways come from plantation records, including a creole woman named Zabeth, who in 1768, left a Léogâne sugar plantation manager exasperated at her constant escapes. Zabeth took every opportunity to sneak away – she feigned illness and promptly attempted to steal another woman’s clothes so she could run away. After being caught in the act, she promised not to take flight again, but did shortly thereafter. When it was realized that she was legitimately sick, Zabeth was sent to a plantation infirmary; yet she took off again once the manager sent her another change of clothes. She fled twice more, both times after having been chained up and and becoming ill nearly to the point of death.

In May 1774, the same planter who owned Zabeth, Madame du Fort, sent a group from a sugar plantation in Léogâne to her coffee plantation in Abricots. During the exchange, the coffee plantation manager wrote to her indicating that three people escaped – Jasmin Barbe-Blanche, his wife Nanette, and a younger man named Marquis. It was suspected that they went to Cayemittes and advertisements were placed for them at Jérémie and Tiburon. A month after their escape, all three were discovered to be in jail in Jérémie. Soon after being returned to du Fort’s manager, Jasmin ran away again. This time he did not make it far, due to starvation and sickness. Before Jasmin died in late September, he admitted that he was familiar with the Grande Anse area and planned to pay another black man with a silver cufflink to take him across a river. Despite the hardship Jasmin endured, Marquis still ventured to run away again in October. He had stolen chickens belonging to other blacks and used for subsistence, presumably to sell them for himself.⁴⁸

Some runaway advertisements were published multiple times and across different publications. The Gazette de Saint Domingue and Courrier Nationale de Saint Domingue carried a small number of the same notices that were placed in Les Affiches américaines. Repeated advertisements were not counted in the current dataset for quantitative analysis; however, their frequency has qualitative implications regarding the length of time runaways escaped, or those who were captured then escaped again after their return. For example, Jasmin, a 25- to 26-year-old Kongo man was reported as a runaway on January 18, 1783, one week later on January 25, then again four weeks later on February 22, suggesting that he avoided capture for at least one month.⁴⁹ Advertisements for Victoire, a creole woman, ran on July 15, 1789, July 22, and July 29.⁵⁰ Over time, Les Affiches runaway advertisements seem to have run repeatedly with increasing frequency, especially as the Haitian Revolution drew nearer. Out of 798 advertisements placed in the year 1790, over 300 of them had been repeats of previously published advertisements. On the other hand, there were only 11 repeated advertisements for the years 1766 through 1768 combined. It seems that reporting became more negligent because the number of repeated advertisements increased alongside the growing number of Africans imported to Saint-Domingue.

The Timing of Marronnage

Part of runaways’ strategy in escaping was to deliberately time their flight to align with windows of opportunity when there would be less attention paid to the goings on of the enslaved population. Weekends, holidays, and natural disasters created enough distractions for absconders to slip away without detection. Colonial planters allowed enslaved people to have leave from work to attend parties on Christmas, Easter, New Year, and other Catholic celebrations. Temporary absenteeism after these events was expected, either due to dalliances with romantic partners or a long weekend stay at a different plantation’s party. Planters kept track of who was missing at their end-of-year account books but were measured in giving out punishments for escapes during the holiday seasons. Analysis of the runaway advertisements shows that escapes were most frequent during high summer months and least frequent at the end of the year. Overall, the 25th, 29th, and 30th weeks of the year saw the highest numbers of reported runaways, overlapping with June 20–26, July 18–24, and July 25–July 31, respectively. Higher productivity on plantations may have contributed to an uptick in marronnage during the summer, since harsh weather made hard labor unbearable. Other Catholic festivities during those weeks were for Saint Jean-Baptiste in Trou and Jean-Rabel (June 24); Sainte Marguerite in Port-Margot (July 20); Saint James the Greater (July 25); Sainte Anne in l’Anse-a-Veau (July 26); Saint Pierre in Limbé (July 29); and Sainte Marthe in Marmelade (July 29). In addition to being moments of distraction for plantation personnel, these locally celebrated holidays would also have been gathering times for enslaved people to partake in their sacred rituals and, as I argued in Chapter 3, to enhance oppositional consciousness and influence marronnage through seditious speech about freedom and liberation.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Many runaways were attracted to the bustling city of Cap Français, in part because the significant presence of free people of color created social spaces where formerly enslaved people could blend in and live as self-freed individuals. Neighborhoods like Haut-du-Cap, Providence, Petit-Carenage, and Petite-Guinée or “Little Guinea,” a section of town with a significant enslaved and free black population, appear frequently in the Les Affiches advertisements as suspected havens for runaways living in Le Cap. Le Cap attracted runaways in large numbers: between October 1790 and August 1791 alone, 122 runaways were suspected of hiding somewhere in Le Cap, and authorities captured over 500 runaways in the city and its surrounding areas.⁷ Escapees with an artisanal trade, or who were perceived as having a lighter skin complexion, had an advantage in self-fashioning their freedom. Though men escaped to Le Cap as well, the city was the singularly significant destination for maroon women.

