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 ~ 1 ~

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. ~ 2 ~

Contents Abstract ...... 1 Introduction ...... 3 Part I – Origins of Afro-syncretic religions ...... 8 Roman Catholicism ...... 8 African Ethnic Groups ...... 10 Voodoo and Vodoun, Santería and Candomblé ...... 13 Part II - Creolization in the Americas ...... 16 Métissage ...... 16 Métissage in Anglophone colonies ...... 17 Métissage in the Latin Colonies in South America ...... 19 Métissage in the French colonies ...... 19 Creoles and Creolization ...... 22 Creole people and creolization in Louisiana...... 24 Part III – Why New Orleans?...... 26 City of dual character ...... 26 Congo Square ...... 28 New Orleans Voodoo ...... 34 Part IV - The power in Voodoo ...... 44 The power of belief ...... 45 Power of a priest in his/her community ...... 47 Power of brand identity ...... 48 Conclusion ...... 56 Bibliography ...... 59 Primary Sources ...... 59 Books ...... 59 Articles in Newspapers ...... 59 Secundary sources ...... 60 Books ...... 60 Articles ...... 62 Websites ...... 67 Images ...... 68 Inspiration title ...... 69

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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 Africa, Vol. 18, Fasc. 1 (February 1988) 19. ~ 4 ~

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 06-22-2016, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/196428?redirectedFrom=Syncretism#eid. ~ 5 ~ 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. ~ 6 ~

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. ~ 7 ~ 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, ~ 9 ~

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 Orleans (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2004) 1, 2. ~ 10 ~

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). ~ 11 ~ 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, ~ 12 ~ 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 Chicago Press, 1995). ~ 13 ~ 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. 21For 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). 22 Fandrich, ”Yorúbá Influences”, 779. ~ 14 ~ 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.” ~ 15 ~

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. ~ 16 ~

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 ~ 17 ~ 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. ~ 18 ~ 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 amalgamation of 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. 35 Ibid., 106, 107, 108. ~ 19 ~ 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 Contemporary Perspective”, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 35 (2009) 133. ~ 20 ~ 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 and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 1 (January 2003) 75, 76. ~ 21 ~ 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. 46 Frederickson, “Mulattoes and Métis”, 105, 106. ~ 22 ~ 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. ~ 23 ~

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 06-17-2016, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/44232?redirectedFrom=Creolization#eid. ~ 24 ~

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. 53 Ibid., 157, 158, 159. ~ 25 ~

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. 55 Ibid., 188, 189, 195. ~ 26 ~

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 ~ 27 ~ 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 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). ~ 28 ~

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 ~ 29 ~

Congo square was continuously and largely documented. It became an institution that affected every New Orleanian, black and white, citywide. It reflected the history of the Creole population of the city and the State, which makes the square very significant. With the formation and popularity of this place, the people of New Orleans and Louisiana could no longer ignore the people related to the activities in the square, which resulted in their emancipation. The activities in Congo Square helped the people of African descent to keep and recreate the social networks that they lost during the slave trade. The African functions of music, icons and dance made the participants able to create a bridge between themselves and Africa. Through the dances, the participants achieved a union with their loved ones in Africa. They reenacted old patterns that existed for ages and kept a bond with their ancestors through these actions.59 The origin of Congo Square lies in the early decades of the founding of the city during the French colonial period. It was not immediately a place where people gathered to play and sing; it was used as a public market instead. The dancing and singing was one of the by- products of the market.60 During the first decades of the French colonization, the colony lacked local production of food. There were massive food shortages. During these shortages, planters banked upon expansion of slave labor to save them, but they could not afford food for their increased numbers of slaves. They therefore made their slaves more self-sufficient. They started giving the slaves parcels of land to grow their own food as well as crops to sell. If the slaves had the opportunity to work on their own land their master did not have to give them food. Planters soon started to see advantages in exempting slaves from forced labor during religious holidays and on Sundays. The slaves used these days to hire themselves for wages or to take their crops, berries, nuts and fish that they plucked and caught themselves to the markets in New Orleans. With the proceed they were able to buy necessities, like clothes. The historian and naturalist Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz said:

It is moreover for your own interest to give your negroes a small piece of waste ground to improve at the end of your own, and to engage them to cultivate it for their own profit, that they may be able to dress a little better, by selling the produce of it, which you ought to buy

Congo Square in New Orleans, 1800-1862”, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Spring 1984). 59 Walker, No More, No More, 46; Johnson, “New Orleans’s Congo Square”, 119, 120. 60 Ibidem., 121. ~ 30 ~

from them upon fair and just terms. It were better that they should employ themselves in cultivating that field on Sundays, when they are not Christians, than do worse.61

This relative freedom that slaves had to earn some money themselves, indicates that they started emancipating from this moment in the early years of New Orleans. What made the situation of slaves in Louisiana different from other areas in North America was that slaves got the right to use their free time as they wanted, with no or little supervision of the slave owner. This situation never existed in other parts of the South, although slaves in South Caroline did have non-workdays, which proves that the slaves in New Orleans had slightly more freedom. In the end, this freedom resulted in the emergence of Congo Square and the relative emancipation of people of African descent in New Orleans. 62 By the last decade of French rule in Louisiana, the trading activities of slaves in Congo Square were a significant part of New Orleans’ life. The Spanish colonists kept the activities in existence because they were familiar with slave vendor markets. They had seen it in Havana and other Caribbean cultures too. These similarities in slave vendor markets in New Orleans and Latin America show the resemblance in slave culture in these areas. The Spanish attitude toward these markets illustrates the continuity during the French and the Spanish period.63 The Louisiana Purchase was the start of a new era in the history of Congo Square. The invasion of Americans brought a period of determination and assertiveness and of an influx of Anglo-American immigrants that was not known before. It was the first time Anglo-Protestant culture arrived in New Orleans. This new culture that came into New Orleans influenced the gradient of the practices in the Square.64 The square had different purposes, but its use as a place where African and Afro- Creoles gathered kept being its most famous use. During all those years of various colonial powers and different governors, they could never really change this. It has always been an important place for Creoles to come together and celebrate the traditions of their African ancestors. Anglo-American observers looked with fascination to the dances on Congo Square

61 Le Page du Pratz, The History of Louisiana or of The Western Parts of Virginia and Carolina: Containing a Description of the Countries that Lie on Both Sides of the River Mississippi: With an Excess to the Settlements, Inhabitants, Soil, Climate and Products, Translated from the French (London: Corner of the Adelphi, 1774) Sect. 2. 62 Johnson, ”New Orleans’s Congo Square”, 122, 124. 63 Ibid., 128, 129, 131, 132, 133. 64 Ibid., 135 . ~ 31 ~ on Sundays were concerned about slave revolts when that much slaves and free people of African descent came together, but they were especially fascinated with what they saw. The music they heard in Congo Square and the dances they saw had not been in existence in other places of the United States for ages because they disappeared due to the American efforts to make African slaves adopt the Anglo-American norms. Congo Square became thé place for these dances because slave vendors danced while they wiled away the day between their sales. The fact that the Americans defined the activities in Congo Square as mainly music and dance was the reason that they allowed the activities for years. They used a European evaluation of the dances and the music. The Anglophone people did not see the expressions that embodied the music, the icons, the masques and the dances. Therefore, the cultural practices could survive. The drumming, singing, and dancing were part of a powerful spiritual tradition that they could maintain in Congo Square. First the trance dances were associated with Voodoo, but voodooists moved their rites to other, more isolated, locations when tourists started coming to the square.65 Henry Benjamin Latrobe, an American civil engineer, described the happenings in Congo Square as following:

They were formed into circular groups […] In the first were two woman dancing. They held each a coarse handkerchief extended by the corners in their hands, & set to each other in a miserably dull and slow figure hardly moving their feet or bodies. The music consisted of two drums and a stringed instrument. […] a cylindrical drum about a foot in diameter & beat it with incredible quickness with the edge of his hand and fingers. […] Most of the circles contained the same sort of dancers. […] A man sung […] to the dancing which I suppose in some African language, for it was not French & the women screamed a detestable burthen on one single note.66

The dances at Congo Square became outings by locals and tourists. This tourist interest in the activities in Congo Square was the start of a Voodoo minded tourism in New Orleans. 67 The passage of time changed the dances in Congo Square. The population that was born in Africa shrunk, and so there were fewer people who could teach the African dances. They started incorporating some European steps in the dances due to this lack of African-born

