Piti a Piti, Zozo Fait son Nid: A History of Voodoo and Power in New Orleans

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PITI A PITI, ZOZO FAIT SON NID

A History of Voodoo and Power in New Orleans.

Daphne Kuntz

Graduate School of Humanities

University of Amsterdam

11142391

Supervisor: Darryl Barthé

Second reader: George Blaustein

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Abstract

In the European colonies, situated in the Americas, different peoples from different areas of the world came together. As a result of these migrations, some peoples mixed, just like some malleable religious traditions that they brought with them. In this thesis, I argue that the syncretized religions that emerged in the Americas, like Voodoo, Vodoun, Candomblé and Santería, gave the people that practiced these traditions some power, that could make their lives easier in the colonies and sometimes lead to anti-colonial resistance. These powers are traceable in different forms, like the power to emancipate a people that was seen by the colonizers as second class citizens, the power to be able to maintain your cultural practices, the power of belief, the power of a priest in his/her community and the power of branding.

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Introduction

For me, it is the involuntary alteration that occurs in my psyche, the spiritual upliftment, my transcendental imagination of a spirit world, my oneness with the gods and spirits of departed relatives, and that temporary transformation of my physical body into spirit. Whenever I participate in this music, whether physically, or silently, I look for properties that make the activity spiritually satisfying and fulfilling – properties that link me with the invisible world and constantly remind me of a world beyond, in which I believe without asserting it myself.1

W. Komla Amoaku – a traditional Ewe musician

This passage shows the experience of the traditional Ewe musician W. Komla Amoaku when he plays (Ewe) music. He describes the spiritual connection that he feels with the spirit world that is part of the Ewe religious beliefs. The music helps him entering a spiritual world,

freeing him from earthly sorrows and problems. The passage is interesting, because it not only shows the musician’s perspective and reasons for making the traditional music, he also

describes the spirit world that he traditionally adores. Escaping this world, to enter the world beyond it for a while, is not only a sort of relaxing action, it can also be a way of escaping problems and being in control (getting insights) in your life, and the situation in which you live. Communicating with the spirit world and, thus, knowing information from the spirits and the gods can give you power within your community and make you stand stronger against any oppressor.

The spirit world is an essential part of many African religious traditions. In these African religious practices music is an important tool to communicate and become one with this world of gods and spirits of the ancestors. Some religious traditions in the Americas show similar practices. They involve music, and the practitioners want to communicate with the world beyond, where the gods, spirits and ancestors live. It is not surprising that some of the religious traditions in the Americas show similarities with religious traditions from Africa since a forced migration of millions of Africans to the Americas took places during several centuries.2

1_{W. Komla Amoaku, “Toward a Definition of Traditional African Music: A Look at the Ewe}

of Ghana” quoted in: Daniel A. Walker, No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004) 12.

2_{Ademola Adegbite, “The Drum and its Role in Yoruba Religion”, Journal of Religion in}

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From different areas in Africa enslaved Africans were brought to several regions in North as well as in South America, in the colonies of European colonial powers like the British, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Dutch. Just like the Africans, these colonial powers brought their (religious) traditions with them. Although the European colonists claimed all the territory of this ‘New World’, the Amerindian people already lived there for ages. And so different peoples, religions, and cultural traditions, from several areas in Africa and Europe and the Americas, came together in this continent. In the Americas, these religions buildout, just like religions kept developing in the old world, and they

gradually started taking over traditions of the other peoples. This mixing of different religious traditions in a new context is called syncretism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the exact definition of the word ‘syncretism’ is an ‘Attempted union or reconciliation of diverse or opposite tenets or practices, esp. in philosophy or religion’.3 This union of these different practices is what happened in the Americas. Nowadays there are a lot of syncretized religions in the Americas like Vodoun in Haiti, Candomblé in Brazil and Santería in Cuba. These religious traditions are all present in Latin America, in the areas that once belonged to Spain, France, and Portugal. In the United States, these religions are less present. However, there is one American city that is famous for Voodoo; this city is New Orleans.

New Orleans was the greatest and most famous city in the Louisiana territory. Nowadays New Orleans is unique for its character because it still shows the evidence of the different peoples and traditions that came together a couple of centuries ago. The city of New Orleans, also known as the Crescent City, is part of the United States since the nineteenth century but is not like any other places in the United States. The African, European and Amerindian influences are, though popularized, still tractable in the famous French Quarter. The most famous street of this quarter, Bourbon Street, shows the old New Orleans with its old European style buildings, it is one of the only places in the U. S. where one can have a beer on the street. There is a lot of entertainment on this street, with many restaurants and (gay)bars, strip clubs and live music on the street. Here in the French Quarter, everything is slightly different from the rest of the U.S.

To know how and why New Orleans became the New Orleans that we now know and to contextualize the city, we must have a brief look at New Orleans’ history. The Catholic French colonists established Louisiana in 1699 as an outpost. It did not receive much support

3_{“Syncretism”, The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Oxford University Press Consulted at}

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from King Louis XIV until the French founded Nouvelle Orléans. In 1718 the city was founded by the French Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. Due to starvation and decease the European laborers that were imported to build up New Orleans died and the French colonial Compagnie des Indes started importing slaves from Africa.

From 1769 to 1803 Louisiana was controlled by Catholic Spain. For a few years, the colony was controlled by a French-acting governor, using the French law. Until the first Spanish governor came to the colony in 1769. The planters drove him out, which resulted in the official establishment of Spanish rule by arms. New Orleans remained French and African but was governed by Spain. The Spanish colonizers kept a lot of the French laws in use, especially the laws concerning African slaves and free people of African descent. The only thing they changed was removing the obstacles of manumission of slaves.4 One can, thus, speak of a relative stability of language, culture and legislation in New Orleans during the French and Spanish period.

In 1800 Napoleon was able to seize Louisiana since Spain was weakened. For three years the direct control of Louisiana stayed in Spanish hands until Napoleon sold the colony to the Protestant United States because he was fed up with the French colonies in the

Americas since Saint Dominque fell.5 The incorporation of New Orleans in the United States was the start of a totally new era; everything changed under the supervision of the U.S. government. During the nineteenth century, the Americans started changing more and more laws, making a lot of traditional practices and cultural happenings impossible to maintain. The famous African dances that were held in Congo Square each Sunday, for example, were dispirited by several new laws, restrictions and the dancing people were intimidated by the presence of police forces.6

Probably the most important difference between the French and Spanish occupation and the American occupation was the unity between the religious practices and the culture of the population. The ‘native’ population of New Orleans, Catholic French-speaking people of Latin, African and Amerindian descent (Creoles), now had to deal with a dominant group of

4_{Thomas N. Ingersoll, “Free Blacks in a Slave Society: New Orleans, 1718 – 1812”, The}

William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 2 (April 1991) 174, 175. 179, 180.; Elisabeth Fussell, “Constructing New Orleans, Constructing Race: A Population History of New Orleans”, The Journal of American History, Vol. 94, No. 3 (December 2007) 847, 848.