Unlike enslaved men who traveled as valets, fishermen, or carpenters, women often did not venture beyond plantations for work-related tasks. Women were not as familiar with the colony’s landscape, in part accounting for their lower numbers as maroons. Instead, some women maroons fled into urban areas where they could participate in formal and informal commercial activities as “market maroons.” They bought and sold provisions, goods, and services, which allowed them economic autonomy and “their own insurgent geographies, fashioning an infrastructure of black freedom … where they took up public space, created networks, and forged community.” Free women of color were already known as entrepreneurs in Port-au-Prince and especially in Le Cap; that maroon women sought to assimilate into these social, geographic and economic spaces “was an open challenge to the racialized and gendered logics of slavery” that mandated enslaved women exclusively perform agricultural and reproductive labor.⁸ For example, Marianne, a 23-year-old mixed-race woman, was well known as a vendor at the Le Cap market selling fish, herbs, milk, and fruit.⁹ An unnamed Mina woman was often seen around the plantations of Haut-du-Cap selling bread.¹⁰ The Haut-du-Cap neighborhood also harbored an unnamed Arada woman who had been hiding there for nearly a month.¹¹ Rosie of the Aguia nation used her language skills in Dutch, English, and Spanish to pass as a free woman and possibly marketed herself as a broker or trader alongside other free women of color at Le Cap.¹²

Maroons also fled their enslavers from within Cap Français at a high rate, meaning there was a circulation of people to and from the city to the mountainous rural districts. Men especially gravitated to areas like Artibonite, Léogâne, and Fort Dauphin, less-populated areas that were connected to waterways, mountains, and caverns, and could facilitate escape and informal economic activity. Places like Fort Dauphin were especially considered dangerous and difficult to access; however, these characteristics would have made for the creation of insurgent geographies as maroons organized themselves and laid claim to lands and rights. Léogâne was the home base of the rebel ritualist Dom Pedro in the 1760s, Fort Dauphin saw several conflicts between armed maroons and the maréchaussée, and Artibonite was home to smaller, self-liberated communities. Where colonists saw inaccessibility, maroons saw geographies of freedom.

Reaching the Inaccessible

Through forced labor tasks or their self-initiated journeys, Saint-Domingue’s enslaved people and runaway fugitives traversed the colony and were exposed to its vastly diverse topography, including its several mountain chains. The Taíno moniker Ayiti, and the most literal interpretation of the well-known Haitian proverb “behind the mountains are more mountains,” derived from the fact that mountain ranges cover three-fourths of the 10,714 square miles of what became Saint-Domingue-Haiti. In addition to several smaller mountain ranges in the north, in the west there are the Cahos and Montagnes Noires, and the southern mountains of Pic la Selle, the Matheux, and the Baoruco – all of which were hiding places for maroons.¹³ Two of these mountain chains exceed heights of 1,000 meters above sea level, including one in the westward-jutting southern peninsula where maroons later established the Platons Kingdom during the Haitian Revolution. The other 1,000-plus-meter mountain range occupies the island’s south-central region, Pic la Selle, sitting southeast of Port-au-Prince.¹⁴ Semi-arid savannas, lush rainforests, sinkholes and deep cave systems also characterized Saint-Domingue’s landscape. The caves were locations for Taíno ritual practice, transculturation and exchange between Taínos and Africans, and served as protective zones for runaways in transit toward maroon communities.¹⁵ Some of these sites included what is now called the Voûte à Minguet of Dondon and Bassin Zim in Hinche, Central Plateau; the Bohoc/Colladère at Pignon and St. Francique at St. Michel de l’Attalaye, both in the Central Plateau; Dubedou near Gonaïves in Artibonite; the caves of Tortuga Island; Grotte Dufour in Marmelade; the Morne Deux-Têtes Meillac at Limbé; caves at Camp-Perrin; the Moreau Cave at Port-Salut; the Grotte aux Indes at Pestel; the Grande Grotte at Port-à-Piment; and the Grotte nan Baryè in Grand Anse.¹⁶