65 Ibid., 242 – 144. 66 Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Impressions Respecting New Orleans: Diary and Sketches 1818 – 1820, quoted in: Walker, No More, 3. 67 Ibid., 45.; Johnson, “New Orleans’s Congo Square”, 138, 140 - 144. ~ 32 ~ participants.68 This adoption of some European uses was the Creolization of the activities on Congo Square, it was mixed with European traditions and became a Creole happening instead of an African happening. The dances continued for a long time after the Louisiana Purchase, but with more and more restrictions. In 1837 it was decided that dances were only allowed on Sundays from 12:00 until sunset, under surveillance of the police. In 1845 slaves were required to have written permission of their masters. Still, the square remained a fairground and meeting place. The survival of African dances in New Orleans lasted long enough to survive an assimilation process that was peculiar to New Orleans. African cultures in New Orleans never died, but were transformed. Congo Square provided the most important platform for this transformation. That is the significance of Congo Square and what makes the square incredibly valuable.69 On the 27th of January in 1851, The Daily Crescent reported that Congo Square would become the new Place d’armes, where the militia drilled during Sunday afternoons. In 1856 the government made it unlawful to blow a horn, sound a trumpet or beat a drum in the city. After that, public dances were prohibited without permission of the mayor. The Sunday dancers were intimidated by the presence of the militia and harassed by police officers until they stopped coming. The people who wanted to Americanize New Orleans, thus, ended the dances70 that were typical for New Orleans and Congo Square.71 They succeeded in making the dances disappear but were too late to stop the cultural process that started as a result of the dances and the gatherings. The dances in Congo Square never returned in its greatness. A new self-awareness evolved in the city at the end of the nineteenth century. There was a cotton exposition that raised national attention to the city. The exhibition made New Orleanians realize that their city was different from any other place in the United States. And they realized that this was something to be proud of as an inhabitant of this unique place. The history of Congo Square became a ‘national’ pride, and the Creole people were the people that made the square what is was. The New Orleans Bulletin of August the 27th of 1875 published an article called: A Glance at other days: Congo Square Thirty Years Ago, African Dancing that expressed these sentiments in the passage:

68 Ibid., 146. 69 Ibid., 147, 149. 70 Dances kept in existence, but not in the public spheres. 71 “New Orleans: Monday Morning January 27, 1851”, The Daily Crescent, 01-27-1851.; Johnson, “New Orleans’s Congo Square”, 150, 151. ~ 33 ~

There are yet many who can recall the Sunday evening dances of the negroes and negresses at Congo Square before the war. […] We are of the opinion that New Orleans enjoyed the monopoly of this peculiar fetish and traditional terpsichorean exhibition, for we have yet to learn that in any other of the other Southern states was it practiced. From 1809 down to about ’50, every Sunday afternoon found gathered in the lower corner of Congo Square a group of negroes, male and female, who, infatuated with the sport, visited the place regularly for the purpose of enjoying the exiting pleasures of dancing the “Bamboula”. The dance was doubtless an original African one, for the motions are still observable in Central Africa to- day.72

This passage not only shows the sentiments of proudness that existed during the publication of this article. It also showed the effort of the Americans to claim the history this exceptional phenomenon of the dances in Congo Square, by arguing that the dances started after the Louisiana Purchase. Due to this new proudness and the American attempts to rewrite the history of Congo Square in their favor, the people of African descent got an important role in the history of New Orleans. Thus, they became considered as legitimate inhabitants of the city. Another example of the American attempts to rewrite the history of Congo Square is the following passage in Herman Asbury’s French Quarter.

The slaves in Louisiana had no freedom of movement whatsoever until the coming of the Americans, who brought to bear upon the whole question of slavery a new viewpoint, entirely different from that of the French and Spanish, which gradually compelled the liberalization of the laws and customs regulating the life of the black man. Recognizing the value of recreation and a measure of social intercourse in keeping the Negro contented with his lot the American authorities began to allow the slaves to gather for dancing. These assemblies appear to have begun about 180573

Asbury’s passage shows that even in the twentieth century the sentiments of proudness of the developments of African culture in New Orleans remained.74

72 “A Glance at other days: Congo Square Thirty Years Ago, African Dancing”, The New Orleans Bulletin, 08-27-1875. 73 Asbury, The French Quarter, 239. 74 “A Glance at other days”, The New Orleans Bulletin.; Asbury, The French Quarter, 239.; Johnson, “New Orleans’s Congo Square”., 138. ~ 34 ~

At the end of the 1920’s ideas for a municipal cultural complex was raised. The first building in this category was a multi-purpose auditorium in front of the cleaned-up square. Nowadays there is an Armstrong Park-Congo Square complex with four old buildings, a concert hall, a jazz museum and sometimes performances on the grassy field. There is a theater for performing arts and the Mardi Gras parades still end at Congo Square, as they used to. The Municipal Auditorium became the first racially integrated public facility in the South. So, the memory of Congo Square and its cultural value is kept alive as a place where people come together to celebrate, share and enjoy music and dances.75 The power of the African and Creole practices, which were closely related to Voodoo, thus, had an enduring influence on New Orleans’ culture and the emotional bond that New Orleanians have with their city.

New Orleans Voodoo

New Orleans is not only famous for its large Creole community, but also for the practice of Voodoo by the Creole population. There are dozens of movies, books, and stories about the Voodoo cult in New Orleans, and nowadays there are a lot of Voodoo inspired attractions for tourists. As I argue in this research, it was Voodoo, and similar syncretized religious traditions like Vodoun, Santería, and Candomblé, that gave the Creole people some power. Through the practice of Voodoo and cultural practices that are related, Creole people were, for example, able to keep some of the traditions of their ancestors. The concept of magic in Voodoo gave them the idea that they had some influence on the course of their lives and that they had some standby from the rules of Voodoo and the Voodoo priests. Because New Orleans is famous for its Voodoo scene, it is now time to look at Voodoo particularly in New Orleans and why it is famous. Once we know why Voodoo is that important in this city, we can consider how it helped the Creole people of New Orleans. In September 1947 a newspaper in New Orleans The New Orleans Item published an article about a housewife in New Orleans who discovered three slices of cake, tucked under her doorstep and immediately called the police. The police did not dismiss her as a crank caller but listened to her story. The woman and the police, both citizens of New Orleans, recognized the cake as a gris-gris, that was part of a Voodoo ritual. After analysis of the cake,

75 Ibidem., 152, 154, 157. ~ 35 ~ the Item stated that the cake contained pulverized rent receipts, nail parings, a tomcat’s whiskers, the grease of a candle that was burned to Saint John the Baptist and the remains of the virility of a rooster. To one that did not grow up in an Americanized New Orleans, this might sound like a story of a lunatic, but this was the way Americans in New Orleans thought that people practice Voodoo. Sensationalist stories about occasions of Voodoo in New Orleans show that Voodoo has been an important tradition in the city because without the presence of this tradition Americans could not have picked it up in their stories, at least not to that extent.76 In the New Orleans of right after the Louisiana Purchase not only the dances in Congo Square were more and more restricted by the American government, there were also regulations against practicing medicine without a license and against fortune-telling. These restrictions made the Voodoo practitioners subject to prosecution. As a result of this, and possibly also as a consequence of the way that Americans interpreted the traditions, Voodoo became a tradition that people practiced secretly, it became clandestine and therefore even more mysterious.77 One of the most important figure(s) of the Voodoo scene in New Orleans, a figure that has been romanticized, sensationalized and more or less pulled out of context is the figure of Marie Laveau. The importance of Marie Laveau as what seems like the embodiment of Voodoo becomes clear in an article in the Columbia Missourian Newspaper of 08-26-1976 with the title: Does Queen of Voodoo Still Reign?. The author writes: “’She was a very, very brilliant woman who utilized business with a little bit of larceny.’ Salbe said. ‘She practiced many of the black arts and made business of it.’ Up until the 1940’s, police reported evidence of voodoo activity in New Orleans’ Congo Square area.”78 He explains Lavaeau’s brilliance and

76 Lewis Flannery, “Watch Doorstep for Voodoo”, quoted in: Kodi A. Roberts, Voodoo and Power: The Politics of Religion in New Orleans 1881-1940 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015) Ebook, Kindle, location 287 – 296. 77 Roberts, Voodoo and Power, location 316. 78 “Does Queen of Voodoo Still Reign?”, Columbia Missourian Newspaper, 08-26-1976. For more about Marie Laveau and Voodoo in New Orleans, see: Carolyn Morrow Long, “Marie Laveau: A Nineteenth-Century Voodoo Priestess”, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Summer 2005). and also Jeffrey E. Anderson, “The Voodoo Queen Unearthed: Three Recent Biographies of Marie Laveau”, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 13, No. 1 (August 2009). and also Fandrich, Ina J., “The Birth of New Orleans’ Voodoo Queen: A Long-held Mystery Resolved”, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Summer, 2005). ~ 36 ~ immediately goes on about the practice of Voodoo itself. He equates the practice of Voodoo with the reign of Marie Laveau.79 The mythology around Marie Laveau also becomes clear in an article in of The Democratic Press of April 1886.

