Chapter V: Vaudoux Worship and Cannibalism (2)

One case occurred in 1860, which was really so remarkable, and drew so much attention at the time, that there was no possibility of doubting it. It was supported by ample testimony. It was first told me by one of the most eminent medical men in Port-au-Prince, and confirmed by another, who had been an eyewitness of some of the details, and pledged his word as to its truth. I one day mentioned the story in the French Legation, as I was still somewhat sceptical, when, to my surprise, I found that it had been made the subject of an official report. Count Mégan, at that time _chargé d’affaires_ (1867), offered to give me an extract relating to that crime, with permission to publish it in any book I might write.

The following are the particulars:--“The police having been informed that some shrieks had been heard at night in the cemetery of Port-au-Prince, went there in the morning, and found a grave disturbed, and near it an open coffin, and lying at the side the body of a lady that had been buried on the previous day. A dagger had been thrust into her bosom, and as blood covered her burial clothes, it was evident that she had been buried alive. Many arrests took place, but the affair was hushed up. It was currently reported, however, that the husband had a mistress, whom he neglected after marriage, and that this woman applied to a Mamanloi for aid. She received a sleeping potion which she contrived to give to the lady during her first confinement, and she was hurriedly buried, to be restored to consciousness in the graveyard at dead of night, with her rival armed with a dagger before her. Her shrieks drew the attention of some Jamaica negroes, who ran towards the spot shouting, but whom superstition prevented from entering the cemetery. Their shouts, however, caused the murderers to fly, and leave the corpse where it was found next morning.” This is the story as told me by my medical friends, and it was universally believed to be true, and in fact was true, and was never denied by those in authority with whom I conversed on the subject.

The accounts given by my French and Spanish colleagues were more complete, and probably more exact, as they were both in Port-au-Prince when this tragedy occurred. My previous French colleague (the Marquis de Forbin Janson) wrote, 2d August 1860:--

“Deux jours après mon arrivé à Port-au-Prince, une femme endormie au moyen d’un narcotique et enterrée le soir au cimetière de la ville, fut exhumée dans la nuit; elle respirait encore, on la tua, puis on enleva la cervelle, le cœur et la foi de la victime, dont on retrouva de débris près de la tombe: le lendemain matin une enquête fut ordonnée, on fit plusieurs arrestations, entre autres celle d’une prêtresse du Vaudoux (Mamanloi). Cette femme fit des révélations y, offrit même de livrer à la justice les auteurs du meurtre et de la profanation en les attirant à la prison par une puissance irresistible ou ballant de son tambour d’une manière particulière. La justice et la police, déjà effrayées du nombre et de l’importance des personnes compromises, reculèrent devant cette nouvelle épreuve. On ordonna aux journaux de se taire et l’affaire fut étouffée. On croit que la principale mobile du crime fut un sentiment de vengeance, mais on tient pour certain que les parties mutilées ont été destinées à la célébration de quelque mystère Vaudoux du fetichisme africain encore pratiqué, quoiqu’on dise, par la grande majorité des Haïtiens.”

I think this case of so much importance, that, at the risk of repetition, I will give the report made by Mr. Alvarez:--

“In July of 1860 there was committed in Port-au-Prince a horrible, almost an incredible crime. A young woman died suddenly, and was buried on the following day. At night several individuals of both sexes went to the cemetery, dug up the coffin, and opened it. What they actually did is not known, but what is positive is that the unburied began to shriek and shout for help. The guard near the cemetery, composed of Jamaicans, Louisianians, and Creoles, approached, and saw the woman sitting in the coffin, and various persons--a torch in one hand and a dagger in the other--vociferating words they could not understand. The Creole soldiers of the country fled dismayed, but the Louisianians, as soon as they had overcome the first feeling of terror, ran to the succour of the unburied; already it was too late, they found her dead from the stroke of a dagger, and her heart and lungs torn from her bosom. The assassins escaped, but subsequently some prisoners were made. In a few days the prisoners were at liberty; and it is related that the lungs and the heart had been cooked and eaten in one of the country-houses in Bizoton.”

My friend, Auguste Elie, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, deplored but could not deny the truth of this story; and having no Vaudoux prejudices himself, having been born and bred in France, conversed freely on the subject, and told us many particulars that had come to his knowledge.

Of the truth of the following story I had the testimony of ocular witnesses. A lady hearing that a child near her house was ill, went down to see it. She found it lying stupefied in the mother’s lap. Her suspicions were aroused, and she sharply questioned the mother as to what had been done to the child. Her answers were so unsatisfactory, yet mournful, that the lady determined to keep a watch on the case. She called in the evening, and was told the child was dead. She insisted on seeing the corpse, and found that though the heart was still and the pulse had ceased to beat, yet that the child did not look dead, and made the remark to the bystanders, but they answered, “Yes, it is dead.” She told the mother she was not satisfied, and that she would return in the morning with her husband, and that in the meantime the body must not be buried. Next day she and her husband walked down to the house, and asked to see the body. The mother replied that the neighbours having insisted, she had allowed them to bury her child, and pointed out the grave. The French gentleman called to some of his labourers, and had the grave opened. There they found the coffin, but the child’s body was absent. Arrests were made, but nothing came of it. It is supposed that it was by this means that the Papalois were enabled to obtain victims during the French colonial period.

