From Vaudoux to Voodoo |
Moreau de St-Mery
Descourtliz
Malenfant
Drouin de Bercy
Webley
d'Alaux
Guérin
d'Hormoys
Larousse
Allain
St John
Froude
Castellanos
Prichard
Aubin
Marcelin
Niles
Wirkus
Hesketh Prichard
Chapter IV ('Vaudoux Worship and Sacrifice')(pp74-101) from Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and About Hayti (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co, 1900)
Some basic biog (from a World War I site): Major Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard (1876-1922) played a notable role in organising effective British sniping practices during the First World War. Hesketh-Prichard's background prior to war in 1914 was chiefly as a big-game hunter (and was regarded by some at the time as the world's best rifle shot), which as was often the case involved much travel. He was also a keen cricketer and played for Hampshire as a fast bowler from 1899 until 1913, the year prior to war. Hesketh-Prichard periodically appeared in print with stories of his various travels, as well as producing works of fiction ( Don Q being written in partnership with his mother, published in 1904 and filmed with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in 1925). Securing a commission in the British Army with the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 Hesketh-Prichard was given the decidedly unusual post of 'sniping expert' to the British Third Army the following year, where he worked amicably and effectively with Sir Charles Monro , the Third Army commander.
[74] Although much of the information incorporated in the following chapter was only gradually gained during the whole period of my stay in Hayti, I am giving it in an early place in this volume, because some slight knowledge of what Vaudoux really is and its influence upon its votaries is indispensable to the understanding of the condition and character of the inhabitants of the Republic.
For Vaudoux is so inextricably woven in with every side of the Haytian’s life, his politics, his religion, his outlook upon the world, his social and family relations, his prejudices and peculiarities that he cannot be judged apart from it.
The underpart of Black life is full of strange beliefs. In Hayti the nominal religion is Roman Catholicism, but it is no more than a thin veneer; beneath you find, not traces [75] merely, but a solid groundwork of West African superstition, serpent-worship, and child-sacrifice.
This last assertion may seem almost incredible, made in connection with a nation, not only living in the midst of other civilised communities, but which was itself started a century ago on the double lines of European laws and a Christian creed. Nevertheless, all those who know anything of Hayti by personal experience and residence there, know too that the fact has been amply proved over and over again.
Little is known of the Black Republic outside of her own shores, and even at home her policy is a policy of keeping dark everything humiliating to her pretensions. The national method is not to suppress these infamous crimes, but simply to deny their existence.
The evil of Vaudoux worship is widespread. The Government has, at all times, been too unstable to care to take the risk of seriously opposing so powerful a combination. The sect is universally feared, hence they carry on their rites and their orgies with practical impunity.
At the root of this outgrowth of superstition are the Papalois and Mamalois, the priests and priestesses, who minister to the naturally credulous mind of the negro. Papaloi, Mamaloi, are corruptions of ‘Papa le roi’ and ‘Mama le roi,’ the titles themselves showing the estimation in which these people are held. They dwell chiefly in the mountains. A famous priest lives on the road (save the [76] mark!) between Port-au-Prince and Jacmel; another towards Furcy; but the old iniquity who is more especially in my mind’s eye sojourns in the sierras not so far from the capital itself.
Vaudoux, according to its more elect disciplines, is an all-powerful deity, but the idea of the masses does not rise above the serpent, which represents to them their god and which presides, in its box, over all their services. These usually take place at night and in pseudo-secrecy. They consist of dancing, sacrificing, feasting, invocations, and a Delphic delirium on the part of the Mamaloi, winding up with scenes of an indescribable nature.
There are said to be two sects of Vaudoux; one which sacrifices only fruits, white cocks, and white goats to the serpent god; the other, that sinister cult referred to, whose lesser ceremonies call for the blood of a black goat, but whose advanced orgies cannot be fully carried out without the sacrifice of ‘the goat without horns’- the human child.
White is supposed to be the sacred colour of the former, red of the latter, but on one occasion I was lucky enough to witness a Vaudoux function where the flags and handkerchiefs were red and white, pointing to an intermingling of the two forms; the cocks sacrificed were both black and white, again bearing evidence in the same direction.
