INTRODUCTION.
Whilst in Port-au-Prince, a Spanish colleague once remarked to me, “Mon ami, if we could return to Hayti fifty years hence, we should find the negresses cooking their bananas on the site of these warehouses.” Although this judgment is severe, yet from what we have seen passing under the present Administration, it is more than probable—unless in the meantime influenced by some higher civilisation—that this prophecy will come true. The negresses are in fact already cooking their bananas amid the ruins of the best houses of the capital. My own impression, after personally knowing the country above twenty years, is, that it is a country in a state of rapid decadence. The revolution of 1843 that upset President Boyer commenced the era of troubles which have continued to the present day. The country has since been steadily falling to the rear in the race of civilisation.
The long civil war (1868-1869) under President Salnave destroyed a vast amount of property, and rendered living in the country districts less secure, so that there has been ever since a tendency for the more civilised inhabitants to agglomerate in the towns, and leave the rural districts to fetish worship and cannibalism. Fires, most of them incendiary, have swept over the cities; in the commercial quarters of Port-au-Prince, it would be difficult to find any houses which existed in 1863, and the fortunes of all have naturally greatly suffered.
When I reached Hayti in January 1863, the capital possessed several respectable public buildings. The palace, without any architectural beauty, was large and commodious, and well suited to the climate; the Senate, the House of Representatives, the dwellings occupied by several of the Ministers, the pretty little theatre, were all features which have now entirely disappeared.
The town of Pétionville or La Coupe, the summer and health resort of the capital, where the best families sought a little country life during the great heats, was almost entirely destroyed during the revolution of 1868, and nothing has taken its place. People are still too poor to afford to rebuild.
Society also has completely changed. I saw at balls given in the palace in 1863 a hundred well-dressed prosperous families of all colours; now political dissensions would prevent such gatherings, even if there were a building in the city which could receive them, and poverty has laid its heavy hand more or less on all. It is the same in a greater or lesser degree in every other town of the republic.
Agriculture in the plains is also deteriorating, and the estates produce much less than formerly, though their staple produce is rum, to stupefy and brutalise the barbarous lower orders.
Foreigners, nearly ruined by their losses during the constant civil disturbances, are withdrawing from the republic, and capital is following them; and with their withdrawal the country must sink still lower. The best of the coloured people are also leaving, as they shun the fate reserved for them by those who have already slaughtered the most prominent mulattoes.
In fact, the mulatto element, which is the civilising element in Hayti, is daily becoming of less importance; internal party strife has injured their political standing, and constant intermarriage is causing the race to breed back to the more numerous type, and in a few years the mulatto element will have made disastrous approaches to the negro. The only thing which could have saved the mulatto would have been to encourage the whites to settle in their country; yet this step the coloured men have blindly resisted.
In spite of all the civilising elements around them, there is a distinct tendency to sink into the state of an African tribe. It is naturally impossible to foretell the effect of all the influences which are now at work in the world, and which seem to foreshadow many changes. We appear standing on the threshold of a period of great discoveries, which may modify many things, but not man’s nature. The mass of the negroes of Hayti live in the country districts, which are rarely or ever visited by civilised people; there are few Christian priests to give them a notion of true religion; no superior local officers to prevent them practising their worst fetish ceremonies.
In treating of the Black and the Mulatto as they appeared to me during my residence among them, I fear that I shall be considered by some to judge harshly. Such, however, is not my intention. Brought up under Sir James Brooke, whose enlarged sympathies could endure no prejudice of race or colour, I do not remember ever to have felt any repugnance to my fellow-creatures on account of a difference of complexion.
I have dwelt above thirty-five years among coloured people of various races, and am sensible of no prejudice against them. For twelve years I lived in familiar and kindly intercourse with Haytians of all ranks and shades of colour, and the most frequent and not least-honoured guests at my table were of the black and coloured races.
All who knew me in Hayti know that I had no prejudice of colour; and if I place the Haytian in general in an unenviable light, it is from a strong conviction that it is necessary to describe the people as they are, and not as one would wish them to be. The band of black and coloured friends who gathered round me during my long residence in Port-au-Prince were not free from many of the faults which I have been obliged to censure in describing these different sections of the population, but they had them in a lesser degree, or, as I was really attached to them, I perhaps saw them in a dimmer light.
The most difficult chapter to write was that on “Vaudoux Worship and Cannibalism.” I have endeavoured to paint it in the least sombre colours, and none who know the country will think that I have exaggerated; in fact, had I listened to the testimony of many experienced residents, I should have described rites at which dozens of human victims were sacrificed at a time. Everything I have related has been founded on evidence collected in Hayti, from Haytian official documents, from trustworthy officers of the Haytian Government, my foreign colleagues, and from respectable residents—principally, however, from Haytian sources.
It may be suggested that I am referring to the past. On the contrary, I am informed that at present cannibalism is more rampant than ever. A black Government dares not greatly interfere, as its power is founded on the good-will of the masses, ignorant and deeply tainted with fetish worship. A Haytian writer recently remarked in print, “On se plaisit beaucoup de ce que le Vaudoux a reparu grandiose et sérieux.” The fetish dances were forbidden by decree under the Government of President Boisrond-Canal. That decree has been since repealed, and high officers now attend these meetings, and distribute money and applaud the most frantic excesses.
President Salomon, who is now in power, lived for eighteen years in Europe, married a white, and knows what civilisation is. He probably, on his first advent to the Presidency, possessed sufficient influence in the country to have checked the open manifestations of this barbarous worship; but the fate of those of his predecessors who attempted to grapple with the evil was not encouraging. It was hoped, however, that he would make the attempt, and that, grasping the nettle with resolution, he might suffer no evil results; but many doubted not only his courage to undertake the task, but even the will; and they, I fear, have judged correctly. Whenever all the documents which exist on this subject are published, my chapter on Cannibalism will be looked upon but as a pale reflection of the reality.