From George W. Cable’s article on Creole slave songs […] we quote the following concerning the famous Marie Laveau: ‘The worship of Voodoo is paid to a snake kept in a box. The worshippers are not merely a sect, but in some rude, savage way also an order. A man and woman and woman chosen from their own number to be oracles of the serpent deity are called the king and queen. The queen is the more important of the two.’ [..] I once saw, in her extreme old age, the famed Marie Laveau. […] in an ill old-looking old rocking-chair, the queen of the voodoos. […] They said she was over a hundred years old, and there was nothing to doubt upon this statement. There was still a faint shadow of departed beauty on the forehead, the spark of an old fire in the sunken, glistening eyes and a vestige of imperiousness in the fine, slightly aquiline nose, and even about her silent, woe-begone mouth.80

This article shows the idea of Laveau’s immortality as Voodoo Queen, her never ending wisdom and her status as old queen, but it also shows a more objective account of Marie Laveau’s position within her community and her death not long after George Cable met her.81 One of the most comprehensive accounts of Marie Laveau is the account of Zora Neate Hurston in her book: Mules and Men, that was published in 1935. Hurston was an African-American woman, born and reared in Eatonville, Florida, who traveled through the South to enter the African communities that she was part of, as a collector of folklore. She was, thus, both more or less familiar with the cultures as an initiate. Some of Hurston’s stories are probably not directly from her research in the communities. She sometimes picked them up elsewhere, and she might even have invented a few stories herself.82 The first person in New Orleans that wanted to talk to Hurston about Marie Laveau is Luke Turner, a Voodoo doctor, who claimed that he was a nephew of Marie Laveau. What followed was a story with many mythical parts and symbols. Turner told that Marie Laveau

79 Does Queen of Voodoo Reign, Colombia. 80 George W. Cable, Creole Slave Songs, quoted in: “A Voodoo Queen”, The Democratic Press, 04-29-1886. 81 “A Voodoo Queen”, Democratic Press. 82 Arnold Rampersad, Mules and Men, Foreword (New York: Harperperennial Modernclassics, 2008) XIII, XXII, XXIII. ~ 37 ~ was born on February the second of 1827, that she was a Creole Quadroon and that she was very beautiful. As a teenager, she was not interested in Voodoo, she was only interested in going to dances. One day, Turner said, a rattlesnake came into her bedroom to talk to her, and he stayed with her. She lived on St. Anne Street where people started to visit her from all parts of the States to get help from her.83 Turner told that the whites used to say that she organized Voodoo dances in Congo Square, but that the dances on Congo Square were only pleasure dances. They danced like they did in Haiti, Tuner said. Voodoo was always private. The dances were each Friday night. The police wanted to put her in jail, because of the stories they had heard about her, but they did not manage to arrest her, for she bewitched them.84 “The whole station force come. They knock at her door. She know who they are before she ever look. She did work at her altar and they all went to sleep on her steps.”85 Every year on the 24th of June, the Eve of St. John’s, she held a great feast at the side of Lake Pontchartrain. Because of Midsummer Eve, the sun gave special powers and benefits during this day. The people that were close to Marie did the preparations for the feast because she always disappeared for nine days before the feast. “She hold the feast of St. John’s partly because she is a Catholic and partly because of hoodoo. […] But when the great crowd of people at the feast call upon her, she would rise out of the waters of the lake with a great communion candle burning upon her head and another in each one of her hands. She walked upon the water to the shore. As a little boy I saw her myself.”86 After the celebrations, she would go back into the lake and disappear for nine days. This passage of the feast of St. John’s is very interesting because Tuner (or Hurston) described the character of Laveau as a mythical figure and a Saint herself. The way Hurston portrays her, she is a kind of Lady of the Lake as in the legends of King Arthur and this description shows some similarities with the Orisha Yemayá (as she is called in Santería), Yemanya (as they call her in Candomblé) and Yemôya (as people call her in Yoruba). Because Yemayá was the Orisha, who has power over the ocean and is the patron of womanhood and motherhood. Yemanya is equated with the Catholic Saint Our Lady of Candeias, also known as Candelaria. This image of Laveau, thus, shows similarities with the from Africa deriving traditions of Yemayá and the Catholic Candelaria.87 These equations are

83 Zora Neate Hurston, Mules and Men (New York: Harper perennial Modern Classics, 1935) 191 - 193. 84 Hurston, Mules and Men, 193. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Fandrich, “Yorúbá Influences”, 784. ~ 38 ~ an interesting example of how people have portrayed Marie Laveau; as a saint-like figure (and was made part of the tradition of saints that are an important part of Voodoo and similar traditions) and who had supernatural powers and was able to cast spells on police officers. When Hurston asked Turner how Marie Laveau did her work he answered:

She go to her great Altar and seek until she become the same as the spirit, then she come out into the room where she listens to them that come to ask. When they finish she answer them as a god. If a lady have a bad enemy and come to her she go into her altar room and when she come out and take her seat, the lady will say to her […] On my knees I pray to you, Good Mother, that you will cause confusion to reign in the house of my enemy and that you will take their power from them and cause them to be unsuccessful. Marie laveau is not a woman when she answer the one who ask. No. She is a god, yes. Whatever she say, it will come so. She say: Oh, my daughter, I have hear your woes and your pains and tribulations, and in the depth of the wisdom of the gods I will help you find peace and happiness.88

After that followed a description of a ritual that the guest has to perform. A sheet of paper had to be dipped into Vinagredes Four Volle. The name of the enemy had to be written on the sheet, and the client had to send it to the house of the enemy, sealed with the wax if the porcupine plant. Then after three days the water of the god Mars, War Water, had to be sprinkled in front of the enemy’s house. If the enemy was a woman, the egg of a guinea fowl had to be put into the powder of Cayenne pepper and the dirt taken out of a grave, Goofer. This poweder has to be set on fire in the house of the client and cooked in rainwater. After this part of the ritual, the enemy would not be able to have children. What followed was that the ‘Damnation Powders’ had to be sent to the home of the enemy, which would bring trouble and damnation to the enemy.89 Hurston’s description of Marie Laveau is a good example of the mythology that evolved around the character of Marie but, who was the real Marie Laveau? It is important to know who the real Marie Laveau was because then we can tell what her true function was within the Voodoo community and in the powers that came with the tradition of Voodoo. An example of a more nuanced article about Marie Laveau was an article after Marie’s death in 1881, published in the New York Times. It was called: The Dead Voodoo Queen: Marie Laveau’s place in the History of New-Orleans, the Early Life of the Beautiful Young Creole-

88 Hurston, Mules and Men, 195. 89 Ibid., 195, 196. ~ 39 ~

The Prominent Men who sought her advice and Society – Her Charitable Work – How She Became an Object of Mystery. The article stated:

To the superstitious Creoles Marie appeared as a dealer in the black arts and a person to be dreaded and avoided. Strange stories were told about of the rites performed by the sect of which Marie was the acknowledged sovereign. […] while others asked for love powders to instill affection into the bosom of their unwilling or unsuspecting sweethearts. Whether there ever was any such sect, and whether Marie was ever its queen. […] she was endowed with more than the usual share of common sense, and her advice was oft-times really valuable […] Adding to these qualities the gift of great beauty, no wonder that she possessed a large influence in her youth and attracted the attention of Louisiana’s greatest men and most distinguished visitors.90