Among the identified destinations for runaways, areas in the northern department were the most common. Besides those who went to more populated towns like Le Cap or Port-au-Prince, many runaways were last seen in Fort Dauphin, Trou, Limbé, Limonade, and Grand Rivière. With its mountain ranges and savannahs, and immediate access to both the northern coast and two major roads leading to the interior of Santo Domingo, Fort Dauphin had been the second most important city in the north and was the first to receive influxes of inhabitants when the town was known as Bayaha under Spanish rule.¹⁷ But by the eighteenth century, the French found Fort Dauphin less than optimal for a viable naval base and it was sparsely populated, apart from five potteries, rendering it a “useless” port.¹⁸ Moreau de Saint-Méry similarly described Fort Dauphin in less than flattering terms: as a “pesthole” that was dangerous and difficult to access due to overflows of river water.¹⁹ However, it was a porous site of the Saint-Domingue–Santo Domingo border, operating as an entrepôt for illegal smuggling between Monte Cristo and Le Cap, especially during the Seven Years War.²⁰ The informal economic activities of French, Spanish, Dutch, and North American traders made Fort Dauphin an attractive place for some runaways to peddle items or sell their services and find some financial independence. For example, a creole man named Étienne had passed for free for ten years since 1756 – he was not branded, spoke strong French, and had pierced ears, though his legs were scarred. Étienne was known to frequent Maribaroux and Fort Dauphin, working as a pacotille, or a vendor of various wares.²¹ A 20-year-old Kongolese woman named Zaire was described as a trader and left her owner in Le Cap, a mûlatre woman named Zabeau, headed for Fort Dauphin.²²

In the early eighteenth century, the mountainous towns east of Le Cap were renowned for the threatening presence of armed maroon bands who were known to rob and kill whites and attack plantations. According to Moreau de Saint-Méry, places with names like Piton des Nègres, Piton des Flambeaux, Piton des Ténèbres, Tête des Nègres at Môle Saint Nicolas, and Crete à Congo signified the dominance of fugitives who had occupied inaccessible places. At Trou, just south of Fort Dauphin, the name of notorious maroon rebel Polydor evoked memories of his band, murders, and the intensive effort to capture him.²³ Later, a section of Trou called Écrevisses, along with Fort Dauphin, became a popular destination for runaways and was the place where Thélémaque Canga, Noël Barochin, and Bœuf pillaged plantations and fought the maréchaussée. The mountains of Morne à Mantegre, between Grande Rivière and Limonade, had a reputation as a maroon haven since Colas Jambes Coupée’s campaigns in the early 1720s.²⁴ In the southern peninsula, the section of Grand Anse bears the name Plymouth after the maroon Plymouth who, along with his followers, destroyed plantations throughout the region and was captured in 1730.²⁵

While the northern plain was more densely populated and sprawling with closely connected plantations, the western and southern departments were less developed. Outside of Port-au-Prince, the western parishes of Artibonite, Léogâne, and Cul-de-Sac attracted the most runaways, probably because plantations were spread farther apart, and parishes sat adjacent to mountains like the Cahos and Montagnes Noires. The priest Jean-Baptiste Labat reported in the 1720s that 700 heavily armed maroons were occupying the Montagnes Noires northeast of Port-au-Prince.²⁶ Les Affiches advertisements also indicate that these mountains were places of retreat for runaways in the latter half of the century. Two men and a woman of the Ganga and Mina nations all marooned to the Montagnes Noires near Port-au-Prince.²⁷ A group of four Kongolese and one Mondongue men took haven in the Montagnes Noires – Houan (Juan) or Jean, Jean-Louis, and Jupiter escaped to join with Cesar and Louis who had already been there for some time.²⁸ Pierre-Louis, a griffe and a carpenter, hid for two months in the Grand Bois mountains in Croix-des-Bouquets, which was a site of conflict between maroons and the maréchaussée.²⁹ Above Port-au-Prince, a group of 17 unnamed maroons, described as mostly creoles, escaped a Gonaïves plantation in May 1769 and were presumed to have been hiding at Artibonite.³⁰ One unnamed Kongolese woman and ten Kongo men escaped from Artibonite and were suspected of finding haven with “other black maroons.”³¹ Télémaque, a creole from Jamaica who spoke English and “the language ordinary to the nègres,” had been in flight for nine months and was thought to be either in the Cahos mountains around Saint Marc or on the Santo Domingo side of the hills.³²

The southern parishes that most maroons fled from were Jérémie, Les Cayes, and Anse-a-Veau. Though these southern districts did not report as many runaways’ suspected destinations as northern parishes, this does not mean there were no maroon hideouts in those areas. Maroon activity was reported in Grand Anse as early as the seventeenth century prior to French rule, and bands like those led by Plymouth were hunted in the 1720s and 1730s. Since the southern department developed much more slowly than either the northern or western departments, maroons in these regions probably lived among themselves in relative peace until the rise of the mixed-race coffee planter class during the mid- to late eighteenth century. Planter Laborde learned in September 1780 that three bondsmen, Jean, Cupidon, and Jupiter, had been captured or killed during the pursuit of a maroon band residing in the mountains of Aquin.³³ Neron, an Arada man, and Cipryen, a Kongolese, had escaped for six months and were suspected to be hiding with a black man from Corail Guerineau and “several others” – other maroons presumably – in the southern Baynet mountains that separated Grande Rivière from Gris-Gris.³⁴ Just before Christmas of 1788, a Bambara woman named Françoise escaped from her owner in Cap-Tiberon and was suspected of attempting to reach an armed community near Jérémie:

The fact that Françoise spoke English suggests that she was either brought to Saint-Domingue through the intra-American slave trade from Jamaica or North America, or perhaps she learned English from ongoing interactions with English-speaking Jamaican slaves and traders near Jérémie. In any case, she was seen with a man carrying a package of linens and a sickle near Riviere des Anglais, the northern end of which heads toward the mountains between Cap Tiberon and Jérémie. A third man escaped around the same time as Françoise, but was carrying a gun and six units of gunpowder. Françoise and her unnamed companion took the road of the Hot Springs near the coves of Jérémie, where many runaways were residing. The hot spring coves in which runaways would have sought refuge may have been either the Port-Salut Moreau Cave or the Grotte nan Barye of the Grand Anse.³⁶

Letters sent in 1775 described marronnage as a pervasive problem that had the capacity to undo the colony; one contributing factor cited was the dense, nearly impenetrable mountain ranges into which the maréchaussée and other hunters attempted and often failed to pursue fugitives.³⁷ Though Saint-Domingue’s mountains were increasingly occupied by coffee plantations by the mid-eighteenth century, maroons were adept to finding locations that were isolated and difficult to access enough to avoid capture. West Central African runaways especially would have been inclined to turn to the mountains, since the highlands north and south of the Congo River were more densely populated due to the hospitable climate for farming and fishing.³⁸ Spaces that were supposed to be unreachable and uninhabitable were the very places where maroons were able to find refuge away from the reach of the plantocracy. Waterscapes were also a space that, in Europeans’ imagination, provided the means of transportation associated with trade and slaving. However, enslaved people utilized Saint Domingue’s rivers and sea-adjacent ports as routes to free themselves.

Waterways: Routes of Un/slaving

Kevin Dawson’s (Reference Dawson2018) work, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora, provides a unique lens through which we can view Africans’ and African descendants’ relationship to, knowledge of, and uses of waterways that were part of their cultural geographies. Contrary to beliefs widely purported by Europeans that Africans had water phobias or that their bones were too dense to float, continental Africans who lived along the coasts or on riverways were equipped with technical abilities to navigate waters, build and operate boats, deep dive and even surf — oftentimes with stronger proficiency than Europeans themselves. West Central Africa, the zone where most of Saint-Domingue’s African population originated, was a rainforest ecology that experienced heavy rains and had major river systems that flowed for miles from the interior to the coast, such as the Congo and Kwanza rivers. High waterfalls, whirlpools, and swamp wildlife made these rivers and their tributaries difficult for Europeans to navigate, while locals fashioned small canoes and arrows that allowed for easier fishing and hunting.³⁹ African children learned to swim, surf, and canoe at an early age, and various water sports provided opportunities for men to exhibit their bravery and masculinity. Water-based activities were not only recreational and cultural in nature; familiarity with waterscapes allowed Africans to resist the slave trade in ways other than suicide by drowning as an act of spiritual self-preservation, as associated with the Igbo.⁴⁰ In 1544, a marooned community of Angolan shipwreck survivors formed on the southern coast of São Tomé, and at the Bight of Benin, the lacustrine community Tofinuland originated from migrations of Aja-Fon speaking peoples fleeing the prolific slave trading Dahomey Kingdom‘s imperial conquests of the early eighteenth century.⁴¹

By the eighteenth century, transoceanic travel from Africa was associated with slaving activities. Few examples of Africans’ voluntary movement across the Atlantic exist; most of the millions who involuntarily voyaged on ships were captives whose collective experience constituted the Middle Passage. Over the course of three centuries, European nations refined their slave trading processes to a bureaucratic science, leveraging capital funds and insurance from privatized and state-sponsored companies, using ledger books to account for their cargo, employing a range of personnel – including sailors, surgeons, and brokers – to complete each voyage, and maintaining trading relationships at ports of each point of the “triangular trade” between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The systematic nature of the racialized slave trade nearly ensured that any black person crossing the Atlantic was destined to be enslaved in the Americas, making the ocean and other smaller waterways sites where freedom was impossible (Mustakeem Reference Mustakeem2016). Canoes and canoe-makers were critical components of fishing communities and were the fundamental means of transport that helped form commercial networks between African coastal ports and the hinterlands. Economic enterprise and cultural, social, and political developments associated with the slave trade were heavily dependent on these boatmen and their knowledge of waterways to establish trade relationships. Traveling along rivers allowed European slave traders and their African intermediaries to have greater access to communities deep in Africa’s interior, where violent raids resulted in boatloads of captives being taken to the coastal ports where they would then wait for weeks or months at a time to board a slave ship. The crisscrossing oceanic travel and commerce of European-owned slave ships made them “living, microcultural, micropolitical system[s] in motion” (Gilroy Reference Gilroy1992: 4) that transported African worldviews, mores, sensibilities, behaviors, and practices.

