CONGO SQUARE was closed to the Negroes some twenty years after being assigned to them. Once again fear of an uprising had become epidemic. However, in the 1840's it was reestablished as their place of recreation and continued as such until the outbreak of the Civil War.
By 1850 the New Orleans newspapers were defending the Voodoos, probably because the sect provided them with colorful copy more than for any other reason. In July of that year the Weekly Delta editorialized as being "inclined to question police rights to interrupt their rites. . . ." On this occasion the police had arrested a large group of women--white, black and of mixed color-while they were gathered for a Voodoo dance and proceedings which those making the arrests described as indecent and orgiastic in character. These women, for one of the first times in Voodoo history, refused to admit the charges made against them. On the contrary, they summoned eminent counsel, who argued in excellent form that such Voodoo practices were purely religious and that the law had no justification for its attitude toward them.
In order to justify the arrests, the court, apparently bewildered at this unexpected and unheard-of situation, seems to
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have been compelled to fall back upon an ordinance forbidding the assembling of white women and slaves.
From then on the Voodoos made life complicated for the police. In August of the same year the Times described the arrest of about fifty nude women, including several white ones, who bad been found dancing together in the Voodoo tradition, and described the queen, when she appeared at the trial, as a "dusky Venus," whose "influence over the ladies of her court was as powerful as a Voodoo spell." This entire trial seems to have been a farce. The white ladies claimed they had been unclad only because of the excessive heat and had been present only because they had one and all collapsed simultaneously on the doorsteps of the Voodooienne. They were fined and dismissed.
Then, just a few days later, on August 13, there appeared an account of a girl who claimed to have been "hoodooed" and was, she vowed, suffering under a spell. She gave birth to a child and said it was all caused by Voodoo and that the birth was the result of an immaculate conception.
In 1855 a Voodooienne, one Elizabeth Sutherland, was mobbed by her neighbors, who believed she had placed a spell upon them. The police rescued her and bore her to the comparative safety of the Third District Station. However, a crowd soon gathered outside the station and insisted upon meting out to her the fate due a witch. Desperate, and faced with the problem of either becoming accessories to Voodoo and finding themselves the butt of newspaper gibes or having a Salem scene in New Orleans, the police at last spirited Elizabeth out a back door, then solemnly told the waiting mob that she turned herself into a black cat and leaped through the bars of her cell!
Voodoo queens now became increasingly brazen. When Betsy Toledano was brought to trial she expressed astonishment at the charges lodged against her. A "stout and intelligent free woman of color," according to one newspaper description, she declared that she held her position as a Voodoo queen through rights of inheritance. Acting as if she thought
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the police were, if not entirely lacking in intelligence, certainly devoid of appreciation, she proudly displayed some of her gris-gris in court and boasted of complete faith in her power. According to a newspaper, Betsy seemed quite sincere and "contended she had a perfect right to hold meetings of the Voudou Society . . . that the Society was a religious institution which had been transmitted to her, through her mother and mother, from the ancient Congo Queens." The court, even with the evidence Betsy herself exhibited frankly, the horsehairs and pebbles and pieces of animal bone, seems to have had a difficult time in establishing a charge of holding an illegal congregation of slaves.
Another Voodooienne of the same period found herself in trouble with the police when Julia Henderson, a prostitute, died of black cholera and her friends brought charges against Hoodoo Mag as having caused her death by supernatural means. The Daily Crescent referred to this witch as "a black hellcat named Margaret, a slave belonging to Mr. Marpolise, and known to Negroes throughout the city as Hoodoo Mag, the queen or high priestess of the mystic order of the Voudous. . . . The priestess claims to have the exclusive business of compounding and retailing bags containing charms and bottles containing direct curses. . . . Not only Negroes, but white women, are known to belong to this infernal institution." Nothing more was heard of Hoodoo Mag. The charges were of course ridiculous and her master probably delivered her from her difficulties.
During the war years of the 1860's the newspapers had other things to write about and Orleanians other things to think about. But the next decade brought renewed interest in the Voodoos.
A reporter for the Times was present at a St. John's Eve celebration in 1872, and on June 26 he published an account of it, which described how shocked he was at
. . . the sudden entrance of a hoydenish flaxen-haired white girl, who whirled around the room in the arms of a negro
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blacker than the ace of spades.... There could be no mistake about it. Set adrift on the rapids of depravity in real earnest, she had reached the center of the vortex. The pallid wanton face actually beamed with exuberant levity, and La Dame aux Camelias, in her wildest hours, could not have displayed an abandon more complete. Even the negresses gazed at her with a look of wonder. While the maddening whirl continued our reporter watched the wretched creature, as one after another the ebony suitors sought her hand; he saw her shrink out into the darkness, and more wanton than ever rush back to the revel, and mute with amazement he also turned away.
He concluded the account with the remarkable observation that "these Voodoo orgies ran scarcely be deemed improving to the refined or cultivated."