5_{Ingersoll, “Free Blacks”, 192.; Ina J. Fandrich, “Yorúbá Influences on Haitian Vodou and}

New Orleans Voodoo”, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37, No.5 (May 2007) 780.

6_{Jerah Johnson, “New Orleans’s Congo Square: An Urban Setting for Early Afro-American}

Culture Formation”, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Spring 1991), 149 – 151.

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Protestant Anglo-American people that started inhabiting the city. This change resulted in a lot of violence between the groups of people and out of melancholy to how it used to be in New Orleans they started to mythicize the Creole heritage of New Orleans.7

During the colonial era, especially during the age of Americanization, it was necessary for the people of African descent and other Creoles to have a tool to stand firm against

dominant colonizers and Americans. This had to be an instrument that provided these peoples with different powers that gave them a kind of emancipated voice in the history and the present. I intend to argue that syncretic religious traditions that evolved in the Western hemisphere, like Voodoo in New Orleans, have served as a tool for powers, that could improve the lives of the practitioners and could sometimes lead to anti-colonial resistance.

The religious traditions that I want to talk about are Voodoo in New Orleans, Vodoun in Haiti, Candomblé in Brazil and Santería in Cuba. These traditions seem to have similar roots and similar practices, although they all had a different development. They are similar, but not completely the same. I will use Voodoo in New Orleans as the central case and the other traditions as a support for the case of Voodoo.

To proof my theory that these religious traditions served as a way to improve lives my main question is: How did Voodoo position Creole communities in New Orleans? To answer this question, I will first have a brief look at the development of these syncretized religions in the Americas and their roots. These religious traditions stem from European Catholicism and African religious traditions from several areas in Africa. Once we know where these traditions came from, we know what made these traditions suitable for syncretism in the Americas and then we can look at which traditions syncretized into the New World’s religious traditions.

Then I will look at the people in the Americas that practiced these syncretic traditions. During the colonization of the Americas, the different colonizers had different attitudes toward the amalgamation of peoples and cultures. These views influenced the ability of the colonial population to syncretize their religions. It is, therefore, important to compare the attitudes and policies between the colonies that did have syncretic religions and the colonies that did not have these religions.

Once it is evident how the populations that practice Voodoo, Vodoun, Santería and Candomblé and their religious traditions were formed we can focus on New Orleans and the reason why New Orleans is that relevant for this research. New Orleans has a history that is

7_{Joseph G. Tregle, Jr., “Creoles and Americans” in: Creole New Orleans: Race and}

Americanization ed. Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992) 132.

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not only unique in the United States, but that is also unique in Louisiana. Next to the city’s unique dual character, New Orleans is famous for its Voodoo scene and the famous Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. Voodoo cannot be studied without the use of Voodoo in New Orleans and Marie Laveau.

The last chapter will discuss the different powers that can be related to the practice of Voodoo and Vodoun, Candomblé and Santería. We can find three powers in Voodoo and the other traditions, that could improve the lives of the people that practiced these traditions; the power of belief, the power of a priest/priestess in his or her community and the power of branding. These powers are related, but all have their characteristics.

After this last chapter, conclusions can be made about the powers that are linked to the practice of Voodoo and Vodoun, Santería and Candomblé. We now know where the

practitioners came from, who they are, how this fits into the city of New Orleans and what powers we can distinguish within the practice of Voodoo in New Orleans, and areas with similar traditions and why. Now we can answer the question how Voodoo positioned Creole communities in New Orleans.

There are some words that I have to use in my research for the sake of clearness. When I mention some groups of people, it has to be clear for my reader who I want to

mention. I, therefore, use the term Amerindian to designate the people that were native to the Americas, knowing that this term is firmly debated, because it is a designation that was made up by the colonizers and not by the people that are identified with this term. Thence I also use the term the New World, because this is a term that is used to denote the Americas. I am, however, aware that this is also a term that is made up by the colonists and that this world was anything but new.

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Part I – Origins of Afro-syncretic religions

The religious traditions that came together in the Americas in traditions like Voodoo, Santería and Candomblé, came from very different contexts in Europe and Africa. Still, they were able to syncretize. The French, Portuguese and Spanish colonists brought Catholicism with them; the enslaved Africans brought several traditions that were common in the regions in Africa where they used to live. Christianity influenced the religious traditions in the Americas. It was the religion of the colonizers who imposed their Christian beliefs upon the African slaves. But, the slaves were able to fit their traditions into the framework of Christianity and in the end Voodoo, Vodoun, Santería and Candomblé gave them a sort of power to resist against the colonial regimes that enslaved them.

It is, therefore, important to start with a consideration of what it was that made the Catholic church suitable for this. After a brief look into the history of the Catholic church and its ability to syncretize with other religious traditions, I will offer a brief description of the cultural context and indigenous religious traditions of the enslaved Africans that created the syncretized religions in the Americas. Then, I intend to compare them with some traditions of Voodoo, Vodoun, Candomblé and Santería and explain what was the basis of these traditions, that provided peoples in the Americas with the inspiration to resist colonial powers.

Roman Catholicism

The religious tradition of European colonizers was Christianity, and the largest denomination of Christianity in the Latin Americas is the Roman Catholic church. The Catholic practice of adoring saints, people who were regarded as being exceptionally holy in life, is an aspect of Catholicism that made it easier to assimilate polytheistic practices. In this section, I intend to interrogate the unique suitability of the Roman Catholic church in

promoting religious syncretism in the colonial contexts of the Americas.

Christianity emerged within the polytheistic society of the Roman empire. At the end of the first century, Christians were seen as a curious religious minority. Due to an evangelical movement, the tradition spread throughout the Empire. To keep growing, Christianity

incorporated elements from the indigenous religions of the Roman Empire to entice Romans to convert. During these first centuries, local deities were turned into demons (daimones) by Christian authorities and Christian martyrs were transformed into angels. From the beginning,

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Christians demonstrated the ability to co-opt and assimilate pagan, or heathen, religious symbols and gods.8

The same process is found in the syncretic religious traditions of the Catholic colonies in the Americas. There, representations and characteristics of the Christian Saints allowed the African populations to parallel them with their deities. Just as Christianity adopted the ancient daimones, the assimilation of African deities, and their identification with Christian saints, shows that the Catholic church retained the ability to assimilate other religious traditions into their own, to facilitate conversion.9

Because of the Catholic practice of venerating saints, it is possible that the Catholic church was more suitable for syncretism than Protestant. What it is certain is that throughout Latin America, these syncretic traditions emerged; the Catholic church, drenched in the historical echoes of polytheistic traditions as it was, provided fertile soil for colonized people to disguise their own religious traditions with Catholic forms without losing their meaning.