Less frequently, enslaved Africans were not only made into cargo occupying the bellies of slave ships, they were owned by naval and other government officers, fishermen, and large-scale traders, and spent long periods of time on the vessels’ top decks, performing a variety of tasks associated with the maintenance of the vessel. Aquatic skills gained on the continent and at sea were part of the cultural legacy enslaved Africans brought to the Americas, which was useful in a water-bound colony like Saint-Domingue. The difficulty of crossing the colony’s many mountains meant that coastal shipping and water-based movement were primary modes of transportation.⁴² Over 30 identified rivers flowed from the mountains to the coastlines, and with a wet climate and natural disasters, flooding was a common and dangerous occurrence. Some of the major river routes included Trois Rivières, which flowed south from Port-de-Paix and the Artibonite River, often referred to as Saint-Domingue’s “Nile,” that flowed nearly 60 miles east into central Santo Domingo. The colony was made up of over 800 miles of coastline, which meant that every region of Saint-Domingue touched or was close to the sea.⁴³

Having access to a body of water, such as women who bathed or washed clothing in rivers (Figure 6.3) would have made boating or swimming away from slavery a tempting possibility; runaways who were skilled swimmers had an advantage in marronnage. For example, an unnamed Mondongue man threw himself from a schooner three leagues, or about ten miles, from land and was suspected of reaching Môle Saint Nicolas, since his comrades attested that he was an excellent swimmer.⁴⁴ Enslaved people who inhabited plantations with proximity to waterways had access to small boats and canoes that they used to escape – even if they were not particularly noted for having maritime experience. Dozens of runaways listed in Les Affiches américaines and other runway advertisements were suspected of taking flight in a canot or canoe. The Gazette de Saint Domingue reported that four men and two nouveaux women of the Nagô and Arada nations banded together to escape their owner Jarossay in a fishing boat in June 1791.⁴⁵ While long-distance trade in Africa was largely conducted by men, women similarly had canoeing skills and used them to conduct local trade. Two unnamed women, one of whom was breastfeeding a two-month-old child, may have already had boating experience when they left Cayes in a canoe in December of 1767.⁴⁶

Figure 6.3. “Propriété sucrière des familles Thiverny et Fresquet à Saint-Domingue, aquarelle anonymeArchives Bordeaux Métropole, Bordeaux Fi Saint-Domingue 1”

Several runaways in Saint Domingue were canoe-makers or masons, fishermen, swimmers, or were part of the colony’s naval forces. Fugitives with maritime knowledge and experience, even those from different regional or ethnic backgrounds, could find common ground and escape together through the rivers or ports. For example, three sailors – Pierrit, a Kongolese man described as the captain, an English-speaking Nagô man named Louis, and Azor, who was also Nagô – fled Le Cap in a stolen boat over 30 feet long. It was believed they were headed to the Jacquezy neighborhood in Le Trou, a common maroon destination and hotbed for armed band activity.⁴⁷ Some maroon sailors were enslaved people sold to Saint-Domingue from other Caribbean islands, which gave them a wider understanding of inter-imperial waters. Saint-Marc, who claimed to be a freeman from Jamaica, and Jacob, who also spoke a little English, were two sailors who left in a Danish boat called The Iris.⁴⁸ Two other sailors from the Anglophone Atlantic, Robin and Guillaume, escaped Fort Dauphin in a small fishing boat, and may have taken another enslaved person with them.⁴⁹

For Europeans, waterways were highways for the commercial buying and selling of captive slaves. But for Africans, water and water-based activity facilitated trade and leisure, and in the colonial context their acquired recreational and practical skills also contributed to efforts to liberate themselves. Self-directed mobility was a scarcity for enslaved people, as were windows of opportunity to escape. Yet the vastness of Saint-Domingue’s topography, its mountains, rivers, plains, ports, sinkholes, and caves offered a number of options for seeking refuge in the act of marronnage. Also, part of this landscape was the ever-changing boundary between French Saint-Domingue and Spanish Santo Domingo. The border not only drew the political distinction between two European empires, it represented a nearly 400-mile gate to a new geographic, social, economic, and cultural scene. The contention between the two colonies and their respective royal administrators made the border more than just an imaginary line in the earth; it became a literal site of grappling between French, Spanish, African and indigenous peoples through trade, competition for land and slaves, and collaboration and resistance. The next part of this chapter will explore relations between the Spanish and the French, and the ways in which people of African descent took advantage of inter-imperial conflict and carved out social and geographic spaces for themselves as maroons.