Testimony, as to the order of ceremonies used in [77] Vaudoux worship differs, but this is not to be wondered at, being the natural result of an unwritten ritual, practised by an utterly ignorant people. Each writer on Hayti gives the order at secondhand as described by native witnesses, and probably all are equally right as regards the instance referred to.
For my own satisfaction I noted down on my cuff the sequence of the rites as they took place before me. Of these I will give a detailed description later.
The serpent used by these fetish sectaries is generally believed to be the Macajuel, a species allied to the harmless boa. When riding in a remote country district, I met a man with a snake of this kind that he had caught. I offered him five dollars for it, which he refused. The Haytian peasant is very poor, and five dollars is for him not merely a windfall, but absolute wealth, and he would hardly have declined it without strong reason for doing so.
Sir Richard Burton speaks of the ‘small green snake of the Haytian negroes, so well known by the abominable orgies enacted before the Vaudoux King and Queen.’ To-day the green snake is extinct in the island. More than that, no white man I met would allow it ever existed, and I was almost beginning to think that Burton had for once made a mistake, when a certain old native, whom I may describe as up to the neck in Vaudoux, told me certain [78] facts which modified my conclusion. I was subsequently shown a green snake preserved in spirits.
Whether the snake enclosed in its box on the Haytian altars of to-day during a child-sacrifice is of that species or a harmless boa it is impossible to say, as no white man has ever been allowed to set eyes upon one.
Vaudoux, Juju, Obi, or some analogous superstition seems to belong to the bottom stratum of black nature. Vaudoux is a religion of old, old time. When William the Norman came to England it was not doubt flourishing amongst the African tribes of the West Coast.
With the captured slaves, whose descendants the Haytians are, it was brought to this distant island, and here it is rampant still. It raises an unshamed head in all quarters. The last president was even said to be a votary. A large place like a casino, just outside of Port-au-Prince, is devoted to its observances.
But Southern Hayti is its strongest rallying point, and Jacmel the hot-bed of its power. All along the road between the town and Port-au-Prince I know it thrives exceedingly. In the north, at Cap Haytien, on the contrary, the traces of it are slighter.
Vaudoux is cannibalism in the second stage. In the first instance a savage eats human flesh as an extreme form of triumph over an enemy; so the appetite grows until this food is preferred to any other. The next stage follows [79] naturally. The man, wishing to propitiate his god, offers him that which he himself most prizes. Add to this sacrifice the mysteries and traditions of the ages, and you have the Vaudoux of to-day.
Cannibalism has been brought as a very general accusation against the Haytians, but although there is no doubt that the child sacrificed in the worst Vaudoux rites is afterwards dismembered, cooked, and eaten, I do not think that of recent years the practice of cannibalism, unconnected with sacrifice, is in any degree prevalent, although it is equally certain that scattered instances do still come to light. The Government have been known to make feeble and spasmodic efforts to punish the culprits, but as a rule this iniquity, as well as most others, is allowed to run its course unchecked.
To quote a case or two of these judicial attempts at punishment: - A woman and her daughter, convicted red-handed at Jacmel of killing and eating a child, were mounted on asses and beaten round the town by the police with cocomacaque clubs. Afterwards they were released. Two years ago, in the northern part of the island, a party of men and women were imprisoned for a few days only for the same crime, which they indulged in as a conclusion to a Vaudoux sacrifice. But this crime is, I both believe and hope, on the decrease and may in time die out.
Not the least prominent feature of Vaudoux is the drum [80] that calls the worshippers together. One which I saw and examined was four feet high. Its frame was made of some jointed wood like bamboo, in girth it was as large as a man’s trunk. The upper surface was of black goatskin, thinned by the thrumming of many fingers, with hair still adhering to the edges where it was pegged to the frame.
This instrument is so singularly constructed that although at a distance of a mile or so it sounds loudly, near at hand its throbbing is indistinct and low.