However, it was not only through the assimilation of saints that these traditions manifested. Many pagan practices and celebrations were also kept alive within these traditions. For example, the Día de Reyes (“the Day of the Kings,” or “the Epiphany”) is a good illustration of this. In Havana, there were processions held by people of African descent on Día de Reyes. They used this festival to gather and to have ceremonies. In this case, the oppressed Africans used Catholic traditions to practice their traditions and to gather and celebrate under the eyes of the colonizers.10

8_{Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,}

2004) 22.; F.R. Trobley, Hellenic Religion & Christianization: c. 370-529, Part One (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993) 98 – 101.; For pagan traditions that were kept alive within Christian

traditions see also: Levente Nagy, “Myth and Salvation in the Fourth Century:

Representations of Hercules in Christian Contexts” in: Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome: Conflict, Competition and Coexistence in the Fourth Century, ed. Michele Renee Salzman, Marianne Sághy and Rita Lizzi Testa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). and also P.E. Nothaft, “The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research,” Church History, Vol. 81, Is. 04 (December 2012). and also Paul Carus, “Pagan Elements of Christianity: and the Significance of Jesus,” The Monist, Vol. 12, No. 3 (April 1902). and also Ruth Mazo Karras, “Pagan Survivals and Syncretism in the Conversion of Saxony,” The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 4 (October 1986).

9_{Sheila S. Walker, “Everyday and Esoteric Reality in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé”,}

History of Religions, Vol. 30, No. 2 (November 1990), 111.

10_{Daniel E. Walker, No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New}

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African Ethnic Groups

The Catholic church was a malleable tradition, suitable for syncretism in the American colonial contexts. However, there were also circumstances rooted in African experiences that also promoted syncretism in religious practices. Many African peoples, that the slave traders brought to the Americas as clustered groups, were often able to stay together, or at least in the same area after their arrival. In this section, I will examine the circumstances of the Africans brought to American colonies so as to identify the factors that facilitated their retention of the African cultural expressions that also influenced syncretic religious traditions, like voodoo.

Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall is a pioneering scholar of Atlantic slavery. Unlike many other scholars, Hall has shown the limits of the belief that the Africans that were brought to the Americas were hopelessly fractionalized, culturally and linguistically. On the contrary, Hall has demonstrated that many communities of African people in the Americas had origins in specific African regions and thus were able to maintain their beliefs since they could keep in contact with people from the same nation. Slave ships did not keep their ‘cargo’ onboard indefinitely as they made their way from port to port because the longer the enslaved were kept on the ship, the higher the death rate. “Spoilage of the ‘cargo’”would cost the traders a lot of money. Instead, entire shipments of enslaved people were often disembarked together.11

Hall’s study of two large sugar estates showed that groups of twenty to thirty slaves were bought by slave owners in the Americas, directly from slave ships carrying people who were al from the same nation. Some slave traders kept meticulous records of their shipments because there were customers who only bought enslaved Africans who were able to

11_{Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the}

Links (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press, 2009), 55-56. See also Douglas B. Chambers,” Ethnicity in the Diaspora: The Slave-Trade and the Creation of African ‘Nations’ in the Americas”, Slavery & Abolution: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, Vol. 22, Is. 3 (2001). and also David Eltis, “Mortality and Voyage Length in the Middle Passage: New Evidence from the Nineteenth Century”, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 44, No. 2 (June 1984). and also Simon J. Hogerzeil and David Richardson, “Slave Purchasing Strategies and Shipboard Morality: Day-to-Day Evidence from the Dutch African Trade, 1751 – 1797”, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 67, Is. 1 (2007). and also Robin Haines and Ralph Schlomowitz, “Explaining the Mortality Decline in the Eighteenth Century British Slave Trade”, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 52, No.2 (May 2000). and also P.M.G. Harris, The History of Human Populations: Migration, Urbanization, and Structural Change, Vol. II (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2003).

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communicate with and were familiar with the culture of the people they already held captive.12

This pattern of forced migration where specific African ethnicities from specific areas in Africa were brought to specific regions in the Americas (and who brought distinct religious traditions with them) also holds true for the enslaved Africans that came to Louisiana by force. The Pointe Coupee inventories, lists of a slave post in Louisiana, provide an indication of the nations of slaves in Louisiana. There were fifty different peoples identified in Spanish Louisiana, but most of the slaves came from a relatively small amount of nations. It seems that most of the slaves that were brought to Louisiana came directly out of Africa, which means that the religious traditions that they were familiar with were a fresh memory for these slaves. There were four main areas in Africa where the enslaved Africans in Louisiana came from; Senegambia, the Bight of Biafra, the Bight of Benin (today’s Benin and Western Nigeria) and Central Africa.13

Different African nations have different African religious traditions, although a lot of these traditions show similarities, due to extensive contacts between the peoples, just like there are similarities in languages. Highlighting some of the most popular traditions that were brought to the New World will give us a context of the origins of the syncretized religions in the Americas and how, and why, they were suitable to syncretize.

Yoruba is the name given to an animistic religious system practiced in the Bight of Benin.14_{The Supreme Being of this tradition is known as Olódúmaré. The other deities are}

12_{Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas, 57-68.}

13_{Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole}

Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992) 281-288.; Ina J. Fandrich, “Yorúbá Influences on Haitian Vodou and New Orleans” Voodoo, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37, No. 5 (May 2007), 781. For the descent and ratios of African slaves that were brought to Louisiana and other French and Spanish colonies, see: Colin A. Palmer, Human Cargoes: The British Slave Trade to Spanish America, 1700-1739 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981); and also Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); and also Manuel Moreno Fraginals, “Africa in Cuba: A Quantitative Analysis of the African Population in the Island of Cuba”, Annals of the New York Academy of Science, Vol. 292 (1977); and also David Geggus, “Sex Ratio and Ethnicity: A Reply to Paul E. Lovejoy”, The Journal of African History, Vol. 30, No. 3 (1989); and also Philip D. Curtin and Jan Vansina, “Sources of the Nineteenth Century Atlantic Slave Trade”, The Journal of African History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1964).