Despite the attempted secrecy, more and more people seem now to have been locating and viewing the Voodoo ceremonies. Voodoo had become a topic of conversation in the lush drawing rooms of the Creoles and St. John's Eve seems to have been an occasion for groups to go searching for the gatherings. We are told that on some occasions the roads along the bayou and those going toward the lake were choked with carriages. Creoles and other Orleanians sought the services of Voodooiennes, sometimes for a lark, sometimes with great seriousness, and it was everyone's desire to witness a Voodoo rite.
Howard LeBreton, a very old colored man, recalled the crowds that attended a Voodoo dance in 1875.
"This one was out by Lake Pontchartrain," he said, "and thousands of people came out to see it. I can remember it good. The Voodoos danced on barges on the water just away from the shore and they carried all kinds of torches and lighted candles. The queen was dressed in a long purple dress with a blue cord 'round her waist, and all her co-workers wore purple dresses, too. And they didn't wear nothin' underneath. Them was what they called good-time dresses. The
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men wore white pants wit' purple shirts and they carried white candles.
"You never seen such dancin' in your life. They all danced first slow, then faster. They would go 'way down to the ground and come up shakin'.
"On the barges they had statues of saints and altars and lots of stuff to eat. They had wine and beer and everybody got drunk. It was just like a picnic."
Despite all this, Howard contended that white people did not see all the Voodoo meetings. "There was some nobody but the real Voodoos, ever seen," he said. "People didn't know that, but it's the truth."
The reporter who described a St. John's Eve affair some years later, in 1896, gave a blunt and somewhat cynical description of the festivities. He does not seem to have been either shocked or impressed. "The rites," he wrote in the Times-Democrat, "consisted in building a large fire, in a dance on the part of a central personage, the destruction of a black cat and its devouring raw. The scene concluded with an orgy, in which the savage actors ended by tearing off their garments." Voodoo had now been a part of New Orleans life for nearly a century and perhaps this gentleman had been seeing such rites for years.
Grandma Beavois, a Voodooienne of the present time, an old black woman with white hair and but one very belligerent eye, insists the black-cat rite is still performed on certain occasions.
"Papa Felix is the only man left in New Orleans what can do it," she said, "and he's a hard man to meet. Papa Felix don't never mess wit' strangers. I seen him skin a black cat lots of times, He gits a crowd in his kitchen for a meetin' and somebody brings him a black cat wit' its feet tied together. He puts a tub of boilin' water on the table and lights candles all aroun' it. Then they says the prayers and sings the Voodoo songs and Papa Felix keeps turnin' the cat 'round and 'round wit' its head hangin' down and it screamin' and goin'
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on like a black devil. Then, all of a sudden, he plops the cat down head first in the boilin' water. When he pulls it out it's dead as a doornail. Then he holds it up and there is a lot more prayin' and shoutin'. He takes his teeth and bites clean through the cat's throat and skins it complete wit' his teeth. After that they eat the flesh and divide the bones. Black-cat bones has lots of power and makes good gris-gris."
The old woman plunged a hand into the pocket of her apron and exhibited a tiny bag made of dirty red cloth. She untied a bit of string and emptied the contents into her hand. There was a piece of black stone that looked like coal, a snail's shell and a fragment of glistening white bone. "That from a black cat's tail," she said. "Papa Felix give it to me. It's my protection."
As the Voodoo ceremonials evolved from the primitive African rites Christian and particularly Roman Catholic features were incorporated into them, creating the queer mixture that exists today. C. D. Warner, touring the South near the close of the nineteenth century, viewed a meeting which had many of the Catholic features grafted upon its Voodoo base. It began with the reciting of the Apostles' Creed, which was followed by prayers to the Virgin Mary. A statue of the Virgin stood upon the altar. Aside from this, though, there was little about it that was Christian. Warner published an excellent description of what he saw in his Studies in the South and West, part of it as follows:
The colored woman at the side of the altar began a chant in a low, melodious voice. It was the weird Danse Calinda. A tall Negress, with a bright, good-natured face, entered the circle with the air of a chief performer, knelt, rapped on the floor, laid an offering of candles before the altar, with a small bottle of brandy, seated herself beside t the singer, and took up in a strong, sweet voice the bizarre rhythm of the song. Nearly all those who came in laid some offering before the altar. The chant grew, the single
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line was enunciated in stronger pulsations, and other voices joined in the wild refrain,
Danse Calinda, boudoum, boudoum!
Danse Calinda, boudoum, boudoum!