It is useless to multiply instances of these horrors; but that they are practised all over the island more or less under every government that has existed in Hayti is certain.

You often hear the expression used in Hayti, “Li gagné chagrin,” which, though, referring occasionally to a known cause, often applies to a sort of anæmia of the mind, when a person appears to care for nothing, or for what becomes of him. I have inquired as to what had been done to the man, and the answer, if in company, was, “We don’t know;” if you asked a person privately, he would probably reply that somebody had given him _wanga_, a generic word for poisons, philters, and charms.

The remark I made when I first began to inquire into this subject may naturally be repeated by others. If the majority of Haytians be tainted by the Vaudoux, who is it that denounces these horrible crimes, and how could a remedy be found? The answer is, that there are in Hayti, as I have before noticed, two sects of Vaudoux worshippers; one, perhaps the least numerous, that indulges in human sacrifices, the other that holds such practices in horror, and is content with the blood of the white goat and the white cock. At one time the police took no notice of the latter, and permitted them to carry on their ceremonies in Port-au-Prince in a large courtyard adjoining a house in which a friend of mine lived. To preserve as much secrecy as possible, the courtyard was hung round with cloth hangings, and watchmen placed to keep prying eyes at a distance; but my friend, though not curious, occasionally got a glimpse of the proceedings. They were much as those described by Moreau de St. Méry. In the country districts the Catholic priests say this sect calls themselves, “Les Mystères,” and that they mingle Christian and Vaudoux ceremonies in a singular manner. The name probably refers to the rites they practise. I have been assured by many gentlemen connected with the Haytian police, that if the followers of this sect did not secretly denounce to them the crimes committed by the others, it would be almost impossible for them to keep the assassin sect in check. It is probable that, acting with these comparatively harmless savages, the Haytian Government might be able to do much, if ever it seriously desires to put an end to the shedding of human blood.

I have been told that, besides the goat and cock, the Vaudoux occasionally sacrifice a lamb; this idea they have probably taken from the Catholic Church--the paschal lamb; it is carefully washed, combed, and ornamented before being sacrificed.

All that I have hitherto related refers more or less to human sacrifices as connected with religion; but there is another phase--cannibalism as practised for the sake of the food which the slaughtering of human beings affords to a vile section of the community.

In Mr. Consul Hutchinson’s paper on the traits of African tribes, published in the “Transactions of the Ethnological Society,” New Series, vol. i. p. 338, he states: “I have during the last year seen it stated in a Sierra Leone newspaper, on the authority of Mr. Priddy, a missionary of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connection in that colony, not that _he had heard of_, but _that he had seen_ hampers of dried human flesh carried about on men’s backs, to be sold for eating purposes, in the progress of a recent civil war between the Soosoo and Tisnney tribes.”[12] This is very similar to what was seen by a lady of my acquaintance in Hayti.

A lady, the widow of a missionary, was forced to stay in the interior of Hayti (north-east of Gonaives), after the death of her husband, on account of the civil war in the surrounding districts in the years 1868 and 1869, and she related some horrible incidents which were of her own knowledge. She declared that human sacrifices were constant, that human flesh was openly sold in the market. One would willingly have believed in exaggeration; but similar incidents, which occurred during the reign of Soulouque, related to me by one so intelligent and truthful as Auguste Elie, compelled me to accept as veritable the horrible stories she told in full detail.

Monsieur Desjardins, an eminent French merchant in Port-au-Prince, remarked to me that, walking near Cap Haïtien, he met a party of soldiers beating a man with their clubs; he inquired the reason, and they told their prisoner to open his basket, and there he saw the body of a child cut up into regular joints.

Auguste Elie told me he knew the following incident as a fact, which occurred during the reign of Soulouque. A man with whom he was acquainted was visiting in the plains with his wife, when she complained of feeling unwell, and they mounted their horses to return to town. At sunset, a violent storm coming on, they determined to halt at a cottage they saw near. They entered, and found two men and a woman there; his wife becoming worse, he determined to seek help, but was a long time before he could find any one to accompany him. On his return to the house, he inquired for his wife, and the people said that, becoming uneasy at his long absence, she had followed him. He rode away without saying a word, and calling at the next police station, induced the men to follow him; they surrounded the cottage, arrested the three inmates, and on searching the premises, found the body of the woman, already dismembered, in a cask in an outhouse. A thick layer of salt had been thrown over the remains. The only punishment these assassins received was that administered by the clubs of the police whilst conducting them to prison.

