It is certain that no people are more sensitive to foreign public opinion than the Haytians, and they therefore endeavour to conceal by every means this evidence of the barbarism of their fellow-countrymen. It is, however, but the story of the foolish ostrich over again; every foreigner in Hayti knows that cannibalism exists, and that the educated classes endeavour to ignore it instead of devising means to eradicate it.
The only Governments that endeavoured to grapple with the evil were those of President Geffrard and President Boisrond-Canal, and probably they in some measure owe their fall to this action on their part.
The first question naturally asked is, “Who is tainted by the Vaudoux worship?” I fear the answer must be, “Who is not?” This does not necessarily imply that they are tainted with cannibalism, as I shall hereafter explain. It is notorious that the Emperor Soulouque was a firm believer, and that the mulatto general Therlonge was one of its high priests, and in his younger days used to appear in a scarlet robe performing antics in the trees. A late Prime Minister, whose bloody deeds will be an everlasting reproach to his memory, was said to be a chief priest of the sect, and many others whom I will not at present indicate.
If persons so high placed can be counted among its votaries, it may be readily believed that the masses are given up to this brutalising worship. During the reign of Soulouque, a priestess was arrested for having performed a sacrifice too openly; when about to be conducted to prison, a foreign bystander remarked aloud that probably she would be shot. She laughed and said, “If I were to beat the sacred drum, and march through the city, not one, from the Emperor downwards, but would humbly follow me.” She was sent to jail, but no one ever heard that she was punished.
President Salnave (1867), inclined at first to court the support of the educated classes, kept clear of the Vaudoux. But when he found his advances repulsed, for the gross debauchery at the palace prevented any respectable person from ever willingly entering it, and when the fortunes of the civil war that then raged began to turn against him (1869), he, from some motive or other, whether superstition or the desire to conciliate the mass of his ignorant troops, went to consult a well-known priest living near Marquissant, in the neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince, and there went through all the ceremonies that were required. He bathed in the blood of goats, made considerable presents to the priests and priestesses, and then feasted with the assembly, who all gave themselves up to the lowest debauchery, and kept up these festivities so long that even the iron frame of the President gave way, and he was confined to his bed for many days after.
The fortunes of war still continuing adverse, he again consulted the Papaloi or priest, who insisted that he must now go through the highest ceremony; that the “goat without horns” must be slain, and that he must be anointed with its blood. If he agreed to this, then the priest assured him of certain victory over his enemies.
Whether Salnave gave in or not I cannot say positively. His enemies of all classes declared he did; his friends among the lower orders confirmed the story; but the few respectable people who adhered to his cause naturally denied the truth of the accusation. I think the weight of evidence was more against him than for him.
To explain the phrase of “the goat without horns,” I must notice that there are two sects which follow the Vaudoux worship—those who only delight in the blood and flesh of white cocks and spotless white goats at their ceremonies, and those who are not only devoted to these, but on great occasions call for the flesh and blood of the “goat without horns,” or human victims.
When Hayti was still a French colony Vaudoux worship flourished, but there is no distinct mention of human sacrifices in the accounts transmitted to us. In Moreau de St. Méry’s excellent description of the colony, from whose truthful pages it is a pleasure to seek for information, he gives a very graphic account of fetishism as it existed in his day, that is, towards the close of the last century.
After describing certain dances, he remarks that the Calinda and the Chica are not the only ones brought from Africa to the colony. There is another which has been known for a long time, principally in the western part of the island (Hayti), and which has the name of Vaudoux.[9] But it is not merely as a dance that the Vaudoux merits consideration; at least it is accompanied by circumstances that give it a rank among those institutions in which superstition and ridiculous practices have a principal part.