Bodies swayed, the hands kept time in soft pat-patting, and the feet in muffled accentuation. The Voudou (the witch doctor) arose, removed his slippers, seized a bottle of brandy, dashed some of the liquid on the floor on each side of the brown bowl as a libation, threw back his head and took a long pull at the bottle, and then began out in the open space a slow measured dance, a rhythmical shuffle, with more movement of the hips than of the feet, backward and forward, round and round, but accelerating his movement as the time of the song quickened and the excitement rose in the room. The singing became wilder and more impassioned, a strange minor strain, full of savage pathos and longing, that made it almost impossible for the spectator not to join in the swing of its influence, while the dancer wrought himself up into the wild passion of a Cairene dervish. Without a moment ceasing his rhythmical steps and his extravagant gesticulation, he poured liquid into the basin, and dashing brandy, ignited the fluid with a match. The liquid flamed up before the altar. He seized then a bunch of candles, plunged them into the bowl, held them up all flaming with the burning brandy, and, keeping his step to the maddening "Calinda," distributed them lighted to the devotees. In the same way he snatched up dishes of apples, grapes, bananas, oranges, deluged them with burning brandy, and tossed them about the room to the eager and excited crowd. His hands were aflame, his clothes seemed to be on fire; he held the burning dishes close to his breast, apparently inhaling the flame, closing his eyes and swaying his head backward and forward in an ecstasy, the hips advancing and receding, the feet still shuffling to the barbaric measure.
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Every moment his own excitement and that of the audience increased. The floor was covered with the debris of the sacrifice--broken candy, crushed sugarplums, scattered grapes--all more or less in flames. The wild dancer was dancing on fire! In the height of his frenzy he grasped a large plate filled with lump sugar. That was set on fire. He held the burning mass to his breast, he swung it round, and finally, with his hand extended under the bottom of the plate (the plate only adhering to his hand by the rapidity of his circular motion), he spun around like a dancing dervish, his eyes shut, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face, in a frenzy. The flaming sugar scattered about the floor, and the devotees scrambled for it. In intervals of the dance, though the singing went on, the various offerings which had been conjured were passed around--bits of sugar and fruit and orris powder. That which fell to my share I gave to the young girl next to me, whose eyes were blazing with excitement, though she had remained perfectly tranquil, and joined neither by voice nor hands nor feet in the excitement. She put the conjured sugar and fruit in her pocket, and seemed grateful to me for relinquishing them to her.
Before this point had been reached the chant had been changed for the wild canga, more rapid in movement than the chanson africaine:
Eh! Eh! Bomba, hen! hen!
Canga bafio, té
Canga moune de le,
Canga do ki la,
Canga li.
At intervals during the performance, when the charm had begun to work, the believers came forward into the open space, and knelt for treatment. The singing, the dance, the wild incantation, went on uninterruptedly; but amid all his antics the dancer had an eye to business. The
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first group that knelt were four stalwart men, three of them white laborers. All of them, I presume, had some disease which they had faith the incantation would drive away. Each held a lighted candle in each hand. The doctor successively extinguished each candle by putting it in his mouth, and performed a number of antics of a saltatory sort. During his dancing and whirling he frequently filled his mouth with liquid, and discharged it in a spray, exactly as a Chinese laundryman sprinkles his clothes, into the faces and on the head of any man or woman within reach. Those so treated considered themselves, specially favored. Having extinguished the candles of the suppliants, he scooped the liquid from the bowl, flaming or not as it might seem, and with his hands vigorously scrubbed their faces and heads, as if he were shampooing them. While the victim was still sputtering and choking he seized him by the right hand, lifted him up, spun him round a half a dozen times, and then sent him whirling,
This was substantially the treatment that all received who knelt in the circle, though sometimes it was more violent. Some of them were slapped smartly upon the back and the breast, and much knocked about. . . .
While the wild chanting, the rhythmic movement of hands and feet, the barbarous dance, and the fiery incantations were at their height, it was difficult to believe that we were in a civilized city of an enlightened republic . . . it was so wild and bizarre that one might easily imagine he was in Africa or in hell.
As I said, nearly all the participants were colored people; but in the height of the frenzy one white woman knelt and was sprayed and whirled with the others. She was a respectable married woman from the other side of Canal Street. I waited with some anxiety to see what my modest little neighbor would do. She had told me that she would look on and take no part. I hoped that the senseless antics, the mummery, the rough treatment, would disgust her. Towards the close of the séance, when the spells were all
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woven and the flames had subsided, the tall good-natured negress motioned to me that it was my turn to advance into the circle and kneel. I excused myself. But the young girl was unable to resist longer. She went forward and knelt, with a smile on her face and a candle in her hand. The conjurer was either touched by her youth and race, or he had spent his force. He gently lifted her by one hand, and gave her one turn around, and she came back to her seat. . . . In the breaking up I had no opportunity to speak further to the interesting young white neophyte; but as I saw her resuming her hat and cloak in the adjoining room there was a strange excitement in her face, and in her eyes a light of triumph and faith. We came out by the back way, and through an alley made our escape into the sunny street and the air of the nineteenth century.
Mr. Warner locates this ceremony as having taken place in the upper portion of a house near the Congo Square. He does not identify the witch doctor.
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