FROM THE BEGINNING of the twentieth century small notes in the newspapers of New Orleans testified to the fact that Voodoo was still a living force.
The arrival of Doctor Koku was announced in 1902. Doctor Koku claimed to have come from the Congo and boasted of having discovered the Seal of Solomon on the shores of Syria. He rented a small cottage a few blocks from where the Laveaus had lived, and opened up for business. When the newspapers refused to take seriously his claim of possession of supernatural powers, he called at their offices and protested. He said he would be in the city but a short time, that he was en route to visit the Grand Lama of Tibet and that he had $42,000,000 in cash. His practices had a pseudo-Oriental flavor, but were fundamentally the same as those of all the Voodooiennes in the city. No one seems to have paid much attention to him, and he vanished without further publicity.
During the same year Henry Duplantier was accused of persecuting a Mrs. Collins by letting her know that he had placed a Voodoo curse upon her. She brought him into court and he was fined.
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In 1906 a group of Voodoos asked the police to arrest their leader, Pastor J. V. Larson, on a charge of embezzling the funds of the sect. Pastor Larson headed an organization known, frankly, as the "Voodoo Church."
Charles Baker was arrested in 1913, He was charging property owners fifty cents each for five-cent candles. He claimed that if the candles were burned in vacant houses tenants would appear to rent them.
Numa Luabre was accused of killing cats with his bare hands in 1915, this act accompanying other weird rites. Indignant neighbors testified that Numa caused them all sorts of bad luck. One woman said it was his fault that she remained childless.
During World War I the newspapers were, as during the Civil War, too concerned with other issues to give much space or thought to Voodoo. However, afterward, and until the present time, the small paragraphs telling of curses and charms, even of Voodoo killings--and these sometimes cause much excitement--continue to appear.
Internes {sic} and nurses at Charity Hospital are very conscious of the existence of Voodoo. For many years they have been treating patients who insist they have been "hoodooed." Many bring their gris-gris to the hospital with them and keep it with them when they are put to bed. The New Orleans Item, April 13, 1924, told how hospital attendants found '. . . metal pieces shaped like devils' souls; metal pieces with 'luck signs' upon them; plain metal pieces, coins, colored and knotted strings; straps with fish scales; obas or bags filled with mystic stones and teeth; bones and mosquito bar rings." The article stated that these and many other things were found upon patients at the hospital and that ". . . they will fight and cry to keep them. And there is a story that one man died after his charm was taken from him. The Voodoo doctors, or charm makers, are scattered all over the city. One, a rather famous one., is found on Tuesdays, in Jefferson Market. When one wishes to employ his power, one goes to the market and
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walks up and down three times. When the 'old man who knows' walks away, the client follows."
Despite constant rumors that they still exist, it is extremely doubtful that any celebrations near the Bayou St. John or Lake Pontchartrain ever took place after the Malvina Latour period. Since then all the ceremonies seem to have been conducted indoors, in the homes of practitioners or in churches or temples bearing names designed to conceal their true character. And more emphasis seems to have been placed on the use of gris-gris, the placing and removing of curses, and of the practice of homeopathic magic than on the dances and orgies once so commonplace. Yet there are still authentic accounts of rites taking place that are not far removed from those of earlier years. In Fabulous New Orleans Lyle Saxon tells of attending one that would have done credit to either of the Laveaus, this sometime around 1926. However, these are, though they may occur more frequently than is imagined, comparatively rare, while cases of people being "hoodooed" are constantly brought to public notice.
One of the most commonplace scenes of the working of the power is a graveyard. Not only are voodoo "plants" of various sorts found before the many burial places supposed to contain the remains of the Marie Laveaus, but many other tombs and graves are used to put gris-gris on certain individuals.
St. Roch Cemetery in lower New Orleans, a very old place of burial, has seen much of Voodoo. In March, 1931, two women went to place flowers upon the grave of their mother, who had died fifteen years before. As they were about to place their flowers in the vase before the plot they noticed a stump of a black candle almost concealed in a small mound of freshly turned earth in the center of the grave. Their curiosity aroused, they dug into the ground beneath the candle and brought forth an old tobacco can that was sealed tightly and bound with string. When they opened this they found
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inside a photograph of a man unknown to them, a package of needles and some charred scraps of paper. The picture of the man was also charred around the edges.
The women went to the police, protesting that while they were not afraid of Voodoo they did not like the idea of this defiling of their mother's grave.
"Who is the man marked for Voodoo vengeance?" wrote a reporter in The Morning Tribune of the next day. "Were the needles part of a gris-gris put on him by some dark magic? Put there so that, according to the Voodoo faith, he would die when his picture crumbled to dust? Was the black candle burning a dire death vigil of the Styx? The picture was charred about the edges and punctured with numerous needle holes symbolic, in Voodooism, of the fate to be visited on the man pictured."
The mystery was never solved, the identity of the young man was never discovered, and no one ever knew whether the curse was thwarted by the discovery of the tobacco can before the picture rotted or whether, despite this, the victim met his doom.