14_{For more on Yoruba religion see: W.H. Clarke, Travels and Explorations in Yorubaland}

1854 – 1858, ed. J.A. Atanda (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1972). and also Bolaji Idowu, Olódúmaré: God in Yoruba Belief (London: Longman, 1962). and also J. Omoşade Awolalu, Yoruba Belief and Sacrificial Rites (London: Longman, 1979). and also Samuel A. Adewale, The Religion of the Yoruba: A Phenomenological Analysis (Ibadan: University of Ibadan,

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called the Órishá, and each has his/her specific symbolic value in the cosmos. Christians were keen on studying Yoruba from a Christian point of view. The fact that they had a Supreme Being and some lower deities made Yoruba suitable to interpret in a Christian way (and the other way around). Christians can easily construe The Supreme Being as God and the Órishás as saints.15

Religious cults and systems, within the larger framework of Yoruba, are useful in gaining insights into Yoruba beliefs that persist within the American syncretic traditions. Egúngún, for example, is the Yoruba cult of the dead ancestors in which the ancestors were believed to celebrate with their living descendants. This practice shows the importance of the dead ancestors within the Yoruba belief. The Ifá divination is also important within the Yoruba society. By using special devises, a diviner could create a particular poem for his clients. These were both traditional African spiritual practices that were carried to America and then embedded within Christian symbolism by enslaved people.16

Yoruba was not the only powerful African spiritual system to be transported across the Atlantic. In the Bight of Benin, nearby Toga and the Gulf of Guinea people practiced, and still practice, the religion of Vodun. People belief in deities who connect the worlds of the people that are alive, the spirits of the dead, the natural world and the material world. The gods take offerings to bring luck or relieve curses and settle arguments. During rituals with music, they dance to the beat of drums until they are in a state of trance. These dances honor the gods.17

Vodun and Yoruba are two of the most relevant African beliefs because large

populations practiced these beliefs. But people also brought words and traditions from other cultures, like from Senegambia, where the people used some charms like gris-gris, a spell or

1988). and also Ulli Beier, Yoruba Poetry: An Anthology of Traditional Poems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

15_{Karin Barber, “‘’Oríkí’’, Woman and the Proliferation and Merging of “órísá”, Africa:}

Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 60, No. 3 (1990) 314.; Jacob K. Olupona, “The Study of Yoruba Religious Tradition in Historical Perspective”, Numen, Vol. 40, No. 3 (September 1993) 243.

16_{Olupona, “The Study of Yoruba”, 248, 249.}

17_{Suzanne P. Blier, “The Place where Vodun was Born”, Natural History, Vol. 104, Is. 10}

(October 1995) 40-49. For more on Vodun religion see: Timothy R. Landry, “Incarnating Spirits, Composing Shrines, and Cooking Divine Power in Vodún”, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, Vol. 12, Is. 1. (2016). and also Dana Rush, Vodun in Coastal Benin: unfinished, open-ended, global (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013). Suzanne P. Blier, African Vodun: Art, Psychology and Power (Chicago: University of

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potion that was used to help or curse someone, for example.18_{The Congo term wanga}

(ouanga) was a magical charm. Again, these are both examples of traditional African spiritual idioms that were brought across the Atlantic and embedded in Christian symbolism to form syncretic religious expressions.19

Knowing where the particular traditions came from in Africa, helps to recognize their expression in the Americas. The African Yoruba belief is thought to be the best surviving African religion in the Americas, but it was not the only one. But, the different areas in the Americas practicing Santería, Candomblé, Vodoun, and Voodoo have different histories, different dominant influences and knew various developments.20

Voodoo and Vodoun, Santería and Candomblé

To understand the powers that syncretized religious traditions in the Americas like Voodoo, Vodoun, Candomblé and Santería have, it helps to know what these religious traditions look like, in form and practice. For the purpose of this work, I will focus on a few representative syncretic traditions in Haiti, Louisiana, Cuba, and Brazil.

Vodun is the Ewe and Fon religion in Benin. It is this tradition that informs the syncretic religion of Haiti, called Vodoun, as well as Voodoo, the syncretic religion of Southern Louisiana. There are a lot of misrepresented about Voodoo and Vodoun as occult practices such that people often use the terms as synonyms in American English for black magic and witchcraft. Indeed, Haitian Vodoun21 might be the world’s most misunderstood religion. These misunderstandings stem from white colonial fears of African resistance to slavery in the Americas.22

During the Haitian War of Independence (1791-1804), Vodoun ceremonies were used to motivate the African population to overthrow their masters. The result was that the white

18_{Martha Ward, Voodoo Queen The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau (Jackson: University}

Press of Mississippi, 2004), 32.

19_{Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 302.}

20_{Ina J. Fandrich, Yorúbá Influences on Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo, Journal of}

Black Studies, Vol. 37, No. 5 (May 2007) 775, 779.

21_{For Vodoun in Haiti see: Michel S. Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti (Houndmills:}

Macmillan Press LTD, 1989). and also Erika Bourguignon, “Religion and Justice in Haitian Vodoun”, Phylon, Vol. 46, No.4 (4th quarter 1985). and also George E. Simpson, “The Belief System of Haitian Vodun”, American Anthropoligst, New Series, Vol. 47, No. 1. (Jan-March 1945).

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colonists and Americans began to see Vodoun as “a considerable empowering spiritual force to be reckoned with.” The tradition of Haitian Vodoun and Louisiana Voodoo are not the same

tradition (though closely related). That did not diminish the mystique of Voodoo in the American mind, and American slave owners recognized the power of this spiritual system in empowering people of African descent to pursue anti-colonial action. 23

A lot of Dahomeyan, Fon and Ewe-speaking people (from Benin) were brought to Haiti as slaves. The Dahomeyan people had a lot of cultural exchange with the Yoruba people so that they ended up with a lot of similar divinities with similar names. Vodoun, however, does not have a visible Yoruba character. The Congolese culture and Dahomeyan culture had the most influence on Vodoun, but the Yoruba influence on Dahomeyan culture was large enough to have an impact on Vodoun. For example, although the divinities are called the Lwa instead of Orishas in Vodoun, just as in Santería and Candomblé there are thousands of Orishas/Orixas, there are thousands of Lwa in Vodoun.24

The people of Haiti interact with the Lwa every day. They give the people hope, as they believe the Lwa can help them. With the support of the Lwa they feel they have power. This belief translated into action in the only successful slave rebellion in history.25

Instead of the Haitian system of Lwa veneration, Voodoo in Louisiana lost most of the African divinities. This loss of divinities was possibly the result of a relatively bigger White-to-Black population compared to Haiti, as well as larger numbers of enslaved Amerindian and Afro-Amerindian people. Also, Louisiana had hardly any Yoruba or Dahomeyan people. The African population in Louisiana was predominately Congolese. Voodoo practitioners had practices including “spiritual work” with Catholic saints and a pantheon of a Supreme Being called: Li Grand Zombi, a very tiny number of saints and spirits of the dead. Voodooists in Louisiana wield power through the use of gris-gris.26

23_{Ibid, 780.}

24_{Ibid, 183, 781-782.}

25_{Wade Davis, The Serpant and the Rainbow (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985) 172.} 26_{For Voodoo in Louisiana see: Blake Touchstone, “Voodoo in New Orleans”, Louisiana}

History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Autumn 1972). and also Carolyn Morrow Long, “Perceptions of New Orleans Voodoo: Sin, Fraud,

Entertainment and Religion”, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 6, No. (October 2002). and also Martha Ward, Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004). and also Branda Marie Osbey, “Why We Can’t Talk to you about Voodoo” The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Spring 2011). and also Robert Tallant, Voodoo in New Orleans (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1946), and also Frandich, “Yorúbá Influences”, 785, 786. The word Zombi comes from the Bantu language of the Congo and it means “spirit.”