The article also mentions some biographical information about Marie; about her marriage, in the St. Louis Cathedral by a cleric called Pére Antoine with a man that disappeared after a year. And about her later marriage with Christophe Dominique Glapion, It also describers Marie receiving lawyers, planters and legislators, etc. in her home in St. Anne Street and how they all came to pay their respect to her.91

Coming in daily contact with the best informed men of that period, and possessing a remarkably retentive memory, it is no wonder that she acquired a large store of valuable information. She was by no means backward in delivering her opinions, and as her predictions nearly always came true, and the course she suggested generally proved the wisest, Marie soon possessed a larger clientele than the most astute and far-seeing legal counseler.92

It is clear that this article in the New York Times is far more nuanced than the articles we saw before. The article tries to construct the reason for Laveau’s popularity and her position within the community of New Orleans. The Marie Laveau that the author of the article portrays in this article might have looked like the real Marie Laveau that lived in Nineteenth-century

90 “The Dead Voodoo Queen: Marie Laveau’s Place in the History of New-Orleans, The Early life of the Beautiful Young Creole- The Prominent Men who Sought her Advice and Society, - Her Charitable Work – How She Became an Object of Mystery”, New York Times, 06-23- 1881. 91 “The Dead Voodoo Queen”, New York Times. 92 Ibid. ~ 40 ~

New Orleans. This Marie shows a lot of similarities with the Marie Laveau that scholars write about nowadays. The famous Marie Laveau was, in reality two women carrying the same name; mother and daughter. Both were Creole in New Orleans. They were, and still are, that popular that thousands of visitors to New Orleans make a pilgrimage to the tomb that is said to hold Marie’s remains in St. Louis Cemetery, year after year. They leave flowers, candy, salt, gum, wine, food, coins and other offerings at the graveside. People mark the sides and front of the tomb with X marks. People do this as a sign of wishes and requests for Marie Laveau. Laveau used the X as her autograph on records.93 The stories tell about Marie the First as a mother-like figure, healing people with yellow fever and saving people from the noose with magical powers. Marie the Second is said to have ‘cured’ domestic violence. According to loads of stories they influenced murder trials by working gris-gris on judges and caused husbands to disappear. The lives the women led was dangerous for sure, but not because of them bewitching people. They were Creole leaders in the largest Creole community in the United States, living as French Catholics in an Anglo- Protestant world. They helped slaves to escape and assembled as Creoles in a city where assemblies between enslaved and free people of African descent were discouraged more and more. They lived in an age of great changes in this place of dual character. Their New Orleans went from golden Creole years to antebellum New Orleans, to a city that was the battleground of the Civil War. Their lives paralleled the passing of Creole life in New Orleans; they became the embodiment of Creole woman in New Orleans during the nineteenth century. Marie the First her mother was brought from Congo to New Orleans. She might have passed the Congolese spiritual traditions to her daughter and granddaughter. They were ngangas, diviners. These diviners did fortune-telling, dream-interpreting, and trance experts, using drums, dances and clapping. Their biggest task was to address social problems like luck and love. Greed, anger and jealousy were the curses that made people suffer, and they worked as a sort of therapist to address this. Nganga sounds like Ouanga, which is why the Laveaus were called Wangateurs. This term became a synonym for Voodooist.94 The Maries might, thus, have had a position as a divinator. The First of the Maries was known as a practicing Catholic; she attented every Sunday mass. They say she made a deal with the pastor of the St. Louis Cathedral. This pastor, Pére

93 Ward, Marie Laveau, IX, 12, 13. 94 Ibid., IX, X, 11. ~ 41 ~

Antoine. She would have agreed to send her protégés to the Catholic church and let them observe baptism, marriage, and communion. Pére Antoine would then allow ceremonial coexistence of Voodoo traditions at marriages and births. Pére Antoine was Laveau’s Catholic mentor. He used to be an Inquisitor during the Spanish period but never persecuted a heretic woman. He went from inquisitor to Creole Saint. He gave money to single mothers and they accused him of debauchery for this. He baptized and buried people of whom the authorities forbade him to bless, like concubines, prostitutes, people who wanted to get a divorce and Freemasons. They also claimed that he provided marriages between peoples of mixed race. After his death he became a Saint, he merged with the Portuguese, Italian and Congolese versions of St. Antonio of Padua and became known as Ant’ny. She was Antoine’s co-worker, devoted parishioner and one of his most trusted friends. Together they visited prisons, prayed with people who were convicted to execution. They sat at the bedside of hundreds of the sick. This work gave Marie and Pére Antoine a role of protector of the weaker people. Marie and Pére Antoine were thus protecters of the Creole community and the vulnerable people.95 She was a high standing member of the St. Louis Cathedral. This Cathedral was a centerpiece of the French Quarter and is said to have been dominated by Spanish priests until the 1850’s. The Cathedral also was a centerpiece in Marie’s life. Philoméne, a daughter of Marie the First and sister of Marie the Second, said that her mother was very pious and took delight in bringing people closer to the church. She went to catechism with the nuns of the Ursuline order. She and other Creoles learned about Moses, a leader who led his people out of bondage and through the harsh conditions in the desert. He corresponded with an angel in a burning bush. His rod became a snake when he tossed it to the ground. He received clear instructions about the preparation of ritual practices. The Maries more or less tried to do the same thing. Marie the Second was not an observant Catholic. She did not have a Pére Antoine that led her to the church and because the church was pushing away women of color she probably did not feel that attracted to the Catholic church. Marie’s Catholic and Voodoo life centered on the Virgin Marie, the Good Mother, Mother Earth. This female spirit has many names, faces, and tasks both within the Voodoo tradition and the Catholic tradition. In African traditions, she is Oya, goddess of wind and lightning, Oshun goddess of love, Yemayá, goddess of oceans and as Erzulie when hurricanes threaten New Orleans. Within the Catholic tradition she is a Virgin Mother, she carried her pregnancy though her personal difficulties; she comforts mothers whose babies have died and witnessed the execution of her son. All of

95 Ibid., 20, 23, 24, 51. ~ 42 ~ these goddesses, who are all one character with different faces, tasks, and names, are presented as a woman of color who lives in rivers, oceans, seas, lakes and springs. She is called Our Lady, Notre Dame. Marie Laveau’s life centered around this figure because she was a citizen of New Orleans, but also because she helped Creole mothers who were in trouble and she helped their children in the prisons and the sick ones.96 The Maries built altars for different ‘Catholic’ Saints to give the people of New Orleans places to go to when they needed help. Here they found support for good luck, love, protection from the law, help in husband holding and money making. For every occasion, they put a Saint on the Altar. Sometimes St. John the Baptist, at times St. Rita etc.. And if you were gris-grised, someone cursed you by using a gris-gris, you asked St. Expedite for help. Expedite became popular as a Saint when his statue, probably separated from a crucifix in a ship cargo, turned up in the levee of the Mississippi in a box that was marked Expedite. He became the Saint of procrastination; he had a bird that calls Cras, Cras, tomorrow, tomorrow. But, he also became the Saint of ‘do it now’. That is why he protected gris-grised people; he immediately acts when asked for help. He is not an official Saint, but still very popular in New Orleans. The Catholic authorities were against these interpretations of saints and blamed Marie Laveau for showing these saints that derived from spirits, saints and ancestors.97 About the family life of the Laveau family, Philoméne said that everyone was welcome in Marie the First’s house for food and lodging. People did not go to the house to buy Voodoo spells and charms. Marie the Second lived a different life than her mother. She had a way more indiscreet love life than her parents and was an unwed teenage mother. People often called her shrewd and flamboyant. The Maries did a lot for the community outside the house, but also adopted children into their own household. Marie the Second probably worked as a hairdresser to support herself and her children. The networks that she created as a hairdresser came in handy, in her and her mother’s efforts to help the people of New Orleans and to know everything about everyone. Indeed the profession of hairdresser did fit in Marie’s flamboyant character. Hairdressers were wanted in the New Orleans of the nineteenth century, for it was the Golden Age of the city. As a flamboyant hairdresser, Marie had entree to the best homes in town. By listening to the stories, the clients told her she had access to very intimate confidences. A hairdresser from New Orleans once said: “Nowhere do

96 Ibid., 23, 25 – 27, 29, 49, 70.; Ina J. Fandrich, “The Birth of New Orleans’ Voodoo Queen: A Long-held Mystery Resovled”, Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Summer, 2005) 299. 97 Ibid., 52 – 54. ~ 43 ~ hearts betray themselves more unguardedly than in the private boudoir, where the hair-dressers’s mission makes her a daily attendant.”98 Marie the Second might have made a fortune in matchmaking and fortune-telling, using the information she heard as a hairdresser.99 The Maries, thus, functioned as protectors of the citizens of New Orleans that needed them. They did this as Voodoo priestesses and Catholic devotees, but wat they did was helping the weaker people and serving as a ‘medium’ in the people’s problems. Not necessarily as a spiritual medium, but as a medium between people. This position brings us to the powers that they had within the Voodoo community, which will be explained in the next chapter.

