Excerpts on the Bois Caïman Ceremony

According to Professor David Geggus, Antoine Dalmas wrote what was likely the first account of the Bois Caïman Ceremony. Dalmas worked as a physician on the Galliffet plantation. His account came from witnesses of the ceremony after a failed attack on a plantation manager. Reading this excerpt can provide the reader with details about Vodou ceremonies and the feelings white colonists held regarding these practices. His account was written in 1793 and later published in 1814.

The elements of this plan had been worked out a few days before by the main leaders on the Lenormand plantation at Morne Rouge. Before carrying it out, they held a sort of celebration or sacrifice in the middle of an uncultivated, wooded area on the Choiseul plantation called Le Caïman, where the Negroes gathered in great number. An entirely black pig, surrounded with fetishes and loaded with a variety of bizarre offerings, was sacrificed to the all-powerful spirit of the black race. The religious ceremonies that accompanied the killing of the pig were typical of the Africans, as was their eagerness to drink its blood and the value they placed on getting some of its hairs as a sort of talisman that they thought would make them invulnerable. It was natural that such a primitive and ignorant caste would begin the most terrible attack with superstitious rites of an absurd and bloodthirsty religion.

Antoine Metral wrote his account several decades after the event in 1818. It is likely that he used the account published by Dalmas. Metral's account included the presence of a priestess taking part in the ceremony. His account also contained a long speech attributed to an anonymous conspirator, most likely the leader, Dutty Boukman.

The conspiracy became more and more certain. Following the testimony of an old slave arrested on the night of August 20, there was on the 14th at the Lenormand plantation, at Morne Rouge, an assembly composed of two deputies, from each workshop, from the parishes of Port-Margot, Limbé, Acul, Petite-Anse, Limo Nade, Plaine du Nord, Quartier-Morin, and several other places. The conspirators had to set the day of the insurrection which had been planned for some time. It is reported that before carrying out the plan, they made a sacrifice on a virgin piece of land covered with wood, called Lecaiman; that the victim was a black pig which they surrounded with fetishes, and loaded with offerings of various kinds; that a young priestess, dressed in a white dress, plunged the sacred knife into his entrails following the usual ceremonies; that they drank greedily of his blood, and that they took of his hair, kind of talisman which should make them invulnerable in combat. 

After this sacrifice, they went to the Lenormand dwelling, and having retired there to the most secret and secure place, having taken care to have the avenues carefully guarded, one of the conspirators, it is said, expressed himself in this way: “It is for the first time, my dear comrades, that freedom has united us, since the barbarians tore us from our homeland, far from our temples, and the tombs of our fathers, to place us on this side of the ocean, under the most inhuman slavery. Every year the sea and the earth are watered days and nights in excessive work without tasting the sweetness of rest, to enrich masters who live in abundance and idleness, while we lack all the things necessary for life. There is none of us whose members are not stained with the imprints of their tyranny; We grow old before our time and we die in youth. Rocks, caves, woods are useless to our freedom. We desire for retreats, which we would be happy to share with wild beasts. Abortions are frequent among our women; their breasts are dry or have milk only for the children of our masters. They defile our daughters barely out of childhood, profane our unions with adulteries full of disgusting pleasures, and do not fear to stain and disinherit the children of their blood when it interferes with ours. Such is the miserable destiny which oppresses us; the irons, the torments, the tortures make life evil for us. Which way should we turn our eyes? The past only presents us crimes without example against us and our race; the future will perpetuate them, our generations will only be born to serve. Children of the Sun, what do we have in common with these masters?

[...]

This speech made the deepest impression on the souls of the conspirators; fury could be seen on the features of their faces; vengeance rolled in their dark and fiery gazes. All, after having pronounced terrible oaths, wanted that very night to carry out their design, if they had not reflected that such a prompt execution would lead to difficulties and could encounter some unforeseen accident which would cause an enterprise to fail, of which nothing would happen. 

In the 1820s, Hérard Dumesle, a prominent political figure in the region, embarked on a journey to the northern province of Haiti. His documented recollection of the events centered on a ceremonious gathering, with a particular emphasis on an alleged speech delivered during the proceedings. Notably, while Dumesle highlighted this discourse, no such reference to a speech was made by Damas, indicating a divergence between the two accounts. Distinguishing itself from Metral's narrative, Dumesle's depiction stands out for its distinct style, adopting a poetic form and weaving in allusions to figures and events from ancient Greek and Roman history. A notable aspect of Dumesle's rendition is its apparent embellishment, suggesting a tendency toward dramatization and artistic embellishment in the retelling of the oration that is often attributed to Boukman, the leader at the ceremony and of the subsequent rebels. 

Toward the middle of the month of August 1791, the cultivators (sugar) manufacturers and artisans from several work gangs gathered during the night, in the midst of a violent storm in a thick forest that covers the summit of the morne rouge, and there formed a plan for a vast insurrection, which they sanctified through a religious ceremony…

Through the furrows traced by the lightning
Where the light of a hundred eclipsed fires is shining
Groups of the oppressed assemble in silence
They prostrate themselves invoking the assistance
Of the God who awakened amongst a people brilliant
The illustrious Spartacus, this slave valiant
Victim of destiny, but through the centuries an example

Whose name, whose virtues deserve a temple…

Nature stirred…
Three centuries of slavery outraged her clemency,
Dirtied her august presence with its crimes...
Vengeance awakens and shines the double-edged sword...
Excites that extraordinary thirst, the surprise of the senses,

The guide of desperation, and precursor of crime.
That by necessity has become legitimate.

A bull appeared, and this black color ...
[Was] offered by innocence as a sacrifice
To that deity adored by Hope.
Among the participants a speaker rises up
He has the august job of making the sacrifice
Holding a sacred blade, his arm brings to the victim

The fatal blow...He immediately consults its flank…

Prophetic delirium!.. Holocaust of blood!..
You unveil the fate of the noble enterprise
That forms heroes and renders them immortal!...

He speaks; and this language loved by our ancestors

That ingenious language that seemed made for them,

Whose naive accents, the portrait of their souls,
Give more eloquence to this burning speech…

"This God who made the sun, who brings us light from above,
Who raises the sea, and who makes the storm rumble,

That God is there, do you understand? Hiding in a cloud,

He watches us, he sees all that the whites do!
The God of the whites pushes them to crime, but he wants us to do
    good deeds.
But that God who is so good orders us to vengeance;
He will direct our hands, and give us help,
Throw away the image of the God of the whites who thirsts for our
    tears,
Listen to the liberty that speaks in all our hearts."
The oracle had spoken…

The next day it was almost midnight when the bell gave the signal for the disaster. The insurrection exploded with such furor that it created the most sad of spectacles. The conjured gathered on the plain, dispersed themselves into groups, and carried the spirit that animated them everywhere: Horror preceded them, destruction followed them and left behind them the disastrous traces of their passage. "Liberty, vengeance," these were their rallying cries; they were the divinities to which they sacrificed.