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People often call Cuban Santería and Brazilian Candomblé “The Spanish neo-Yorúbá religion of Cuba” and the “Brazilian neo-Yorúbá religion”. The Orishas (as the Cubans call their deities) and the Orixas (as the Brazilians call their gods) were disguised as Catholic Saints. Through these Saints, Africans (and later African descended people) have kept the Yoruba pantheon alive along with the Ifá divination system. In Cuba, the Babalawos priests are still very crucial in the religious practices. The retention of African spiritual traditions in these contexts represents a retention of African identity, and an expression of agency. Through this conservation of African traditions, enslaved people in Cuba and Brazil were empowered to resist the erasure of African cultural identity.27

27_{Frandich, “Yorúbá Influences”, 785, 786. For Santería and Candomblé see: Miquel A. de la}

Torre, Santería: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America (Grand Rapids, Wiliam B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004). and also Wiliam R. Bascom, “The Focus of Cuban Santería”, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 6, No. 1. and also Sheila S. Walker, “Everyday and Esoteric Reality in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé”, History of Religions, Vol. 30, No. 2. and also Melville J. Herkovits, “The Social Organization of the Afrobrazilian Candomblé”, Phylon, Vol. 17, No. 2.

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Part II - Creolization in the Americas

The Africans and Europeans that came to the New World and the Amerindians who already lived there were, as we have seen in the first chapter, able to syncretize their religions because their religious practices had certain similarities that brought them together. However, these similarities would never have come together if there was no contact between these

communities. Voodoo in New Orleans could not exist if the peoples that built up New Orleans did not merge. So, we first need to know how the assimilation of the African, European and Amerindian people worked and under what conditions this assimilation took place.

The first paragraph will, therefore, be a paragraph about miscegenation (métissage) and the meaning of this concept. Once it is evident what this miscegenation means we can focus on miscegenation in the United States, miscegenation in Louisiana (that became part of the United States in a relatively late stadium) and miscegenation in the Spanish, Portuguese and French colonies. Once the facts about miscegenation are clear, we can move on to the contextualization of the Creole population (the people that mixed through miscegenation) of the Americas and especially Louisiana and the phenomenon of Creolization. Creolization and métissage are both part of the same (complex) process of peoples and their cultures mixing into new peoples and cultures. However, to understand the complex definitions of métissage and Creolization the two concepts are served in two different subchapters. When we

understand the meaning of creolization and the appliance of this phenomenon in different areas in the Americas, we can look at it in the context of Louisiana. After this, we have a clear view of the identity of the citizens of Louisiana who had different descents, but who together created the syncretized religions like Voodoo and who created a unique character with this Creole culture and syncretized religions and therefore created their position within the cultures of the Americas.

Métissage

The peoples that came together in the Americas all had to find their place in this New World, but also had to live together with the other peoples. It was, however, the colonizer who decided with whom he wanted to live together and who he did not want to have anything to

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do with in his millieu. Here the process of métissage28_{(French) or mestizaje (Spanish)}

appears.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, métissage means cross-breeding and miscegenation.29 It was in many cases, not a matter of a conscious act of assimilation of peoples, but often a matter of concubinage between Amerindian or African woman and white men. Some scholars have suggested that Mulattoe slaves were more valuable than pure African slaves so that it would be economically profitable to impregnate a female slave. And it would improve an African or Amerindian woman’s status to become a white man’s

mistress. These motives have nothing to do with human concerns.30

Métissage is a concept of race. Using the term you classify people on ancestry and physical appearance. The idea of a superior group is not necessarily part of métissage.

However, if someone assumes a hierarchy, peoples that have amalgamated with other peoples become lesser than the ‘superior race’. People with racist, assumptions, therefore see

métissage as polluting the blood of the superior race.31

Métissage in Anglophone colonies

The colonial powers that ruled in colonies in the Americas had different attitudes towards métissage. There is a difference in the racial ethos of the Protestant Anglo-Saxon colonists or the ‘tolerant’ Catholic Latin colonists, which has influenced the race relations in the

28_{For métissage in the United States, Latin America and Louisiana see: Kathleen DuVal,}

“Indian Intermarriage and Métissage in Colonial Louisiana”, The William and Mary

Quarterly, Vol. 65, No.2 (April 2008). and also Sidney Kaplan, “The Miscegenation Issue in the Election of 1864”, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (July 1949). and also Arnold A. Sio, “Race Color and Miscegenation: The Free Coloured of Jamaica and

Barbados”, Caribbean Studies, Vol. 16, No.1 (April 1976). and also Marilyn G.Miller, Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004). and also Mauricio Solaún and Sidney Kronus, Discrimination without violence: Miscegenation and Racial Conflict in Latin America (New York: Wiley-Intersience, 1973). and also Bárbara C. Cruz and Michael J. Berson, “The American Melting Pot?:

Miscegenation Laws in the United States”, OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 15, No, 4 (Summer 2001).

29_{“Metissage”, Oxford Englsih Dictionary (OED), Oxford University Press consulted at}

05-20-2016, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/117615?redirectedFrom=metissage#eid.

30_{Pierre L. van den Berghe, “Racialism and Assimilation in Africa and the Americas”,}

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 19, No 4 (Winter 1963) 425.

31_{George M. Frederickson, “Mulattoes and métis. Attitudes toward miscegenation in the}

United States and France since the seventeenth century”, International Social Science Journal, Vol. 57, Is. 183 (March 2005) 104, 105.