98 Ibid., 73. 99 Ibid., 66, 69, 72, 73, 75. ~ 44 ~

Part IV - The power in Voodoo

It is now clear that New Orleans is a city where Voodoo and its protégés have played a crucial role, and are still playing a major part in the imagination of Americans. People see Marie Laveau as a powerful Voodoo witch who bewitched people and gave clients rituals to curse their enemies. However, it may now be clear that this version of Marie Laveau did not exist in reality and that the real Marie Laveau(s) was a way more nuanced character. The role that Marie Laveau and Voodoo play in New Orleans, and in other areas in the Americas like Haiti is interesting. Because, next to magical powers that are considered to be a power of Voodoo, Vodoun, Santería and Candomblé, they also have other powers of which some have, in theory, the ability to lead to anti-colonial resistance. While reading about the history of the religious traditions and their histories in the colonial world, one can distil three powers that these traditions provide their followers. These powers are the power of belief, the power of a spiritual leader in his/her community and the power of branding. The stories we now know of Marie Laveau tell about her magic chants and how she came out of the water like the Lady of the Lake during the feast of St. John’s, but this is not how the legends about Marie started. It all started with Marie standing out in the Creole crowd. Something made her famous enough for the people to look for her when they were experiencing trouble. She created a platform of places to go to and ask the higher spirits for help; she gave the people something to belief in. The altars that Marie the First and Marie the Second established gave people the feeling that there was someone, or something, present to ask for help. Their belief in this Saint and he fortune-tellings of Marie the Second made things really happen, like a placebo. One of the most vivid proofs of this kind of placebos is found in Haiti in the process of zombification. The first subchapter will, therefore, be a case about the zombification in Haiti and about the power of belief that is related to this zombification process. After this subchapter it is time for the second power that is a result of the practice of Voodoo, and that has the ability to give Voodoo practitioners some power in his society. This is the power that a priest has to his or/her community. The power of this priest is an extension of the power of belief because it is the belief in this priest and his power that grants him/her this power. The last subchapter serves the power of branding, which is especially relevant for the situation in New Orleans. As stated before, tourists are extremely interested in Voodoo in New Orleans. Therefore, there is a big market for Voodoo related attractions in the city of ~ 45 ~

New Orleans. The attention for Voodoo within the tourist industry results in a popularization and the ridiculing of Voodoo. However, it also raises attention to the Creole community, and it raises money for these communities. This power of branding is, therefore, a loaded, but a relevant subject.

The power of belief

In his book The Serpent and the Rainbow Wade Davis, an ethnographer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, and anthropologist, talks about the phenomenon of ‘zombification’. Voodooists in Haiti believe that Voodoo sorcerers have the powers to raise people from their graves to sell them as slaves. In 1980, for example, there was a case of a Haitian woman, Natagette Joseph, who was killed in 1966, but was found wandering around in her village in 1980 by the police officer who had pronounced her dead back in 1966. In 1980 a group of people was found near the North coast of Haiti, aimlessly wandering around in a state that looked psychotic. Local peasants identified them as zombies.100 The people that wandered around were buried alive. To not die from the lack of oxygen in the coffin the metabolic activity had to be reduced to the lowest level. However, some of the brain cells will die so that the vital parts of the brain will have more strength to endure longer. In this case, the person might lose personality or voluntary movement. Then the person might act like the Haitian definition of a zombie, “A body without character, without will.” But, brain damage does not create a zombie and the victims first must be pronounced dead. The victims, thus, must be made in a trance first, which is done by poison. Some say the poison is sprinkled on the floor and absorbed through the feet. After the ‘resurrection’ a second drug would be given to the victim.101 A person who is buried alive manifests certain symptoms. Some of the symptoms that a zombie shows are in psychiatry are called catatonic schizophrenia. These symptoms are, thus, not typical for the zombies that are buried alive. There are various processes that can cause Catatonic schizophrenia, the experience of being buried alive might drive someone into

100 Davis, The Serpent, 26, 27. For more about zombification, see: Hans-W Ackermann and Jeanine Gauthier, “The Ways and Nature of the Zombi”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 104, No 414 (Autumn 1991). and also Roland Littlewood and Chavannes Douyon, “Clinical Findings in Three Cases of Zombification”, The Lancet, Vol. 350, Is. 9084, (October 1997). 101 Davis, The Serpent, 29, 30. ~ 46 ~ madness. However, this is more than catatonic schizophrenia. This change into a zombie is the result of a social process that is custom to the culture. The existence of zombies is deeply rooted in the Haitian culture. The whole process is part of the Haitian culture and subordinate to the Haitian beliefs.102 Clairvius Narcisse, a victim of zombification, told Davis that he remained conscious through the whole process of being poisoned and buried. He was completely immobilized, but could hear everything, also his doctor pronouncing him dead. He remembered hearing drums and the bokor103 calling his name. They grabbed him, beat him with a whip, tied him and wrapped him in a cloth. After that, he was brought to a sugar plantation. He said he worked on the ranch for the bokor. He was aware that he missed his family, but his life on the plantation was like a strange dream with objects, events, and perceptions that interacted in slow motion, completely out of his control; control did not exist. A conscious action was not possible, and a decision was meaningless.104 People who experienced zombification and their family members all acknowledge that the victim was sold to a bokor, but denied that the ritual involved poison. “The boker sent for my soul. That’s how it was done.”105 The bokor must call the dead to be able to take one’s soul. Then they bring the victim down with a coup poudre, a ‘magical’ powder. This powder was, of course, the poison but they did not consider it as poison, because they believed that magic conceived the whole process of zombification.106 They, thus, were all well aware of the process of someone making someone appear like he is dead, by using a poisoning powder. To bury him and dig him up again later to make an aimless slave out of him, but they had such a belief in the magic of the bokor that they thought of the whole process as if it was magic. The antidote that was given to the victim when he had to be ‘resurrected’ was a placebo. Once the victim realized that he was being ‘zombified’ he believed that he was reviving from the dead. The power of poison or as Haitians call them ‘magical powders’ is conceived by the force of the bokor. He provides the poison, leads the rituals and ‘owns’ the zombie’s. Haitian Voodoo priests, especially the houngan107 are psychologists, diviners, physicians, spiritual healers and musicians at the same time. He is the one that balances the

102 Ibid., 61, 62. 103 The priest that does the zombification. 104 Davis, The Serpent, 62, 80. 105 Ibid., 80. 106 Ibid., 83, 84. 107 The highest Voodoo priest. ~ 47 ~ forces of the universe. He never has accidents108, people have such a belief in what he and other priests do that they even believe that they can turn someone into a real zombie, while knowing everything about the real process of ‘zombification’. This phenomenon of zombification works, because people believe that it works and see no reason to have any doubts about it. One can call this belief a ‘psycho-placebo’. It works, because they believe that it works. If a person has such a solid belief in his religious traditions, these traditions can break him, for example when someone zombifies him, but it can also bring comfort and a feeling of mutual identity and understanding. In Haiti the Voodoo church is an underground political institution, ever since the colonial era. The participation of Voodoo leaders in the Haitian revolution (1798-1804) was an important reason for Haiti’s relatively early independence in 1804.109 During a possession trance a Voodoo priest named Boukman informed the present worshippers that the Voodoo spirits wanted help from the people in liberating the slaves and eliminating the French colonists. In the rebellion that followed and in the end resulted in Haiti’s independence a lot of Vodoun priests headed the rebels. The Haitian slaves and people of color fought one of Europe’s best army’s with sticks tipped in iron, knives and picks and won in the end. The idea that the spirits would protect them, also based on Boukman’s message that led to the revolution and the idea that they would go back to Guineé after their deaths made them successful with the few weapons that they had.110 Their belief in the help of the spirits and the life after death made them strong like a placebo that heals people because of their faith in the placebo.