Where the negro picked up this secret in acoustics it is hard to imagine. But the peculiarity has an important use. A sect with rites like the Vaudoux have naturally strong reasons for desiring that none but the initiated should be present at their gatherings: hence the low, misleading sound that mutters about you when the drum is played close at hand, whereas the initiated, who have warning of a sacrifice, hear the call at really wonderful distances, and at once proceed to the appointed spot.
The difficulty of following up the dull throb at close quarters is extraordinary. On several occasions I have tried to trace from the ear alone the unmistakable vibration, and have failed. There is some thrilling quality in the muffled and mysterious beat which cannot be described, but which stirs the pulse in spite of familiarity.
Hayti is the sole country with any pretence to civilisation [81] where a superstition contaminated by such active horrors exists. It would seem that the perpetuation of a cult so degrading must have its source deep in the character of the race. Yet you find that these undoubted cannibals can on occasion be both kind-hearted and hospitable. Perhaps the root of all lies in their squalid ignorance.
Then whose is the fault?
The answer must be given unhesitatingly. It is the fault of the Government. Instead of rare and futile demonstrations directed against some outlying evildoer, they should strike at the Papalois, who are the heart and mainspring of Vaudouxism [sic]. Let them destroy the Papalois, and the whole edifice of horror will crumble to pieces of natural decay.
I made it a special point while in the island to learn as much of the sect as possible, to get at the truth concerning them by personal experience, and to glean actual facts at firsthand. With this object in view, I more than once gained intelligence of the time and place appointed for the performance of Vaudoux ceremonies and sacrifices. I wanted to see for myself the mysteries of snake-worship, and by good luck I succeeded to a certain extent.
On the first of these occasions, I understood that I must find my way to a low part of the town after night had fallen. It was getting on towards midnight when the muffled reverberation of a drum beating a swift measure [82] came up out of the hot darkness; no wind stirred, and the candle-flame by the open window stood up straight and unwavering.
I descended into the evil odours of the street. I had heard it before, that droning drum music, with a scream or two at intervals, which in Hayti often beats upon the overladen pulses of the night. The town was under martial law, but passing steps were stirring up the ineffable rubbish under foot. At the corner, ‘Qui vive?’ from a soldier in the gloom, but a small coin settled the matter and I passed on.
At last the challenges died away behind me; the carpet of dirt and garbage seemed to have grown thicker below the tread: the streets were unlit even in the best quarters of the town, and therefore to keep clear of drains and arbitrary pools of slime was almost an impossibility.
Under a roof a concertina was playing to a crowd who oscillated and turned in dance measure, but the drum was calling from somewhere in the dark twist of streets beyond. Above shone the serene stars; beneath them the negro and negress followed out their scheme of life. Past booths crowded with talkers, past the vending-places of the rich, unwholesome sweetmeats and drink in coloured bottles, pausing occasionally to catch the vibration of the drum, across an open market-place frilled with an edging of empty sheds, and at length I was at the spot described to me.
[83] There was a crowd round the house, peering through a window at the doings inside. A big negro stood at the door with a cocomacaque club. There was some demur as to admittance, then the door opened and a stream of muffled drum-music and a monotonous hum of voices broke out on the ear. A hand beckoned me, and I found myself within. The shutters were closed, and it was difficult through the obscurity to make out one’s surroundings, but I felt the presence of a crowd. The song they were singing their forefathers sang two hundred years ago in the riverland of Africa.
Suddenly a negro set light to a candle, and at once the scene leapt out to meet the eye. The song ceased, but all mouths still hung upon its final note. There must have been upwards of two hundred people in two small rooms. They were ranged round the walls, those in front sitting on their haunches, leaving only a narrow passage open in the middle of the earthen floor. The faces were glistening with heat, and all eyes were turned towards the Mamaloi.
The silence was broken by an abrupt bark of the drum and the chant began again, the sitting figures swaying their shoulders to its roll. It was led by an enormous negress, wrapped in a white and purple print, who held a living cock in her spatulate black fingers – you could see the shining of her uncut nails. She sat and swayed and sang in what at last became an insistent drone of sound. It [84] was like something heard through a delirium of fever, you could not forget or escape it for an instant, and the drum drove it through the brain with blows. It neither waxed nor waned; it was merely the same, and endless.