Maroons Making the Border

Geopolitical contestations between the French and Spanish starting in mainland Europe continued to spill across the Atlantic to the island of Española and caused conflicts between colonists, as well as rifts and misunderstandings between colonists and their respective royal governments. These struggles centered on competition for land, resources, and enslaved people, whose very presence and collective actions to self-liberate further ignited and shaped inter-imperial contestations over the border, and shaped the border itself. The decrease of sugar production in Santo Domingo did not stem the desire for outputs like those occurring in Saint-Domingue, leading envious Spanish planters to take advantage of Saint-Domingue’s deadly labor regimes and harsh punishments for maroons by luring or kidnapping enslaved people from plantations during raids from the east. Spaniards attempted to drive away several planters from Bassin-Cayman, Dondon in 1741, and in 1747 they kidnapped five blacks and a plantation overseer from Marre-a-la-Roche, Dondon.⁷⁷ When Port-au-Prince was founded in 1749 and sugar production increasingly spread in its suburban areas, economic development in the areas surrounding the city and the Cul-de-Sac region pushed Saint-Domingue’s boundaries eastward, and maroons who had been in these border regions found themselves at the center of conflicts between French and Spanish authorities.⁷⁸ As in previous decades, a major concern of Saint-Domingue colonists was that enslaved Africans were continuing to take advantage of geographic proximity to the Spanish territory as a channel for escape. African Saint-Dominguans had an incentive to do so since Spanish codes held several provisions that allowed for manumission from enslavement and, at times, the establishment of free black towns such as San Lorenzo de los Negros de Minas.

In October 1751, the militia commander of Mirebalais received a substantial budget from colonial authorities to chase runaways into Santo Domingo. The commander, Bremond, had at his disposal 300 livres for every captured runaway, a high-ranking militia officer, and as many maréchaussée archers as he could pay himself.⁷⁹ According to Spanish officials, some 3,000 runaways from Saint-Domingue had escaped to Santo Domingo, or the Baoruco mountains more specifically, in 1751 alone.⁸⁰ A good number of these perhaps escaped after the earthquake on November 21 of that year that almost destroyed Port-au-Prince.⁸¹ Spanish planters likely welcomed these refugees to provide additional labor due to the lack of plantation-based economic growth in the island’s eastern regions. While Saint-Domingue’s enslaved population grew exponentially in the eighteenth century, Santo Domingo’s reached a maximum of 15,000 in 1789, a far cry from its neighbor to the west. Though there was growing industry toward the end of the century, Santo Domingo had essentially become a sparsely populated “backwater” colony of the Spanish empire.⁸² Spanish colonists’ desires for land and black workers continued to manifest as aggression over the border – they burned four plantations in Ravines-a-Mûlatres in Valière in 1757 after warning the planters to abandon the settlements.⁸³

While island-dwelling Spanish colonists irritated relations with their French neighbors, during the 1760s, the Spanish crown offered collaborative support regarding Saint-Domingue’s problem of runaways. A letter from the king of Spain on October 18, 1760, revealed that the primary cause for marronnage was the harsh treatment enacted by French planters, who had not held to their agreement to stop punishing deserters.⁸⁴ Yet, Spanish colonists again undermined Saint-Domingue’s attempts to regulate its runaway problem when on May 22, 1764, the governor of Santo Domingo, Don Manuel d’Azlor, proposed that Saint-Domingue model San Lorenzo de los Negros de Minas and build its own free settlements to house runaways.⁸⁵ Spanish attitudes toward re-settling fugitives may have incentivized more runaways from Saint Domingue, resulting in another expedition in pursuit of fugitives into the Spanish territory on August 21, 1764.⁸⁶ In February 1765, the Saint-Domingue colonial governor, Comte d’Estaing, declared a state of alert, mandating that all colonists were required to be armed at all times with guns, bayonets, gunpowder, sabers, and machetes or swords. Further, he ordered that fugitive-chasing militias would be comprised of gens du couleur and free black affranchis.⁸⁷ One year later, a treaty was established between d’Azlor and Rohan, general governor of Saint-Domingue, to return all maroons, thieves, and absent-without-leave soldiers, and to stop the sale of goods by merchants who passed through Bete à Cornes without legal right.⁸⁸ The 1766 treaty also stated that any Santo Domingo planter would be fined 50 livres for harboring fugitives or kidnapped Africans. The two colonial forces also decided to cooperate to chase maroons in the mountains.⁸⁹ This agreement suggests that despite ongoing negotiations between the two royal representatives, Spanish planters continued use Saint-Dominguan runaways as labor and as trading partners – meaning that maroons played an active role in orchestrating relations between the two colonies as they attempted to concretize and manage the border.