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colonies.32_{Since the United States are often considered as an Anglophone country nowadays,}

and because today the States cover a huge part of the Americas, it is important to treat the English and American opinion of métissage first. Knowing the American opinion of

miscegenation is understanding whether minorities did or did not have the possibility to create a new collective identity in the U.S. and, as a result of this, to raise a stronger voice with this new identity. In the Anglophone areas, métissage was called the amalgamationof races.33

In the British colonies, there has been disapproval towards miscegenation from the beginning onwards. It started with high fines for intermarriage and in 1691 Virginia criminalized intermarriage between white people and people of African descent. Six of the thirteen English colonies criminalized intermarriage by the mid-eighteenth century. As a result of this criminalization of intermarriage the line between white and black, a

two-category race system, that predominated in the biggest part of the United States, started in the British colonies. Due to this race system, Mulattoes got the status of blacks and did not have a voice. Intermarriages between colonists and Amerindian people were more accepted; there was no clear rule about the restriction of marriages with an Amerindian person. The result of the laws against intermarriage in the United States was a large African American population with a very slight amount of mixed races.34

During the mid- and late eighteenth century, a more authoritative racial determinism started in the U.S. towards miscegenation. Prominant thinkers embraced the idea of

polygenism, the idea that colored races were distinct species. They thought that these different species had no common origin with white people. These people regarded miscegenation as an unnatural union of different species. They thought that Mulattoes would bring the worst of the two races together.35

These were the thoughts that the British and the citizens of the United States had about miscegenation and people with ancestors from an interracial marriage. At first, the British colonists did not have many colonies in North America, but as the United States grew, the

32_{Berghe, “Racialism and Assimilation”, 425.} 33_{Frederickson, “Mulattoes and métis”, 103.}

34_{Brandon Wolfe, “Racial Integrity Laws”, Encyclopedia Virginia, Consulted at 06-23-2016,}

http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/racial_integrity_laws_of_the_1920s#contrib.;

Frederickson, “Mulattoes and Métis”., 105, 106. For more about the legislation in Virginia see: William W, Hening, ed., “The Statues at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619…[1809-1823]”, 2:170 in Colonial Tithables, Library of Virginia, consulted at 06-23-2016,

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/rn17_tithables.htm.

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idea that miscegenation would defile the white race got more and more diffuse. The American opinion of miscegenation shows that there are structural differences between race politics in the colonies in the Americas from the beginning onward. The result of this is that there are differences between the populations in the U.S. and other areas of the Americas and that it was harder in the U.S. for traditions to merge.

Métissage in the Latin Colonies in South America

The Latin colonial powers, the French, the Spanish and the Portuguese, had a different attitude toward métissage than the Americans. Their policies towards métissage seem relatively liberal compared with the Anglophone American attitudes. However, a policy of assimilation only reflects one’s belief in his cultural superiority. This attitude has, however, had more practical advantages than the idea that there are races that have permanent

inferiority.36 And it did have a lasting influence on the culture of the colony. In these colonies the African religious traditions syncretized with European Catholicism.

In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies mestizaje has been called an important tool for nation building and the citizens of Latin colonies have always glorified their systems of mestizaje. Instead of the inhabitants of the United States, who did not even want to mention the word miscegenation, they were proud that their people mixed with other races.37 This attitude toward métissage automatically resulted in another status for the people of mixed-race than the status of the people in the U.S.38

Métissage in the French colonies

We now have seen that the Protestant Anglophone and the Latin Catholic colonists have had different attitudes and policies toward métissage and can now focus on métissage in the French colonies, especially in Louisiana. Just like in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies French policies towards métissage are entirely different from the Anglo-American plans. Their policy was way more complicated and more ambiguous. It is important to note that the situations in the various French colonies were not completely the same. The colonies had different developments, diverse peoples, and dissimilar geographical conditions; they

36_{Berghe, “Racialism and Assimilation”, 425, 426.}

37_{This does certainly not mean that there is no racism in Latin America, on the contrary.}

People of African descent and indigenous people have a very low status. One has to have European blood to have a higher status.

38_{Edward E. Telles and Christiana A. Sue, “Race Mixture: Boundary Crossing in}

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developed different languages and cultures. Louisiana is the focus point. However, the official policy toward métissage in Canada is worth the mention.

Canada is a good place to start when trying to understand the French policies toward métissage. Here, the French King Louis XIV’s finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert formalized the French attempts to assimilate the Amerindian populations into the French society by making it an official policy. Colbert said: “Civilize the […] savages who have

embraced Christianity, and dispose them to come and settle them in community with the French, live with them, and bring up their children in their manner and customs […] in order that, having one law and one master, they may for only one people and one blood”. This passage explicitly shows the idea that the French had about métissage in the colonies. Jean-Baptiste Colbert introduced this policy in Canada and not in Louisiana, but it is relevant because it shows the overall French opinion about different peoples marrying and living together.39

People often think that the French ideas about blood and Colbert’s efforts were a sign that the French had fewer prejudices about the Amerindian people residing in the colonies. The idea that Amerindians had different blood, however, proves that fewer prejudices did not apply. The idea was that rarefaction of Amerindian blood was needed to create a better population.40

In Louisiana, just like in other French colonies, marriage and sex between the different peoples was seen as a way to maintain the boundaries between the colonized and the colonizer (a very cruel way of showing who is in power). Conversely, it was used to erase boundaries (used as an ultimate instrument of assimilation between the different peoples) and so to raise the status of all the people living in the colony. The colonial authorities wanted to use

métissage as a way to be able to control the population of Louisiana. And by doing this, they created a suitable environment for the Creole community that Louisiana is known for in the United States. Métissage also had a very practical side; there was a shortage of European women in the colony.41

Since the number of slaves in French Louisiana did not grow since 1731, the slave population had to be maintained in Louisiana. This urge to maintain the slave population

39_{Johnson, “Colonial New Orleans”, 23.; From 1666 and 1667 dispatches quoted by Mark}

Eastmen, Church and State in Early Canada, Quoted in: Jerah Johnson, “Colonial New Orleans: A Fragment of the Eighteenth-Century French Ethos” in: Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization ed. Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992) 23.

40_{Aubert, “The blood of France”, 453.}

41_{Jennifer M. Spear, “Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French Louisiana”, The William}

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resulted in a profamily plan. The slave owners did their best to give every male slave a wife, to keep the slave population in existence. This family policy also included that family members were allowed to stay together and were not sold apart by their owners.42

There were more male Africans in Louisiana than female Africans. The deficit of African woman in Louisiana was made up by Amerindian woman. Amerindian-African slaves were noted on inventories as Grif. There were more white men than white woman. African women became targets of white, African and Amerindian men.43

Records of Pointe de Coupee show a lot of information about miscegenation in the area. In this area, halfway between New Orleans and Natchez, we can observe hybrid cultural forms because ‘red’, ‘black’ and ‘white’ lived under the same crisis conditions. Insecurity in this frontier area created a society in which the different races were extremely dependent upon each other. Because physical survival was way more important than wealth, racial lines were not that important and relations between the peoples were more intimate. In the rest of lower Louisiana the same process took place, but in Pointe de Coupee the incredibly insecure beginnings social fluidity was clearer. In this area, the Canadian and French colonists were socialized to use Amerindian ways of housing, cultivation, preparation of food and clothing. An exchange of knowledge between the races was a crucial process within the community. Within this mutual exchange, Amerindians and Africans were more influential than the white colonists. The French settlers had to keep the ties with the Amerindian people, because the French population was thin and the Amerindian people could protect them, by giving them military support.44

French and Spanish colonists in Louisiana seemed to be more considerate of their children of mixed blood. They often freed them, educated them and accepted them as family members.45 As a result of these French and Spanish policies, a three-category racial

classification emerged in which status and pigmentation were closely related. This system was an opposite of the American two-racial classification.46 The people that had ancestors of both African and European or Amerindian descent had a new, larger group of resembles and space to practice the traditions of their forefathers, but they also had relatively good relations with the colonizers. The people that came directly from Africa were the lowest class, and the only

42_{Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 168.} 43_{Ibid., 171, 172.}

44_{Ibid., 238, 239, 243, 244.} 45_{Ibid., 239, 240.}

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way for them to get in a higher class was to intermarry. Métissage was, therefore, an important tool within the French colonial society.