Meantime the Mamaloi danced, back and forth, forth and back, between the knees of the worshippers. She was about forty years of age, small-faced, snub-nosed, round-eyed. She gazed past you with a rapt stare, a streak of foam lay across her chin. For covering she wore a thin white robe, tied with a red sash, and a string of gold beads gleamed about her neck. There were two candles alight now, set in pots and decked with the pink flowers of the melon. At intervals the Mamaloi stopped to sprinkle water over them, and as she did so, the song rose a little higher; but would it never end, never end? I had time to notice that the walls were ornamented with prints from the French illustrated papers. Upon how many strange scenes do those pictures look! You find them everywhere in Hayti; in the drawing rooms of the rich and in the huts of the peasantry, and now in the place used for Vaudoux rites.
The song rose suddenly in volume, a candle flickered and burnt up. Still the Mamaloi danced between the rows of knees with stealthy, menacing, tigerish steps. Her excite- [85] ment was intensifying, her eyes seemed to grow larger, but they never met yours. As she danced she cleared her throat, and spat with a noise like artillery coming into action. The huge black woman in the centre droned on, and to the drum-beat was added the chink of a key on metal. The Mamaloi quickened in her sinuous dancing. The heat was terrific; humanity sweltered there. And over all presided a portrait of the German Emperor, whose eye I seemed to catch at this juncture.
The Papaloi, a small and filthy old man, crouched at one side, as the Mamaloi caught the cock from the hands of the big woman, and, holding it by the neck, flung it over her head and shoulder. Her face was distorted with frenzy; round and round she twisted, accompanied by a swifter measure of the same dead song. She laid the cock upon the heads of the worshippers and began to whirl more and more rapidly to the hurrying, maddening drumming. Suddenly she straightened her arm, spun the cock round and round, its flapping wings beating impotently upon the air. A snowstorm of feathers floated up as she stood with rapt eyes and bared teeth, twirling: then she flung up her hand, and the headless body flew over her shoulder.
Her excitement was horrible; she pressed the bleeding neck to her lips, and, when she slowly withdrew her hand, stood for an instant fixed and immovable, her lips and teeth stained red. Then she began to run up and down [86] screaming; at last she staggered and fell, and, with the torn neck of the sacrifice still in her hand, rolled in under the feet of the worshippers, while the song boiled over her.
In the interval various fetishes were brought out of a box, uncouth wooden images, stones and bones, old and over-handled, which must have come over with the ancestors of these people from their original home.
After this the rites, dancing, sacrifice, sprinkling of blood and of some pungent fluid, which was certainly not perfume, followed one another in changing order. Six cocks were slain, all in like manner to the first, with like monotony and brutishness. One of them, however, was the chief sacrifice, and its blood was set apart in a basin by itself. With this blood the Mamaloi went outside and sprinkled the doors and gates, putting marks upon them.
Then she returned, and with the remainder sealed the foreheads of those present with the sign of the Cross!
This intermingling of the ancient Jewish and Christian symbolisms with their own nauseous ceremonies springs, of course, from their acquaintance with Roman Catholic teaching. The ignorant are always ready to incorporate the worship of any god with their own: from their point of view it can do no harm, and may do some good.
After a time the frenzy grew, and the dancing became universal. The whole crowd were moving and swaying and jostling together, chattering out the unvarying, monotonous [87] measure. The chink of the old key quickened riotously, the drum thrummed out under the falling thumb-joints with stimulating haste, the mental atmosphere fermented and rose to high pressure. They swing and whirled, they writhed and danced in an intoxication of excitement.
A woman was contorting herself and hissing in an ill-lighted corner. Near the end of the room another with a child at her breast was carried away by the seething hysteria about her, and began to shuffle to and fro, with eyes distended in a sort of sightless stare. There was hardly room for all, and the drums beat faster. The child at the breast began to stretch its arms and wail, but the mother danced blindly on.
Still the tumult and the music grew. The atmosphere was suffocating, but there was no symptom of tiring or cessation. On and on and on, the scene with its savagery and blood and senseless sickened you. When at last I got out into the clear starshine once more I felt I could not have endured another five minutes of it. Yet what I had witnessed was only the beginning of an orgie [sic] which was to go on for a couple of days longer.