The Spanish and French royal and colonial governments were conjoined by shared interests in enslaving and preventing maroons from dominating areas that bordered the two colonies. Yet, their common goals did not reach the local level, where planters from Santo Domingo continued to antagonize Saint-Domingue planters over land and slaves. In 1769, Don Nicholas de Montenegro, commander of St. Raphael in Santo Domingo, renewed aggression against Saint-Domingue when he kidnapped a Dondon planter and four black captives and took them to Santo Domingo until 1771, when the planter paid a ransom to the king of Spain. Spanish planters continued to violate the 1766 agreement and stake claim to French lands in Saint-Domingue, again in the parish of Dondon. Montenegro gave a French mûlatre permission to settle in Dondon in March 1771, but 50 Spanish men arrived in May, kidnapping the plantation overseer and a black woman, then burning down several plantations. In retaliation, an armed force went into Santo Domingo and kidnapped nine blacks and an overseer without damaging any property. Negotiations to return each set of hostages ensued, and the French agreed to return portions of Dondon to the Spaniards.⁹⁰ Interestingly, over twenty years later, on the night of October 10 or 11 in 1789, nine men and four women, all Kongolese, escaped to Saint-Domingue from their owner, Montenegro, the commander of St. Raphael.⁹¹ These maroons may have been the kidnapped slaves who chose to return to Saint-Domingue, perhaps due to its familiarity or kinship ties they may have formed. In either case, these maroons and people enslaved along the border were both subjects and agents of the border’s creation.

Despite these local spats, Spanish colonial forces adhered to their earlier agreements and sent convoys into the border region to search for runaways, and the French continued to establish militias to retrieve the numerous maroons from the Spanish territory.⁹² In 1770, a group of 13 runaways from Saint Domingue were captured in the countryside along the border and then interrogated in the city of Santo Domingo. Six were from the Loango Coast, identifying as Kongo and Mondongo. Several knew their French owners, while others were recently arrived and could not speak Spanish or French. An unbranded African named Bucu did not know how long he had been in the colony because he had escaped toward the east immediately after leaving the slave ship. This indicates that the political strife over the Spanish–French border was not lost on even the most recently arrived Africans, who used the contestation to their benefit.⁹³ By 1775, some 15,000 maroons were believed to be in Santo Domingo.⁹⁴ Africans’ knowledge of the eastward haven did not go unnoticed; the French government created a commission in January 1776 to search for runaways “who passed daily into Spanish Santo Domingo,” providing compensation per fugitive recovered.⁹⁵

Some maroons who fled Saint-Domingue for Santo Domingo blended into colonial society, either farming, working for local Spanish planters, or residing in San Lorenzo de los Negros de Minas. Others joined established maroon communities who operated outside the sphere of both colonial societies and antagonized plantations in Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo. In Saint-Domingue’s western department at Béate – a small island that forms a sound with Baoruco and Anse-a-Pitre in Cayes de Jacmel – maroon bands’ attacks on plantations in the 1770s prompted a renewed struggle between the French and Spanish to defeat the maroons. The Council of Léogâne had already increased maréchaussée presence in the south in 1705, 1729, and 1741. Yet as the numbers of troops increased, so did the number of runaways. Administrators sent a detachment to Fond-Parisien in Croix-des-Bouquets on February 19, 1771, and another group was sent to Grands-Bois in Mirebalais on May 19, 1774. On February 8, 1775, there was an ordinance to build a town in Croix-des-Bouquets and a sheriff with several mounted police were assigned to Fond-Parisien, Roche-Blance, and Grand-Bois. These troops were ineffective in preventing raids from runaway bands, and on October 13, 1776, another dispatch arrived at Boucan Patate because the maroons destroyed a newly built guardhouse. Though this offensive was somewhat successful, resulting in rebel deaths between Fond-Parisien and Grand-Bois as far south as Sale Trou, maroon militaristic strategy bewildered Spanish and French forces. The colonial militias were not as adept at navigating the mountains as the maroons, who for generations had deployed the mountains as part of their geography of subversion.

