Drouin de Bercy describes a Vodou Ceremony, 1814

Louis Marie César Auguste Drouin de Bercy's account vividly portrays the perceived threat posed by individuals engaged in Vodou practices in the context of the Caribbean plantations during the nineteenth century. The detailed initiation ritual into the Vodou brotherhood, as described by Drouin de Bercy, reveals the complex and secretive nature of these practices, highlighting the perceived threat to the plantation system and the fear of rebellion that permeated the mindset of slaveholders in the Caribbean. The author's account contributes to our understanding of the intersections between religion, resistance, and perceptions of danger in the Atlantic world during this period. 

The Caprelata is a good-for-nothing who goes from plantation to plantation and never works. He pretends to be a sorcerer and sells the blacks amulets and fetishes that he assures them will let them do anything without being caught or punished or even hit by bullets. He wears on his body and head twenty or so little tails decorated with feathers and birds' feet, glass beads, grains, and shells.

The Don Pedro is a Negro that goes around the plantations at night to see his women. Not satisfied with stealing vegetables, poultry, and sheep, he carries off horses and sometimes little black boys. He is lazy, argumentative, and a boldfaced liar. He wears a couple of tails on his head and a long lock of hair on each side of the face.& He usually carries a large stick or a large whip called an arceau. Postillions, & carters, and stockmen are generally Don Pedros.

The Vodou is the most dangerous of all the Negroes. He works only when he has to; he is a thief, liar, and hypocrite. He gives the blacks bad advice and also subtle poisons with which they secretly kill live-stock, poultry, and whites and Negroes they don't like. Gatekeepers, the watchmen on provision grounds, gardens, and canefields, and a great number of old Negroes are Vodou. In their huts, they always have different poisons kept in coconut shells or calabashes. The Don Pedro and the Vodou constitute a combination that is all the more terrible in that its aim is the ruin and destruction of the whites and to persuade the Negroes they will never be happy unless they join. To be a Don Pedro, one must be a good pickpocket, bold-faced, stubborn, and hardened to blows, and must never reveal what happens at their meetings.

When the brotherhood believes there is nothing to fear from the weakness, cowardice, or indiscretion of a Negro who wants to become a Vodou, it informs the king of the organization. The member elect is then put through a month of tests. If he proves by his skill in larceny, his patience, his firmness, and his ability to stand being beaten that nothing can get him to tell its secrets, he is taken blindfolded into its inner sanctum. Once he kneels down, his blindfold is taken off. All around him he sees Negroes armed or decked out in a frightening manner, and in the middle of the chamber a large cloth on which there are scattered birds claws, feathers, and bloodstains.

An appalling noise announces the arrival of the Vodou king, who emerges from under the cloth carrying in one hand a burning ember and in the other a dagger. He asks the neophyte in a ferocious voice what he wants. "I wish," he says, "to kiss the sacred serpent and to receive from the Vodou queen her orders and her poisons." To test him, the king sticks the point of his dagger into his arm and into the fat of his thigh, which he then touches with the burning ember. If the Negro complains or grimaces, he is killed on the spot. If he doesn't raise an eyebrow, the armed blacks then lead him into a spacious room with a curtain at one end and in the middle a large Bamboula or drum, four feet high, decorated with ribbons, leaves, and fetishes.

The neophyte crosses the room on his knees and elbows between two rows of Negro men and women. On reaching the curtain, he makes an offering of the poultry and vegetables he has stolen. The curtain is immediately raised, and he sees on a throne the Vodou king ready to pierce him with an arrow, and next to him the queen, who is holding back the deadly weapon. As soon as his offering is made, the snake is wrapped around his body. He kisses it and then receives the orders and poisons of the queen to destroy in the next two or three months his [or: her] enemies and their animals.

Seven naked Negroes with leaves around their loins, feathers on their heads, and glass beads around their wrists take him and lead him to the sacred drum. They arm him with a stick similar to their own, and make him drink an intoxicating potion made of blood, gunpowder, and rum. After this, they sing and repeat in a chorus the following words, which they begin and end by hitting the Bamboula with a stick.

"A ia bombaia bombé, lamma samana quana, e van vanta, vana docki," which means, "We swear to destroy the whites and everything they possess. Let us die rather than renounce our oath."*

After the oath the men and women start to dance completely naked and drinking rum. The scene thereafter becomes nothing but an indecent orgy, with members of the opposite sex intertwined in each other's arms.

*This chant is likely in Kikongo, a language of the Congo Basin. Numerous scholars have debated the exact meaning of the chant. Some have accepted Drouin de Bercy's translation while others have offered their own. Either way, the chant does invoke Mbumba, an African deity that takes the form of a snake.