The belief of a people is the skeleton on which its character is moulded. Here in Hayti they have this gigantic cult, superstition, call it what you will, possessing unbounded influence, and inactive existence, as I have personally seen, all over the island. The tremendous hold it has gained [88] over the people is proved by the fact, well known and amply verified on many an occasion that a mother will, under the orders of the Papaloi, give up her own offspring to be sacrificed. When reproached with inhumanity, the reply has more than once been given: "Who had a better right to eat them than I who brought them forth?"
No picture of Hayti will remain longer in my memory than the remembrance of a mean old man in grass slippers, heel-less, showing a long half-foot of veiny black ankle under the faded trouser, the upper half of him almost bare, the whole topped by a vinegar-coloured face graven by time and wickedness into exaggerated wrinklings. He had wide-open, far-away eyes, and sparse grey hair scattered on chin and lip and head.
He was a Papaloi, or Vaudoux priest, otherwise a Haytian witch-doctor and medicine-man. His home was far away up in the mountains, where he dwelt as a patriarch. He owned four palm-thatched huts within an enclosure of raw stakes, where, hidden away from the potato-green foliage of the bush, tamarinds, bananas, and mangoes ripened. All day long he sat in the shade, and his wives waited upon him. There were four of them, and their ages ranged from sixty to sixteen. He was said to have other wives elsewhere, but, then, he could afford it, for he was a man of substance, and his fame was great in the land.
In Hayti the Papaloi is a living force. He is at once a [89] high priest and a consulting physician. He will cure the body, and, for a consideration, touch the hidden springs of life. People are very much afraid of him. They travel up on foot, on donkey-back and pony-pack, according to their stations in life, from the plains to consult him; and, for payment, he will use his hereditary knowledge on their behalf. He can cure, and he can kill, and the two are often curiously allied in his practice.
A man has revenge to accomplish; he seeks a Papaloi. He is the victim of an unrequited affection, he seeks the Papaloi. The Papaloi is, in fact, the pivot on which moves much of Haytian life. All these powers over mind and body he lays claim to, and in the matter of love some of his cures are nasty enough, but there is one thing he can assuredly do – he can give you a revenge for twenty dollars that would satisfy the vindictiveness of a Corsican and leave him a balance of remorse. The Papaloi can take away your reason, with or without pain, at will. His ancient subtleties of poisoning are unapproached. Of course, he winds into his woof much useless mystery and ceremony of time and place and circumstance. This is nature, as well as useful and politic, for a mere dose would seem of poor value to a sickness-smitten negro compared with a remedy to be swallowed when the moon is at her full, with mystic rites and incantations and the bones of the dead thrown in. [90]
Nor is the white man outside the powers of the Papaloi. Consider the simplicity of being poisoned. You unwittingly offend a negro and he takes away with him the sense of deadly injury. You eat and drink three times a day, and on one occasion or another he seizes his chance, and puts the Papaloi’s prescription into your food or drink. Then sickness grips you, ghastly sickness, and you are far beyond the aid of doctors of your own colour. Some poison, old as the world, is at your vitals. You must infallibly seek a Papaloi or die. Being the local practitioner, he may be the very man who has poisoned you. For twenty dollars, or perhaps for as many centimes, he has brought this evil upon you, and he asks a liberal advance on the first sum to cure you. It is a mere matter of antidote. No man but shudders at the grasp of these grim powers, they are so potent and so hopelessly irresistible. You pay the Papaloi fifty dollars; you would pay him a thousand as readily for no more than the feeling of relief.