Two months later, in December 1776, a full-scale collaborative offensive between the French and Spanish – numbering 180 men and costing 80,000 livres – launched from Croix-des-Bouquets against the maroons in the Baoruco mountains. But by January 1777, the expedition was struggling to enter the dense forest and was running out of energy, food, drink, and supplies; troops were even reduced to drinking their own urine in order to survive. While some retreated to Port-au-Prince for provisions, the rest went south to Cayes and sent a boat of 100 men to Béate, where Spanish guides suggested there were maroon settlements based in the caves. When the boat arrived, the maroons had temporarily disappeared. That spring, the maroons re-appeared, initiating a counter-attack at Fond-Parisien – back in Croix-des-Bouquets where the expedition had begun. The rebel bands attacked Boucan-Greffin in May 1777 and again in November 1778, this time kidnapping an enslaved domestic worker named Anne from the Coupe property. On December 15, 1778, another detachment was sent to Boucan-Greffin in Croix-des-Bouquets, where a brigade of eight archers and two corporals were lodged at Sieur Coupe’s property to protect him. While in the hands of her captives, Anne was coerced into marrying a rebel leader named Kebinda, perhaps a BaKongo man named after the port city Cabinda. However, before the nuptials started, she convinced Kebinda to take her to a church where she was recovered by Spanish officials.⁹⁶

Once divided by maroons who took up arms for the Spanish against the French, collaborations on expeditions in pursuit of maroons united the two colonial forces and pushed them to an agreement on the contours of the geopolitical landscape and the treatment of future maroons. After a year of negotiation, on June 3, 1777, Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo ratified the Treaty of Aranjuez to finally settle the geographical limits of the boundary between the two colonies. One of the central parts of that treaty concerned the treatment of maroons who abandoned Saint-Domingue for the Spanish countryside and mountain ranges. The two nations again agreed to collaborate on pursuits, since maroons were considered a threat to both colonies, and that the French would give compensation of 12 livres for returning runaways.⁹⁷ But, Saint-Dominguan runaways, and perhaps also kidnapped enslaved people, continued to disregard the agreements between the French and Spanish authorities by making new lives for themselves in Santo Domingo. In January 1778, the Intendant of Saint-Domingue suggested that there needed to be concern and consensus about the price of return for runaways who were married and living in the Spanish territory, and in the rare case that Spanish blacks were caught in Saint-Domingue as runaways, they would not be sold in the cities but kept in jails separate from other absconders.⁹⁸ Colonists’ fear of maroons from Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo possibly co-mingling indicates their conscious awareness that maroons collaborated in manipulating inter-imperial relations and persuaded each other to rebel. Over the course of three centuries, maroons forced French and Spanish colonists to expend energy, time, and resources toward finalizing the border between Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo. Colonists were ineffective at using the border to maintain separate societal spheres and control over the respective enslaved populations, and therefore turned to other policies that they hoped, incorrectly, would placate the enslaved and prevent further rebellion.

While the Spanish actively sought to expand the slave trade in its Caribbean and South American territories, they aimed to do so according to customs and codes that governed the treatment of enslaved people throughout the empire. The Code Noir was the envy of the Spanish Empire and was perceived as an important source of Saint-Domingue’s economic prosperity. In 1785, a year after the French king issued a royal decree aimed to ameliorate conditions in Saint-Domingue, the Spanish similarly issued the Carolinian Slave Code for Santo Domingo. Included the Code were provisions for learning Catholicism, the right to a small plot of land for personal cultivation, several conditions for slaves to earn their freedom, and the right to marry. In response to this new code, it seems that the number of runaways from Saint-Domingue into the east was increasing. Moreau de Saint-Méry, writing from Cayes de Jacmel, claimed that raids in this area stopped after 1785, but as Chapter 8 will explain, later incursions and conflicts with the Maniel maroons would prove this to be false.⁹⁹ In 1788, the Marquis de Najac wrote to a former governor of Saint-Domingue essentially accusing the governor of allowing the maroon problem to grow: “during your administration, over four thousand slaves fled into Spanish territory; since your departure, the Spanish hardly returned any of them, and I am convinced that there are now six thousand in the Spanish colony.”¹⁰⁰ Saint-Dominguan planters and traveling merchants also attested to growing unrest among their slaves in October 1789 because of circulating rumors that the Spanish were again giving refuge to runaways.¹⁰¹ This may reflect local interpretations of the 1789 Spanish code Royal Instructors for the Education, Trade, and Work of Slaves, which limited punishments to no more than 25 strokes of the whip and threatened punishments to owners who caused serious injury, blood loss, or mutilation.¹⁰² However, these policies were not qualitatively distinct from those that existed in Saint-Domingue, and the 1789 Real Cedula was not actually promulgated in Santo Domingo.¹⁰³ Whereas there once may have been a perception among runaways that Santo Domingo was a safer space due to its underdeveloped plantation economy, the changing circumstances in which Spain now aimed to reinvigorate its agricultural production and slave-holding practices meant that the Bourbon colony might no longer be considered a haven for Saint-Domingue’s maroons. After centuries of exploiting the border as a geography of subversion, new Spanish policies attempted to bolster Santo Domingo as a geography of containment.