With regard to the history of the country, materials abound for writing a very full one, but I do not think it would prove interesting to the general reader. It is but a series of plots and revolutions, followed by barbarous military executions. A destructive and exhausting war with Santo Domingo, and civil strife during the Presidency of General Salnave, did more to ruin the resources of the country than any amount of bad government. The enforced abandonment of work by the people called to arms by the contending parties, introduced habits of idleness and rapine which have continued to the present day; and the material losses, by the destruction of the best estates and the burning of towns and villages, have never been fully repaired.
From the overthrow of President Geffrard in 1867 the country has been more rapidly going to ruin. The fall was slightly checked during the quiet Presidency of Nissage-Saget; but the Government of General Domingue amply made up for lost time, and was one of the worst, if not the worst, that Hayti has ever seen. With the sectaries of the Vaudoux in power, nothing else could have been expected.
I have brought my sketch of the history of Hayti down to the fall of President Boisrond-Canal in 1879, and shall not touch on the rule of the present President of Hayti, General Salomon. I may say, however, that he is the determined enemy of the coloured section of the community; is credited with having been the chief adviser of the Emperor Soulouque in all his most disastrous measures; and the country is said to have sunk into the lowest depths of misery. The civil war, which by last accounts was still raging in Hayti, has been marked by more savage excesses than any previously known in Haytian history, the black authorities, hesitating at no step to gain their object, which is utterly to destroy the educated coloured class. They care not for the others; as they say, “Mulatte pauvre, li negue.”
A few words as to the origin of this book. In 1867 I was living in the country near Port-au-Prince, and having some leisure, I began to collect materials and write rough drafts of the principal chapters. I was interrupted by the civil war, and did not resume work until after I had left the country. It may be the modifying effect of time, but on looking over the chapters as I originally wrote them, I thought that I had been too severe in my judgments on whole classes, and have therefore somewhat softened the opinions I then expressed; and the greater experience which a further residence of seven years gave me enabled me to study the people more and avoid too sweeping condemnations.
I have not attempted to describe the present condition of the republic of Santo Domingo, but from all I can hear it is making progress. The Dominicans have few prejudices of colour, and eagerly welcome foreign capitalists who arrive to develop the resources of their country. Already there are numerous sugar estates in operation, as well as manufactories of dyes, and efforts are being successfully made to rework the old gold-mines. The tobacco cultivation is already large, and only requires hands to develop it to meet any demand. I hear of a railway having been commenced, to traverse the magnificent plain which stretches from the Bay of Samana almost to the frontiers of Hayti.
After having written the chapter on Vaudoux Worship, my attention was called to a communication which appeared in Vanity Fair of August 13, 1881, by a reply published in a Haytian journal. It is evident that the writer in Vanity Fair was a naval officer or a passing traveller in the West Indies, and he probably carefully noted the information given him. He was, however, too inclined to believe what he heard, as he gravely states that a Haytian told him that the kidneys of a child were first-rate eating, adding that he had tried them himself; and the writer remarks that the Haytian did not seem to think it strange or out of the way that he had done so. No Haytian would have ever stated seriously that he had eaten human flesh. Probably, amused by the eagerness of the inquirer, he told the story to test his powers of belief, and must have been diverted when he found his statement was credited. Cannibalism is the one thing of which Haytians are thoroughly ashamed.
This communication makes mention of the herb-poisonings and their antidotes; of the midwives who render new born-babes insensible, that are buried, dug up, restored to life, and then eaten. In May 1879 a midwife and another were caught near Port-au-Prince eating a female baby that had been thus treated; he adds that a Haytian of good position was discovered with his family eating a child. In the former case the criminals were condemned to six weeks’ imprisonment, in the latter to one month. (I may notice that I never heard of a respectable Haytian being connected with the cannibals.) The light punishments inflicted were due to the fear inspired by the Vaudoux priests. In January 1881 eight people were fined for disinterring and eating corpses. An English medical man purchased and identified the neck and shoulders of a human being in the market at Port-au-Prince. In February 1881, at St. Marc, a cask of so-called pork was sold to a foreign ship. In it were discovered fingers and finger-nails, and all the flesh proved to be that of human beings. An English coloured clergyman at Cap Haïtien said that the Vaudoux did away with all the effect of his ministry; and that his wife was nearly purchasing in the market human flesh instead of pork. Four people were fined in that town for eating corpses. When the writer arrived at Jacmel he found two men in prison for eating corpses, and on the day of his arrival a man was caught eating a child. Near the same town nine thousand people met at Christmas to celebrate Vaudoux rites. At Les Cayes a child of English parents was stolen, and on the thieves being pursued, they threw it into a well and killed it.
These are the statements made by the writer in Vanity Fair, and nearly all are probable. If correct, the open practice of Vaudoux worship and cannibalism must have made great strides since I left Hayti, and shows how little a black Government can do, or will do, to suppress them. The digging up and eating of corpses was not known during my residence there.
This communication to Vanity Fair provoked a reply in a journal published at Port-au-Prince called L’Œil, October 1, 1881. It denies everything, even to the serious existence and power of the Vaudoux priests, and spends all its energies in abuse. The article is quite worthy of the editor,[1] who was one of the most active supporters of President Salnave, whose connection with the Vaudoux was notorious. It is in this angry spirit that the Haytians generally treat any public reference to their peculiar institution.
Mexico, January 1884.