To his credit be it said, he usually keeps his side of the contract; though he occasionally uses delay to extort a little more. The real wonder of it is that he does not spread his poisons broadcast, but it would appear that he uses his power not for play, but for pay, or to carry out some personal resentment. Once an attempt of this kind was made under my own close observations, - a little something in a little water-and-rum, - but it came to no serious issue. [91]
During my travels in the interior I carried a water-bottle of military pattern I carried a water-bottle of military pattern topped by a cup of black vulcanite, which was padlocked securely over the neck. In this I usually carried some Haytian rum and water. On one occasion I left the bottle at a hut, where I had brought corn for my horse, while I went down to the river to bathe. On my return I started with my guide and a pair of villagers. After a time it occurred to me that a drink all round would be acceptable. I offered it. To my surprise it was somewhat furtively refused. My suspicions were aroused, and I also went thirsty. I afterwards discovered that some vegetable poison had been put into the bottle; the leathern [sic] strap padlocked over the cup had been stretched, the cup turned, and the poison inserted. I could not imagine any reason for the attempt. It seemed quite gratuitous. Not till long after did a possible solution flash upon me. I had petted a little plump child at the hut, which, I believe, is in certain cases considered unlucky. Perhaps they thought I had the evil eye. Certainly, as the Zulus say, my snake stood up beside me that day. I do not care to think over the incident, for Haytian poisons do not kill painlessly, and I was alone in the heart of the mountainous interior, miles away from a white face.
In a word, secret poisoning pervades the scheme of Haytian life exactly as it pervades that of West Africa.
There was an English engineer at Petit Goave – he has [92] now left Hayti, so I am free to tell the story – who discharged a workman for a serious fault, and shortly after left the place for Port-au-Prince. Arrived in the capital, his legs began to swell with all the symptoms of the well-known African disease beri-beri. He consulted doctors, but they could no nothing for him. Making a pretty accurate guess at the true state of the case, he at length sent a messenger to the Papaloi at Petit Goave.
The Papaloi demanded fifty dollars, and promised for that sum to effect a certain cure. The Englishman agreed to pay, and the Papaloi, with many incantations, prepared a bath of leaves, a thick brown bath. Into this the sick man was plunged, and after three days was well enough to return to Petit Goave. But the beri-beri returned, and he was obliged to consult the Papaloi once more, who said that he had again been poisoned, and that for a second payment of fifty dollars he would again cure him, at the same time warning him that if he were poisoned a third time he would probably die. The white man took the hint, and, as soon as he was cured, left the country.
The Papaloi is descended straight from the African witch-doctor. Seven generations ago he was a secret king among the slaves of French Hayti; further back he still lived in a wattle hut by the Congo and made Juju. And he makes it in Hayti to this day. Here and there in talk with him you stumble across some older African superstition, some- [93] thing from which you could, without other evidence, deduce the origin of his race.
There is another operation to which the Papalois – or more often the Mamalois – turn their power. They can produce a sleep which is death’s twin brother. For instance, a child marked for the Vaudoux sacrifice is given a certain drug, shivers and some hours sinks into a stillness beyond the stillness of sleep. It is buried in due course, and later, by the orders of the Papalois, is dug up and brought to consciousness; of what occurs then I have written in another place. It is ghoulish and horrible, but beyond all question human sacrifice is offered up to a considerable extent in the Black Republic at the present time.
Everywhere in Hayti you find charms against evil, sold by Papalois and Mamalois. They assume all shapes – sticks, stones, rags, and bags of leaves. I remember seeing a ’bus, as they call the local cab, overturn in Port-au-Prince. The first thing that the driver scrambled for was a nameless bundle which had fallen from under the seat. It was his charm against being upset!
Putting Vaudoux upon their enemies is another variation of the priests’ accomplishments. A bundle of garbage is placed at your door, and if you pass over it you are sure, the negroes say, to fall ill. So far the thing is absurd, but it becomes less so when the action of the rotten egg on your doorstep is aided by a sprinkling of powdered [94] glass in your rice. No priestcraft gains so firm a grip of the savage mind as that which leads solid temporal aid to the passions of its devotees. There is a deep desire ingrained in the black to get a pinch on the man above him; to be given this obscurely and surely is sufficient to rivet his adhesion to any faith. Few whites in the island have altogether escaped the far-off touch of the Papaloi directed against them for some inscrutable offence by those who are most probably of their own household.