The Haytians occasionally publish accounts of these crimes. I read the following in one of their local papers. At Jacmel, on the southern coast, an old woman, a midwife, was lying on her death-bed surrounded by her neighbours, and they were somewhat surprised at her long struggles and loud groaning. At last she said, “I cannot die in peace; put aside the bed and dig underneath;” and on doing so, great was their astonishment to come on numerous small skeletons, which the old fiend acknowledged were the remains of children she had eaten. After this confession they say she died quietly. One cannot but be reminded of the horrible picture in the Wiertz Gallery in Brussels of the woman cutting up and cooking the infant. It must have been painted under the influence of nightmare.

That the practice of midwives slaying children for the purpose of eating them is an old one in Hayti is proved by the following story, related by Moreau de St. Méry:--

“On a eu à Saint Domingue (Haïti) des preuves que les Mondongues y avait gardé leur odieuse inclination, notamment en 1786, dans une negresse accoucheuse et hospitalière sur une habitation aux environs de Jérémie. Le propriétaire ayant remarqué que la plupart des negrillons périssait dans les huit premiers jours de leur naissance, fit épier la matrone; on l’a surpris mangeant un de ces enfans récemment inhumé, et elle avoua qu’elle les faisait périr dans ce dessin.”

As late as 1878, the last year of which I propose to treat, two women were arrested in a hut near Port-au-Prince. They were caught in the act of eating the flesh of a child raw. On further examination it was found that all the blood had been sucked from the body, and that part of the flesh had been salted for later use. In 1869 the police arrested, in that beautiful valley to which I have referred in my first chapter, about a dozen cannibals, and brought them bound to La Coupe. They had been denounced by the opposing sectaries of the Vaudoux. From the time they were taken from their houses they were beaten in the most unmerciful manner, and when thrown into prison they were tortured by the thumbscrew and by tightened cords round their foreheads, and under the influence of these they made some fearful avowals, in which, however, little confidence could be placed. A French priest, with whom I was on intimate terms, hearing of their arrest, had the curiosity to go and see them. At first they would not converse with him, but when they found him protesting against the inhumanity with which they had been treated, and threatening the jailer that he would officially report him should such conduct continue, they placed more confidence in him. He visited them nearly every day, and had many conversations with them in private. They confessed to him that their avowals under torture were true; and when the priest, horrified by the details, said to a mother, “How could you eat the flesh of your own children?” she answered coolly, “And who had a better right,--est-ce que ce n’est pas moi qui les ai fait?”[13]

One of these prisoners died under the torture of the cord tightened round his forehead.

Though the Haytians believe in the mythical “_loup garou_,” they have also the fullest faith in his counterpart among their fellow-countrymen. It is the _loup garou_ who is employed by the Papaloi to secure a child for sacrifice in case the neighbourhood does not furnish a suitable subject; and they are supposed to hang about lonely houses at night to carry off the children. I have often heard my young Haytian servants rush into my country-house laughingly saying that they had seen a _loup garou_--their laugh, however, tinged with a sort of dread. They have often said that these human monsters prowl about the house at night, and that nothing but the presence of my dogs kept them in respect. I have occasionally seen the object of their fear in an ill-looking negro hanging about the gate, but the sight of my dogs was enough to induce him to move on. The negroes have fortunately an almost superstitious terror of dogs.

There is no doubt that these _loup garous_ do carry off many children, not only for the priests, but for cannibals. They generally look only for native children, and I have only heard of one instance in which they attempted to carry off a white girl. She was snatched from the arms of her nurse, whilst walking on the Champs de Mars, by a huge negro, who ran off with her towards the woods, but being pursued by two mounted gentlemen who accidentally witnessed the occurrence, he dropped the child to save himself.

One of my Haytian friends who had studied botany informed me that the number of poisonous plants to be found on the island is very great, and that it was absolutely certain that the Papalois made use of them in their practices. I believe in some French botanical works lists of these plants have been published, and their medical value would appear to merit further study. It is not more remarkable that the Papalois should know the properties of the plants in Hayti than that the Indians of Peru and Bolivia should have discovered the properties of the cinchona bark and the coca-leaf.

If it be remembered that the republic of Hayti is not a God-forsaken region in Central Africa, but an island surrounded by civilised communities; that it possesses a Government modelled on that of France, with President, Senate, and House of Representatives; with Secretaries of State, prefects, judges, and all the paraphernalia of courts of justice and of police; with a press more or less free; and, let me add, an archbishop, bishops, and clergy, nearly all Frenchmen,--it appears incredible that sorcery, poisonings for a fee by recognised poisoners, and cannibalism, should continue to pervade the island. The truth is, that except during one year of Geffrard’s Presidency, no Government has ever cared resolutely to grapple with the evil. If they have not encouraged it, they have ignored it, in order not to lose the favour of the masses.