Creoles and Creolization

We can now start looking at the phenomenon of Creolization47. This process is important because it is the formation of the communities that practiced Voodoo and similar religious traditions in the Americas. The practice of these traditions gave the Creole people an extraordinary power within the colonial and post-colonial societies.

The word Creole has known (and still knows) many different meanings in different contexts, but it derives from crioulo, which is a Portuguese word. A Crioulo was a slave of African descent, born in the Americas. After that, it extended to people of European ancestry, born in the Americas. During the eighteenth century, the term Creole became the name for locally born people that were of African descent at least partial. Here it did not matter if the individual also had European blood, what mattered was the African blood. It was used to distinguish African-born and American-born slaves.48

A modern definition of a Creole is a person with non-American ancestry, whether it is African or European, born in the Americas.49 The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that the definition of Creole is:

47_{For Creole people, creolization and the population of Louisiana see: Martha Ward, Voodoo}

Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau (Jackson: University Press, 2004). and also Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992). and also Carl A. Brasseaux, French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer on Francophone Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005). and also Sybil Kein, Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Colour (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000). and also Nicholas R. Spitzer, “Monde Créole: The Cultural World of French Louisiana Creoles and the Creolization of World Cultures”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 116, No. 459 (Winter 2003). and also Joan Rubin, “A Bibliography of Caribbean Creole Languages”, Caribbean Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4 (January 1963). and also Sylvie Dubois and Megan Melançon, “Creole Is, Creole Ain’t: Diachronic and Synchronic Attitudes toward Creole Identity in Southern Louisiana”, Language in Society, Vol. 29, No. 2 (June 2000). and also Connie Eble, “Creole in Louisiana”, South Atlantic Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Spring 2008). and also Charles Stewart, Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2007). and also Charles Stewart, “Creolization, Hybridity, Syncretism, Mixture”, Portuguese Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2011).

48_{Hall, Africans from Colonial Louisiana, 157.} 49_{Ibid., 157.}

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Chiefly in the Caribbean, certain parts of the Americas (esp. tropical South America […] and parts of Central America), and in Mauritius and Réunion: a person born in one of these countries, but of European or African descent. (Originally used to distinguish such people from those of similar descent who were born in Europe or Africa, and from indigenous

peoples. The following senses are clearly defined in early use, but the distinctions become less clear towards the present day. In modern use, the term is generally used for people with shared European linguistic and cultural heritage, rather than relating to race.)50

It may be clear that the definitions of the term Creole are a little vague. A person of non-American ancestry could be anyone, because every person living in the Americas, except for Amerindian people, is an individual with non-American ancestry. For this research, these definitions are, however, not that important, because the only thing that is genuinely vital is the defining of a Creole person as the people in Louisiana use it. This might look a little bit like the last part of the definition of the OED, Creole people in Louisiana had a language that was very similar to French and European culture is still present in Louisiana’s culture. This will definition of Creole be further specified in the following subchapter.

With a provisional definition of the word Creole, we can look at the phenomenon of Creolization. According to the OED Creolization is the:

“The action or process of taking on any of various characteristics or aspects of Creole people, their culture, etc.; esp. the assimilation of aspects of another culture or cultures; hybridization of cultures. Also: the action or process of becoming naturalized to life in a colonized

country.”51

According to Edouard Glissant, a famous historian, and writer from the French Antilles, creolization is a process that originates by conflicts and contacts between different cultures in countries in the Americas. Creolization is more than métissage; it adds something to the people who together are part of a Creole group, for example, a language. Writing about

Jamaica Edward Brathwaite, wrote that Creolization was a sociocultural situation that radiated outside of the slave community, which affected an entire culture. It is also a process of

50_{“Creole”, Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Oxford University Press consulted at}

05-22-2016, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/44229?redirectedFrom=Creole#eid.

51_{“Creolization”, Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Oxford University Press Consulted at}

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Americanization of cultures in the Americas because people of African descent are an important part of Creole cultures.52

It, thus, becomes apparent that the word Creole has had different meanings throughout the years, but that Creole people in Louisiana are a group with a shared European-like

language. In the Americas, where Creole communities emerged a process of creolization (or Africanization) took place.

Creole people and creolization in Louisiana

Métissage, Creole communities, and creolization, thus, all appeared in the Americas in the same contexts, Catholic Latin colonies. Now that we know this context and some definitions of these concepts, we can move our lens to Louisiana. This new focus is important because we can then find the context of the cultural assimilations which made the syncretism of religious traditions and the powers that come indirectly with Voodoo and similar traditions.

After the Louisiana Purchase by the United States in 1803 Creole, cultural

identification became a way to distinguish a Louisiana-born person and an Anglo-American person. In Southern Louisiana, it became the way to describe the language and the culture of the people that were native to this area. African, Spanish, and French roots were most significant within this Creole culture. Here in Louisiana, the slave culture was thoroughly Africanized from the beginning of the slave trade onward. Mixed blood-Creoles in Louisiana were proud of their Creole identity at the start of the nineteenth century. They emphasized their French ancestry and distinguished themselves from Anglo-African Americans and other Africans. They defined Creole as racially mixed. This is the definition of Creoles in

Louisiana.53

During the French period, Louisiana was not a society that was stable and controlled by a socially and culturally cohesive white, European elite. The conditions in the colony were chaotic, the size of the Amerindian population and the skills and knowledge of the enslaved Africans contributed to an Africanized culture. The slaves were unevenly distributed to a relatively small group of the ruling elite and, thus, clustered in groups. The fact that the slaves in Louisiana came directly from Africa, while most of the slaves in other North-American regions came from other areas in the Americas, is also a reason for the Africanization of

52_{Edouard Glissant, “Creolization in the Making of the Americas”, Caribbean Quarterly,}

Vol. 54, No. ½ (March-June 2008) 82, 83.; Hall, Africans from Colonial Louisiana, 158, 159.