In considering the character and influence of the Papaloi, one fact should be borne in mind; that he is the sacrificial priest when the most culpable and hideous of the Vaudoux rites is practised. He is also the guiding and dominant intelligence amongst the bulk of his countrymen, the result of which must be a continuous falling back deeper and deeper into the savage state. But as long as Hayti retains an entirely negro Government, at least so long will the shadow of the Papaloi loom large in the land, for Africa transplanted in Africa still, and she is so conservative that the passage of uncounted years finds her ever the same.
The Papaloi is the rain-maker, the witch-doctor of West Africa under another name. He is a kind of fortunate vagabond battening upon the ignorance and credulity of this New World negro. He is dirtier than an Indian fakir, without that excuse which emanates from the religion of the fakir, to whose mind our precept assumes an [95] inverted form – with him dirtiness is next to godliness. But the Papaloi, on the other hand, has no religion in his dirt; he is filthy, because to be clean is troublesome. And the Papaloi possesses a treble share of the universal laziness of the children of Ham.
But he is not a subject to jest at. His power is paramount throughout the length and breadth of the Republic; he rules with an iron hand, and with that jealous insidious grasp on the whole inner life of his fellow-countrymen which is everywhere the distinctive trait of priestcraft. From the highest to the lowest all yield him obedience; it is true the majority believe, but the minority, who do not believe, at least tremble. The whole land is netted over with fear, fear of vague and occult potencies that harass and harm and hurt, and in case of revolt inevitably kill.
Remove the Papaloi and the murders and superstitious observances would, to a large exeunt, die out, and the land shake off the influence which keeps it so degraded. The debasing consequences of kindred superstitions acting on the negro mind is keenly recognised in other countries where the black man does not rule himself. Among the American negroes the rites of Voodoo, Voudoo, Vaudoo, Vaudoux – you can spell it as you like – are carried on in secrecy, and sedulously screened from light of day.
In Jamaica the punishment for the practice of Obeah is imprisonment and whipping, the latter having a wholesomely [96] deterrent effect. For though Obeah is to its Haytian variant as water is to wine, the danger of it lies in the fact that if unchecked it would only too easily merge into the enormities and crimes which distinguish true Vaudoux worship. Obeah is a cult of charm-wearing, of love-potions, of the laying on of curses by means more or less absurd, such as the tying of a bunch of red rags to a branch near your door, or hanging up a beer bottle filled with nasty concoctions, all of which go to prove its kinship in a puny degree with the hideous Haytian sect.
It must be remembered that it is the Papaloi who is the instigator and upholder of the vilest forms of snake-worship, and they can be carried on by him with practical impunity. When some grosser case than usual forces itself upon the public notice it is never the priest who suffers. The victim is always some obscure votary, never the arch-criminal, who is too powerful for the Government to interfere with. A couple of unknown women, or a group of poverty-stricken peasants, will be maltreated or imprisoned, or even on occasion shot, while the Papaloi is permitted to go scot-free.
If you are a black man either you belong to the sect and are under deadly compulsion to perform the behests of the Papaloi, or else you are not of the sect, and, as its supposed enemy, are exposed to equally deadly dangers. It is thus very evident that in a land publicly christened with the names of Liberty and Brotherhood no man is free. [97] The mysterious weapon of poison – which can kill a body, or mind, or bother, or merely cause long languishing and pain – is one against which no man can at all times guard himself. And this is the chief weapon the Papaloi, with his pre-eminent knowledge of vegetable venoms, is apt to use.
To give yet another illustration. I knew a negro in the Triburon peninsula who was not of the sect of the Vaudoux. He was at one time a white man’s servant; he stood between his master and harm, and he was not to be bribed. Nor did he buy charms to wear round his neck or inside his shirt. Hence it was prophesied that he would not remain long in the employment he then held. He never knew where he drank it for certain, but drink it he did, - a malignant drug. It had its effects swiftly. He rolled in the gutters. He stared at the sun with vacant eyes – to use his own expressive words: "My head was filled with boiling blood." His master noticed his condition, and sent him to a white doctor, who gave him civilised medicines, which had no effect whatever. At last he was taken to a Papaloi in the mountains, who gave him a compost of drugs in an earthen jug. He ate of it, and was cured. He had paid his tax to the powers of darkness and of the soil.