Power of a priest in his/her community

Priests, Imams, Pastors, Rabbis and other religious leaders have a particular position within their community. They have the lead of the people in their church, mosque or synagogue and are also a mentor and a confidential. People count on them in personal and communal crises. As we just have seen, the priests in Haiti have played a major role in the Haitian revolution. In New Orleans, the best example for a similar kind of ‘strong tower’ is, again, Marie Laveau.

108 Davis, The Serpent, 73, 100, 101. 109 Michel S. Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti (Houndmills: Macmillan Press LTD, 1989) 1. 110 Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics, 1.; Davis, The Serpent, 66, 67. ~ 48 ~

The fact that she is still immensely popular in New Orleans and the rest of America, as a ‘witch’, but also as a helper of the lowest classes and damned, says it all. As seen in the previous chapter Marie the First and the Second helped their community by taking care of the people who needed help, by letting them into their house. They listened to people who wanted to share their story and gave them a place to go to share their stories, anxieties and problems with the spirits. Marie the First was probably inspired by Moses. “He taught his people to build altars and make sacrifices. He gave them formulas for spiritual practice, practical laws for getting along with each other in trying times. At the risk of blasphemy, we must note that both Marie the First and Marie the Second developed similar techniques.”111 In this way especially Marie the First tried to be a pillar of the Creole community as a mother, as a Catholic and as a practitioner of Voodoo. One can say that the Maries served as a kind of shadchan112 too. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a shadchan as a: “A Jewish professional matchmaker or marriage-broker.”113 Due to Marie the Second’s profession as hairdresser they knew the secrets and preferences of many of her clients, they used this knowledge to assist lovers.114 This knowledge also made them a pillar in their community, because they knew everything about everyone and helped people to find a lover. People with positions like the Maries could move people to action because their followers trusted them and knew that they had the best intentions with them. The help of priests like figures gave people confidence in themselves and their culture. Individuals with a position like the Marie Laveaus could, if they wanted and needed to, move people towards anti-colonial resistance.

Power of brand identity

Nowadays people still visit Marie’s grave. Every traveler guide mentions the graveside, and many tour guides take their tourists to the grave. Both tourists and citizens of New Orleans visit her graveside to ask her a favor. They leave gifts and hope for a favor in

111 Ward, Marie Laveau, 27. 112 Often designated as a Yenta, but this is not the right word. 113 “Shachlan”’, Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Oxford University Press, Consulted at 06- 01-2016, http://www.oed.com.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/view/Entry/177192?redirectedFrom=shadchan#ei d. 114 Ward, Marie Laveau, 75. ~ 49 ~ return. Some guides advise their clients to knock three times, turn around three times and then make a wish.115 Laveau is still an inspiration for spiritual groups in New Orleans. At March the 14th the organizers of the project ‘International Shrine of Marie Laveau at the New Orleans Healing Center’ organized a Press conference for the dedication and blessing ceremony at the New Orleans Sacred Music Festival. The project is an artistic and spiritual project of the New Orleans Health Center and focusses on a statue of Marie Laveau where pilgrims and the community can conduct prayers and leave offerings. On the website of the ‘New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau’ the reason for the erection of the statue is called:

Marie Laveau is at the heart of New Orleans history and culture. The most famous Vodou Queen of all time, a devout Catholic, advocate for African American freedom and rights, and powerful spiritual and social leader, she is New Orleans' most famous and revered resident, drawing thousands of visitors to her tomb each year making it the 2nd most visited in the US. In December 2013, the tomb was damaged with pink latex paint, resulting in dramatically reduced access. The International Shrine of Marie Laveau will provide a new venue for visitors and the local community to celebrate, connect with and visit Marie Laveau.116

The passage shows that people see Marie Laveau both as a Voodoo Queen and as an advocate for freedom for the African American citizens of New Orleans. The shrine must be a living cultural phenomenon, and the makers hope that people contribute to the memorial in works of art and offerings. They will complement the shrine with plaques, written by leading academics.117 The Shrine for Marie Laveau project is an example of how communities in New Orleans still ‘worship’ Marie Laveau. But, Marie is not only still popular in New Orleans. She is also popular in the rest of America. The Americans seems to have a fascination with Marie Laveau’s mythical side. While the Shrine for Marie Laveau projects wants to raise attention to her position as a protector of the African American people in New Orleans, other Americans

115 Ibid., 12, 13. 116 “International Shrine of Marie Laveau at the New Orleans Healing Center”, New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.neworleanscvb.com/articles/index.cfm?action=view&articleID=9192&menuID=1 603. 117 “International Shrine of Marie Laveau”, New Orleans Convention, http://www.neworleanscvb.com/articles/index.cfm?action=view&articleID=9192&menuID=1 603. ~ 50 ~ portray her as a witch who has the most incredible magical powers. She is, for example, a popular character in a lot of Marvel comics. A few of the comics where Marie Laveau appears are Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme, Hellhound: The Redemption Quest, Marvel Team up, Blade the Vampire Hunter, Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child, Ghostbusters and Dracula Lives. In the Marvel Comics Marie’s powers are described as, for example: ‘attractive female’, ‘divine powers’, ‘energy manipulation’, ‘healing’, ‘illusion casting’, ‘intellect’, ‘magic’ and ‘time travel’. She appears in films and series like the immensely popular American Horror Story (during different seasons) and the movie Mirrors.118 The Voodoo Queen’s appearance in all of these comics and movies means that they make a lot of money with the character of Marie Laveau. Hollywood exploits the mysterious stories around Marie the First and the Second. This popularization brings the memory of the Maries to a very different level, which annoys the people who want to keep the memory of the real Maries alive as pillars of the society of New Orleans. This is the reason that people in New Orleans are not keen on talking about Marie Laveau. They are afraid of sensationalists and do not feel as if people take their Creole identity serious. During the previous chapters, we have seen that since the United States took over New Orleans tourists always have been coming to New Orleans to watch the dances in Congo Square. The ‘exotic’ dances have fascinated Anglo-American people, and they immediately started to link the activities in Congo Square with Voodoo. Today thousands of tourists visit New Orleans, and they all want to see things that are related to Voodoo because that is what New Orleans is famous for in the United States. This reputation started with Congo Square, went on during the nineteenth and twentieth century, with the many articles about Voodoo and Creole witches as a matrix of the Voodoo fears and fascination, and only got stronger with the movies and comics about Marie Laveau. Some people used the opportunities that the tourist interests in Voodoo bring to earn money. Some examples of this ‘power of branding’ are the Blackened Voodoo Beer, the New Orleans Voodoo Festival during Halloween, the Budweiser commercials during the Superbowl and the Voodoo Temple and Voodoo shops. Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager is brewed by Dixie Brewing Company. It is a Schwarz bier that is available year-round. The brewery started in 1907 and became very popular in

118 “Marie Laveau: The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans”, Comic Vine, CBS Interactive Ink, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://comicvine.gamespot.com/marie-laveau/4005-21557/issues- cover/.; “Laveau, The Voodoo Queen”, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://comicvine.gamespot.com/marie-laveau/4005-21557/.; “Marie Laveau” (character), IMDB, Consulted at: 01-06-2016, http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0401614/. ~ 51 ~

New Orleans, until 1975, when they brew a bad batch, due to brewing water that was infused with chemical fumes. The sales dropped tremendously after this situation. Bankruptcy and change of owners followed. In 1985 the company was sold and the new owner came up with new beers like Blackened Voodoo Beer and Jazz Amber Light. Although the brewery has not sold beers that became bestsellers since 1975 the company still exists, so the new beers, which tried to play upon the sentiments of the city, did save the company.119 Each year around Halloween a company called the Voodoo Experience organizes the Voodoo Music + Arts Experience, better known as Voodoo Fest, comes into town. On the website of the festival, they present themselves as: “Voodoo is a musical gumbo stirring together music, art, community, cuisine and all the mystery and adventure that Halloween weekend in New Orleans conjures up. With more than 70 bands over three days, Voodoo is more than just a Festival – it is an experience.”120 In 2014 the festival attracted more than 100.000 attendees in three days. That is the largest crowd since its sixteen years of existence.121 The festival is, thus, immensely popular and it seems to be thé Halloween activity for 100.000 people from New Orleans and the area. In February 2013 the popular Superbowl XLVIII took place in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. This festival had become a show off of capitalism and an American cultural phenomenon. It is the most watched television broadcast and commercial time is therefore very expensive, but also very wanted by American companies. The efforts that companies put in good commercials during the Superbowl have made watching the commercials part of the American popular culture during Superbowl Sunday.122 Anheuser-Bush, the largest brewing company in the U.S., ran a few ads for its But Light Brand. The theme of these advertisements was Voodoo because that is the most imaginative topic of New Orleans. It was all about Voodoo and the promise of power. The first ad is about a chair that is carried around New Orleans by two young men. In Ursulines