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Louisiana, these slaves were therefore more aware of the culture that they came from in Africa.54

The Louisiana Creole language survived from the French period onwards and was widespread among people of African descent and people of European descent until World War II. This long survival is substantial evidence for the strength of Africanization in Louisiana. Language, of course, has a significant impact upon thought and so upon culture. People identify themselves and others by the language they speak. Their idioms, modes of communication, folk tales and songs are part of their cultural identity. In the drawing rooms of the white elite Louisiana Creole was the official language at some points.55

This Creolized identity gave large groups in Louisiana (African and Amerindian people, and also the lower class European people) a collective voice. Because, they became Creoles through métissage, and had a a syncretized religion, they became a group that was too big to ignore and to some extent to disadvantage for the colonizers.

54_{Ibid., 160, 161.}

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Part III – Why New Orleans?

Now that the basis of the history of syncretic religions and a concise history of métissage and Creolization in the Americas are clear, we have a complete view of the syncretism of religions within Creole communities in Louisiana and some areas in Latin America and the Caribbean. The focus of this research is, however, Voodoo in New Orleans, thus, it is now time to look at the context of New Orleans and the reason why it is New Orleans that is important in the history of Voodoo and its powers.

First, the dual character of the city will be explained and contextualized. The history of New Orleans is unique and it is important to know why this city is unique, and how this uniqueness started, to understand the powers that the practice of Voodoo imply. That is why the first part will serve the dual character of New Orleans; that is to say, the Creole character and the Americanized character. The second part shows the context and history of one of the most Africanized places of the city and the United States, Congo Square. This square was and is of great importance for the emancipation of Creoles, the practitioners of Voodoo, and the culture of New Orleans. After a contextualization of this square in the history of New Orleans and Creolization, it is time to focus on the Voodoo scene in New Orleans and especially on one of the most influential Creole women of New Orleans’ history, Marie Laveau, who was famous and mythicized for her Voodoo practices. Only when we know what Marie Laveau did for the Creole community in her position as Voodoo priestess, we can make conclusions about the power of Voodoo. Once these topics are served, we can make some conclusions about some powers of Voodoo in New Orleans.

City of dual character

The French colonial period, the Spanish colonial period and the Americanization of New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 all changed the city’s character forever. New Orleans is like a book where every page adds a contribution to the conclusion. Catholicism strongly influenced the Crescent City, and after the Louisiana Purchase, the Americans exposed the city to their Protestantism. The cultural practices that the French and Spanish colonists left were, however, already a too substantial part of Lousiana’s culture to completely ‘Protestantize’ and Americanize the city. The dual character of the identity of the city is worth looking at because it makes the city different from all the other cities in the United States, which might give us some clues about the reason how it is possible that Voodoo is still an

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important part of New Orleans’ culture. We will first look at the position of the city within the State of Louisiana and then pay attention to the dual character of the city.

New Orleans is the largest and especially the most famous city in the state of

Louisiana. It is, and always has been, a vital city in the history of Louisiana, especially in the nineteenth century in which the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War took place. Right after the Purchase the ports of New Orleans became wealthy, second to New York, by selling and buying goods as a member of the United States and by the slave trade. During the Civil War New Orleans was the largest city of the Confederacy. It also became an important place for immigrants to enter the states. The immigrants and Anglo-Americans started building new neighborhoods upriver.Although Anglo-American people changed the culture of New Orleans forever, it had by far the largest concentration of free people of color in the South, by the time of the Civil War. The free people of color remained French-speaking Catholic Creoles.56

The ‘Latin’ character that New Orleans in known for, because of its French and Spanish history and the Catholic culture, is of the two sides of New Orleans. The Anglo-American culture is the other side. The Anglo-Americans did everything they could to make New Orleans part of the culture of the United States and, thus, did their best to incorporate ‘the good things’ that they brought to New Orleans in New Orleans’ history. The character of New Orleans was not only two-sided because of the two cultures that clashed, but also because people see New Orleans as a very exotic city on one hand, but a city of savages and vagabonds on the contrary.

In 1936 Herbert Asbury, an American author and journalist, who wrote from a very American point of view. Asbury wrote about New Orleans’ dual characters in his book The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld and stated that this city’s history has been corrupt, with ‘gaudy’ social functions and lapses from the moral code.

56_{Billy H. Wyche, “The Union Defends the Confederacy: The Fighting Printers of New}

Orleans”, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Summer 1994) 280.; Connie Eble, “Creole in Louisiana”, South Atlantic Review, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Spring 2008) 46.; Johnson, “New Orleans’s Congo Square,139. For more about New Orleans, Creoles and American people after the Louisiana Purchase, see: Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992). and also Martha Ward, Voodoo Queen The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004). and also D. Ryan Gray, “Incorrigible Vagabonds and Suspicious Spaces in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans”, Historical Archeology, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2011). and also Thomas Ruys Smith, Southern Queen: New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011).

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He stated that the situation was at its worst right before the Louisiana Purchase, with the arrival of adventurers and vagabonds from all over the world. However, he said, under the rule of the U.S. New Orleans arrived at its golden age of wickedness and glamor. It was in this era that the city attained its stature as a city of uniqueness and sin. Asbury implies that the Americans freed New Orleans from corruption, but also made it better in its status as a city of temptations and sin. It is exactly the dual character that Abury tried to ‘Americanize’ in this statement.57

The city’s dual character, of Creolization and Americanization, is the context in which the Voodoo community maneuvered. One can even state that it was this character that formed this community. The Creoles of New Orleans constantly had to fit themselves into the

changing political and cultural situations that emerged in the city, because the policies towards their culture and religious traditions also changed.

Congo Square

One of the most famous places in New Orleans is Congo Square. The activities in this square are of a tremendous importance for the history of Creoles of New Orleans. It was the place where the enslaved Africans and people of African descent could gather and where the

Africanization of New Orleans started. And, although there are more areas in Louisiana where the Creole culture has had a major influence, there are no other examples of phenomena that are similar to Congo Square. This square is, thus a compelling case about the potency of the African slaves and free people of African descent in New Orleans. The extreme influence that it had on the city’s culture shows the power of the Creole community and their cultural and religious traditions.

The square used to be known as the Place des Négres and is localized on Rampart Street in what we now know as The French Quarter. This square is famous for its: “beat of the

bamboulas, the wail of the banzas, and the congeries of African dances that became the hallmark of

the square.”58 Music historians have speculated that it was the birthplace of jazz. The history of

57_{Herman Asbury, The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld}

(New York: Alfred A knopf, 1936) 3.

58_{Johnson, “New Orleans’s Congo Square”, 119. For more about the history and meaning of}

Congo Square, see: Ted Widmer, “The Invention of a Memory: Congo Square and African Music in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans”, Revue Française d’études américaines, No. 98, Is. 2 (December 2003). and also Gary A. Donaldson, “A Window on Slave Culture: Dances at

Piti a Piti, Zozo Fait son Nid: A History of Voodoo and Power in New Orleans