Even in the highest places the hand of the Papaloi makes itself felt. Since it is a matter of public notoriety that he can kill his enemy in a number of painful ways, none dare offend him. He is a licensed criminal. [98]
Occasionally he will admit to the white man that he is a bit of a fraud, but for the most part he keeps up appearances. How much he believes in his own pretensions or in Vaudoux as a religion it is impossible to guess. He uses both to forward his own ends. He seldom has a tendency towards discussion. His argument in favour of the sacred snake is old as the hills. "You have an enemy," he says, "who is not a snake-worshipper. I will put Vaudoux upon him. If his god be stronger than mind, he will save him." Afterwards poison is conveyed into the victim’s food, and when the man dies the Papaloi’s disciplines agree that the serpent is a great god indeed.
The Papaloi feed like leeches upon their negro following. The country is honey-combed by that system of terrorism. The profession is not necessarily hereditary, although the son often follows in the footsteps of his father. The knowledge of poisons, which is, after all, their stock-in-trade, passes down through the generations, nor will they, any more than the Indian jugglers, divulge any particle of their secret lore. These priests are no doubt to a certain extent hypnotists. They achieve the unexplainable. And, of course, what is to us a trick is to the savage mind a miracle.
In full dress a Papaloi makes at once a grotesque and an alarming figure. His piecemeal vestments are red, the sacred colour; his aged face, bandaged about the brows [99] with a red handkerchief, peers out malignantly. It is he who in the course of the ceremonies initiates the hysteric fervour and delirium of the priestess and the worshipping crowd; it is he again who leads the orgies into frenzied and horrible excesses which it impossible to describe. These orgies continue for three or four days at a time, and their result must infallibly lead to the continuous debasement of the national character.
There is no doubt also that the priests prompt the action of the "loup-garous", the child-stealers, who are usually women, generally old, pilot-fishes to the priestly sharks. The Papaloi chooses the victim, but it is the "loup-garou" who steals it or otherwise secures it. The drugged child is borne away to some secure place, be it a hut in the centre of a town or in some lonely forest clearing. The little body bears all the appearance of death, and so it is allowed to remain until the appointed time, when an antidote to the sleeping drug is given, and the dazed child wakes to become the central figure in a tragedy of sacrifice.
What are the three galls of this priest-ridden people?
First, there is superstition. Who keeps it alive?
Next, there are the impure and tragical rites. Who instigates them?
Lastly, there is the opposition to all enlightenment. Who obscures the light?
In every case the answer is the same. The Papalois. [100]
Their own manner of life, their traditions, their very appearance, their budget of endeavours are all mean, self-seeking, squalid. They have absolutely no good point, no clean impulse; no characteristic that you can even distantly respect.
It is well to understand exactly the position these men occupy in Hayti. In the unhealthy atmosphere which they create evil becomes alive and flourishes. They encourage the worst tendencies innate in negro nature as assiduously as a gardener nourishes his forcing-beds. They permeate Hayti with their influence. Until they are smitten down the country can never flourish.
At present the greatest obstacle to an almost universal terrorism is the sprinkling of white men dwelling in the coast towns. The better Haytians are ashamed of Vaudoux, but they are afraid of its revenge. The Government are either unwilling or unable to cope with it. In West Africa the first endeavour of the advancing white is to break the rule of the witch-doctors, and they succeed in so far that superstition moves slowly backwards into the heart of Africa. But in Hayti, instead of meeting with relentless opposition the Papaloi meets with tacit encouragement, or at best a puerile interference, with results such as I have even now only partially shown. As the case stands, were one to subtract the very small white element, his authority would increase fourfold. And it is in the mountainous [101] interior, where not white man goes, that his autocracy reaches its high-water mark.
But it is absurd to pretend that the Papaloi possesses supernatural powers, though I would not deny for a moment that he has inherited certain knowledge which seems at present to lie outside the white man’s range. He is a Borgia in poisons, and to fill in the rest of his hollow pretensions he is an actor, a colossal quack, and a terrorist.