119 Bierman 9, “Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager” Beer Advocate, 10-18-2001, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/404/1186/.; The Associated Press, “Dixie Brewery: Brand Preserves, but the Brewery?” New Orleans City Business, New Orleans Publishing Group, 07-08-2013, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2013/07/08/dixie-beer-the-brand-perseveres-but-the- brewery/. 120 Voodoo Festival, Voodoo Experience, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.voodoofestival.com/experience/. 121 Keith Spera, “7 Things the 2014 Voodoo Fest Got Right, and Seven Things it Got Wrong”, Nola.com, The Times-Picayune, 11-05-2014, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.nola.com/voodoofest/index.ssf/2014/11/seven_things_the_2014_voodoo_f.html. 122 Roberts, Voodoo and Power, Location 64, 68. ~ 52 ~ avenue, they pick up a six-pack of But Light to put it in the seat. The man and the chair pass by different places that are very typical to New Orleans. They bring the chair to an old mansion. In exchange for admittance they give the six-pack to a large gentleman with a Kangol had. They bring their chair to a hall that is lit by candles where Stevie Wonder, wearing a white suit, is sitting on a throne. The men ask him if he does ‘lucky-chairs’ He says that is not his thing, but snaps his finger to make a woman, played by Zoe Saldana, appear, who is able to ‘do lucky chairs’. She snaps her fingers and then they are back in their living room. Another gentleman comes in to take a seat in ‘his’ lucky chair. The guys clang the necks of their But Light bottles together and acknowledge that it was his lucky chair. Then the words: “It’s only weird if it doesn’t work”123 appear and the commercial ends with a close-up of Stevie Wonder.124 The second ad begins in the Superdome with a young man. The man goes into the locker room where he picks up a large sock from a bin of socks. He also pulls a hair from a brush and later on collects some of the dome’s green turf. The guy walks through New Orleans to an old graveyard, where he encounters a party. People have gathered around a bucket with ice and But Light. He walks on, out of the cemetery, and passes a brass band in the area near the old Cabildo. where he walks into a Vieux Carré Bar. He drinks a beer with the bartender and goes into a passage behind the bar. In a staircase in a large hall, Stevie Wonder appears again. Wonder asks the guy if he is looking for a little mojo. The man gives the stuff that he gathered to Stevie Wonder together with a shoestring, some pins, and some odd circles. Wonder snaps his fingers, and the man is back in the Superdome again, now filled with football fans. The young man is wearing a shirt of the San Francisco Forty-niners and pulls of Voodoo doll with the hair, the string and the turf and the emblem of the other team, the Baltimore Ravens, out of his jacket. But, the guy next to him, a Baltimore Ravens fan, holds a similar doll with the emblem of the Forty-niners. Again the tagline that the other commercial also had appears. An announcer says: “But Light: for fans who do whatever it takes.”125 The commercial ends with a smiling Stevie Wonder. Anheiser-Bush used Voodoo as a nod to the Superbowl host. Without using the word Voodoo everyone who watches the Superbowl recognizes it. It sends a message like welcome to New Orleans.126

123 Ibid., 84. 124 Ibid., 68, 76, 84. 125 Ibid., 124. 126 Ibid., 92, 100, 108, 116, 124, 132. ~ 53 ~

Then there are the Voodoo shops and the Voodoo Temple that entertain thousands of tourists each year. In his article Mail Order Magic: The Commercial Exploitation of Folk Belief Loudell F. Snow states that shops earn a lot of money by extorting money from people who believe in Voodoo.127 This practice does affect people in New Orleans who believe in Voodoo, but it probably affects interested tourists the most, because the individuals who have learned the practice of Voodoo of their parents and grandparents already have the tools. Examples of Voodoo related products that are sold are: Adam and Eve Love Drawing Oil, Hold your Loved One Oil (both used by people who want to regulate their love life), Lucky 13 Health and Wealth Incense, Money Cling to me Powder (both used for financial problems), against people who are causing bad luck one can buy a ‘Bring Confusion to one Causing Bad Vibrations’ candle. There are Black Feminine Voodoo Oils inspired by Marie Laveau. Amulets, ritual kits, and Voodoo dolls are also popular items.128 Even the weirdest ‘Voodoo related’ products are for sale; ‘Graveyard dirt’, ‘A Wolfs’ eye’, dried rattlesnake heads and bat corpses are examples of these products. ‘Witch Queen Adonia’ of New Orleans sells Voodoo spell kits for $13,50. The package includes a candle, incense, a doll, parchment, pins, and charcoal, they are available work for: hate, love health, luck, to separate and to win a court case etc.. The commodities that Snow names are available in different stores in different cities in the U.S. But, New Orleans is the city that is known for Voodoo and the (Creole) citizens of New Orleans are the people that suffer the most due to the selling of these products, because, their traditions are popularized, generalized and ridiculed. Snow suggests that these practices also take place in Creole and African communities. But I highly doubt that the descendants of the people who practiced Voodoo when they arrived from Africa, and who still admire Marie Laveau as a protector of Creole communities instead of a powerful witch, believe in the use of rattlesnake heads and ‘Bring Confusion to one Causing Bad Vibrations’ candles.129 There are various Voodoo shops in New Orleans, one of the shops is Voodoo Authentica. They are situated in the French Quarter and sell ‘spiritual guidance’ Voodoo dolls, Ritual Kits with a Voodoo doll, a candle, position oil, a mini gris-gris, incense and parchment paper presented in a box that looks like a coffin and spells and candles, etc.130 The

127 Loudell F. Snow, “Mail Order Magic: The Commercial Exploitation of Folk Belief”, Journal of the Folkore Institute, Vol. 16, No. ½ (January-August 1979) 44. 128 Snow, “Mail Order Magic”, 48, 50, 52. 129 Ibid., 45, 53. 130 “Voodoo Authentica”, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.voodooshop.com/index.html. ~ 54 ~ coffin boxes may be the best examples of the popularization of Voodoo. No voodooist who keeps his charms and objects in a coffin, for sure. A well-known tourist Voodoo attraction is the Voodoo Museum in the French Quarter, where different Voodoo related objects are displayed. Visitors to the museum can easily combine a visit to the museum with a visit to Marie Laveau’s grave and Congo Square. But, the most famous Voodoo related tourist attraction is the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. The priestess of the Temple, Miriam Chamani, was born in Mississippi and grew up in the Baptist church. She became a member of the Spiritual churches when she lived in Chicago. According to the Brochure of the Temple, her purpose is to educate the community about the practice of Voodoo and to misspell misconceptions and myths. She carries this out by card readings, African bone readings, and exotic snake dance rituals, etc.. However, uptown the Watson Memorial Teaching Ministries provide education that is strikingly different from the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. They have Sunday school services about ‘Love’s better way’ (based on Corinthians), choir rehearsals and a dance ministry. It is not surprising that the Voodoo Spiritual Temple is famous by tourists, and the Watson Memorial Teaching Ministries are not, while they engage more in New Orleans’ realistic spiritual traditions of nowadays than the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. Both institutions display a part of New Orleans’ religious culture, but a culture keeps changing and the way the Voodoo Spiritual Temple presents Voodoo is not how modern day religion of communities in New Orleans looks.131 Miriam Chamani did not grow up within the New Orleans Voodoo traditions and from her brochure, we can distil that the rituals and teachings that she does in her temple seem to have few Catholic ceremonies, while Voodooists are all Catholic. Citizens of New Orleans blame her that she has her temple primarilly to earn money from the tourists. The companies that make money by making a tourist attraction out of Voodoo can make it hard for the inhabitants of New Orleans to be taken seriously by their fellow Americans. The explicit ‘horror’ themes of the Voodoo festival, the products that they sell in Voodoo shops, the popular culture that strengthens the stereotypes about Voodoo and the Voodoo Temple ridicule the Catholic religion and Creole culture of New Orleans. (American) tourists have a distorted view of Creoles in New Orleans and their religious practices, and the Voodoo themed companies only make these sentiments stronger. Still, Voodoo as a brand identity has the potential to provide power too, because it gives people the opportunity to earn

131 Claude F. Jacobs, “Folk for Whom? Tourist Guidebooks, Local Color and the Spiritual Churches of New Orleans”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 114, No. 453 (Summer 2001) 324 - 326. ~ 55 ~ money, and so it has the ability to make people financially independent, by ‘demonstrating’ some of their cultural practices.

~ 56 ~

Conclusion

As stated in the introduction I intended 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. As a case, I used Voodoo in New Orleans, but I also used Vodoun from Haiti, Santería from Cuba and Candomblé from Brazil to buttress my argument. To be able to research this, I asked the question: How did Voodoo position Creole communities in New Orleans? We have seen that there are several religious traditions in the Americas that were syncretized by the European colonists and the African slaves. These religions stem from Europe and Africa but in the Americas, the peoples that came together developed them into a new religion. Catholicism was suitable for syncretism in the Americas because it had an old tradition of incorporating pagan traditions in its practices so that it would be easier for pagans to convert. The pagan deities became saints, and pagan celebrations became incorporated into Christian celebrations like Epiphany. African religious traditions were suitable for syncretism in the Americas because they had some religious traditions that they could easily interpret from a Christian point of view. There was a Supreme Being (God), and there were deities (Saints). In Louisiana, the religious traditions were influenced by the Catholic colonizers and Africans from Senegambia, The Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra and Central Africa, especially Congo. These peoples brought, for example, Yoruba influences with deities called Orishas, Vodun influences with similar deities and spirits and names of spells and diviners from Congo to the Americas. These religions in the Americas gave the Africans an opportunity to practice the traditions from home and to maintain relations with people from their own descent and get in contact with people from other origins, like Catholics. These religious traditions would not be able to syncretize if the peoples did not mix and the different colonies of the Americas had varying attitudes towards this mixing. The Protestant Anglo-American areas were strongly against the miscegenation (métissage) and cultural mixing of people of European, African and Amerindian descent. They thought that intermarriage between Europeans and Africans would defile the blood of the Europeans. The Catholic Latin territories were more tolerant toward the process of métissage and Creolization. They saw intermarriage between Europeans, Africans and Amerindians as a way to improve the population in the colonies. The French even had laws in favor for ~ 57 ~ intermarriages between Europeans and Amerindians and often adopted and freed their children of mixed race. In Louisiana settlers, slaves and Amerindians often depended on each other and so the relations differed from the relations between settlers and slaves in the rest of the North-American colonies. The government of Louisiana wanted to control the population, and the number of slaves, by the use of métissage. From the beginning onwards the culture of Louisiana was relatively Africanized. The African slaves were brought to Louisiana directly from Africa. The Creole language emerged, and the Africans and Europeans that bound themselves through marriage and language all became part of a creolized society. Métissage and Creolization gave minorities like the African slaves the opportunity to form an even larger group and to have a voice within the colony’s population. New Orleans, in particular, had a large Creole community, even after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. It was the biggest city in the South, and the city is famous for its Africanized culture that was particularly visible in Congo Square in the French Quarter. Congo Square was the place where the Creole people of African descent could gather, earn money in a market, be financially independent and dance traditional, creolized dances. In this square, the Creoles of New Orleans were able to maintain some of their old African traditions for decades after the Louisiana Purchase and the strong Americanizing policies until it was too late for the Americans to erase this Africanized culture. The Americans did not see the events in Congo Square as a threat for a long time because they thought that dances and music were harmless. The activities in the square disappeared in the end, but the memory was kept alive. The Crescent City was also important in this research because it has an extensive history of Voodoo. Tourists associate New Orleans with Voodoo and the newspapers in New Orleans, and the rest of the United States were full of stories about citizens of New Orleans finding traces of gris-gris in their house, concluding that someone tried to curse them. The most important citizen of New Orleans, concerning Voodoo, is Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen. The mythicized stories about her and her supernatural powers are countless, but in reality, Marie Laveau the First and Marie Laveau the Second were protectors of the weak and the Creole population of the city. They tried to cure the sick people, sought to give hope in the form of protection from saints to the desperate and probably had a lot of networks to help the people that needed these systems. In the end, three great powers that could make the position of Creoles within their society better, and in some cases make anti-colonial resistance possible, can be distinguished. The first power is the power of belief. This is the power that comes with the believe that large ~ 58 ~ groups have in a tradition, ritual (like zombification) or person. This belief works as a sort of placebo. If people have such a faith in something, they can do things that they would not be able to if they did not believe in it. The Haitian Revolution might be the best example of this power. The second power is the power of a priest in his/her community. The best example of this is the power that Marie the First and the Second had in their community; they served as protectors, spiritual advisors, and matchmakers, thus as a central ‘strong tower’ of the community. They can be seen as mediums between the people. This position could, in theory lead to anti-colonial resistance, if they would want to start a revolt and if the right sentiments would be present in the community. The last power is the power of branding. Marie Laveau and Voodoo in New Orleans are actively popularized and used for movies, comics, beer brands, festivals, commercials and Voodoo shops and museums. The Creole population of New Orleans is duped by the ridiculing of their religious traditions, but the branding of Voodoo does help people to earn their money. For example, giving a Voodoo style name to a beer brand saved the brand from bankruptcy. We can now conclude that Voodoo positioned Creole communities in New Orleans in different ways. The grow of syncretized religious traditions in the Americas, like Voodoo, gave Creole people the opportunity to maintain their old traditions and, thus to create a home in the Americas. Because of the mixing of peoples in the colonies, new compositions of peoples emerged; the Africans were able to become Creole and to have a more prominent voice in the colonial society because they became part of a larger group. The activities in Congo Square gave the enslaved Africans and Creoles the power to be financially independent and to practice old and new cultural traditions of their own. The memory and history of Marie Laveau gave the Creole community confidence and proudness in their community. The three great powers all have a purpose and all provide some support for the communities of the people that once were enslaved, whether it is hope, confidence, a consolation after the trauma of slavery and oppression, and money. These powers are all direct or indirect results of the formation of syncretized religions like Voodoo, and so Voodoo and Vodoun, Candomblé and Santería and have been crucial for the creation and emancipation of Creole communities in the Americas and, in some cases, as a resistance against the colonial societies. It made them able to build up their lives in the New World; little by little they built their nests.

~ 59 ~

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Keith Spera, “7 Things the 2014 Voodoo Fest Got Right, and Seven Things it Got Wrong”, Nola.com, The Times-Picayune, 11-05-2014, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.nola.com/voodoofest/index.ssf/2014/11/seven_things_the_2014_voodoo_f.html.

Oxford English Dictionary: The Definitive Record of the English Landuage (OED), Oxford University Press, Consulted at 05-20-2016, 05-22-2016, 06-22-2016, 06-17-2016, http://www.oed.com.proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/.

The Associated Press, “Dixie Brewery: Brand Preserves, but the Brewery?” New Orleans City Business, New Orleans Publishing Group, 07-08-2013, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2013/07/08/dixie-beer-the-brand-perseveres-but-the- brewery/.

Ann Glasmann, “International Shrine of Marie Laveau at the New Orleans Healing Center”, New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.neworleanscvb.com/articles/index.cfm?action=view&articleID=9192&menuID=1 603.

Voodoo Authentica, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.voodooshop.com/index.html.

Voodoo Festival, Voodoo Experience, Consulted at 06-01-2016, http://www.voodoofestival.com/experience/.

Images Image 1 (Cover image): David Wargo, “Fleur-de-Lis French Quarter”, David Wargo Gallary, Consulted at 06-22-2016, http://davidwargogallery.com/WebPhotoAlbums/2013FleurDeLisAlbum/Album/pages/Fleur DeLisFrenchQuarter_jpg.htm.

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Inspiration title A Collection of Creole Proverbs, “Little by Little the bird builds its nest”, 241, Frenchcreoles.com, French Creoles of America, Consulted at 06-22-2016, http://www.frenchcreoles.com/Language/creoleproverbs/creoleproverbs.htm.