In 1937 an even more elaborate "plant" was found in the same cemetery. The sexton was walking along one of the aisles one morning when he discovered it before a tomb. The earth had been scraped away, leaving a cleared, circular place, around which a ring of candles had been placed. Crosses and other symbols marked the ground. In the very center of the circle reposed an ox tongue, split down the center and sewed back into one piece with black cotton thread. The tongue was opened and inside were three nickels, some red peppers, some pins and several scraps of white paper containing undecipherable writing in black pencil. The police recalled an almost identical "plant" that had been found several years before in front of a tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. On this occasion one of the pieces of paper contained the name of the current police superintendent. Then it was said that "some Negro who has landed in jail has gotten a Voodoo doctor to wish something on the police." The latest ox tongue
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case also went unsolved. The family owning the tomb before which this "plant" was found knew nothing of either Voodoo or any enemy who might believe in it.
The sexton at St. Roch Cemetery vowed recently that he keeps an anxious eye ready for any signs of Voodoo mischief. Nevertheless, he still finds evidence of such abuse of his graveyard.
"The stupidest and cruelest thing I ever seen," he said angrily, "was when we found the dressed-up chicken. You know it's mean as hell to leave food and water near a poor livin' creature and then tie up its feet so it can't reach it. The sonsofbitches who done that better not let me ever catch 'em. The chicken we found was a big rooster and it was all dressed up in a coat and pants, a hat, a collar and a tie. His legs was tied wit' about a hundred yards of white cord. On the tomb where he was I found three nickels. I took that rooster home, but the poor thing died.
"A few days after that a colored woman I know come in here and I asked her what all this monkeyshine meant. She aid it was hoodoo. Somebody was in jail and he ain't the ain't the one to be there, so his friends took a rooster, dressed up in a coat like a man and tied it up in the cemetery so it would suffer. As long as that rooster suffered the guilty man was supposed to suffer and in the end he was supposed to confess and give himself up. Them people are crazy.
"I've found plenty of stuff in this place, mostly in the back, in the Negro section. I've caught people buryin' tongues all. stuck wit' needles and pins and wrapped around wit' black thread. I found a lemon split and sprinkled wit' red and black pepper and wit' a note in it that had a man's name written nine times. Once I found a pair of tan shoes wit' a note between the sole and heel that said, 'Willie, I want your death.' Another time we found three pigs' hearts, all tied together, and less than ten minutes later one of my helpers came across a loaf of bread and some fried pork chops. We'd have thought it was somebody's lunch if each of them pork chops hadn't had nine pins stickin' up in it."
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This sexton knew a Voodoo doctor who had tried to use St. Roch's Cemetery for Voodoo purposes for a long time.
"This man's name was Hunter," said the irate guardian of the graves. "He was a big cream-colored guy that never did a day's honest work in his life, but always had plenty money. He lived near here and all day and half the night women was comin' in and out his house--white and black. Sometimes the white women come in automobiles and dressed like they had money.
"Hunter used to come here and ask me to sell him some grease from the bell in the chapel, and I'd do it. He said he used it to cure people of sores. It was real funny. When I couldn't get any grease from the bell I used to swipe it from automobiles that was parked outside the graveyard. He didn't know the difference and he used to always brag how many people he cured wit' that chapel bell grease. That always tickled me.
"It went on for a long time, but then he started messin' around in the place too much, digging up dirt and taking dust from the tops of tombs to sell as goofer dust. People don't like all that goin' on in here, and I began to get complaints. Well, one time he come in here wit' a big blonde woman and I heard 'em talkin'. Everything he'd say she'd giggle and scream, 'Oh, Doctor! Really? You sure are smart!' and stuff like that. I didn't like that. You can't have that goin' on if you tryin' to keep a place respectable. So the next time he come I put him out. I told him I was gonna get the police after him if he step inside this place again.
"I never did bother wit' any hoodoo doctors after that. I don't see why they come here. Why pick on me? Hell, this town is lousy with graveyards!"
During the early decades of the present century many other kinds of sorcery and pseudo-science either lent to or borrowed from Voodoo superstitions and practices. Many fortune tellers, palmists, healers and spiritualists added to their repertoires the dark magic that had been African. Marie
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Laveau I and Marie II had told fortunes and had talked of communication with the spirit world, but now it was the other way around and Voodoo began to be popular with all types of soothsayers and magicians.
After World War I there was the great vogue of spiritualism that swept from England to America, as a blood-drenched world grieved for its dead youth and yearned to communicate with those sacrificed in the carnage. Séances became popular, and every town had its mediums who entertained groups with table rappings and ectoplasmic manifestations. At home people played with ouija boards and automatic writing. For some it was a serious and pathetic effort to reach into the other world. For others it was a game and a fad.
Voodoos had long talked of spirits, but this referred to demons and personifications of evil, not the departed dead. However in 1921 Mother Leafy Anderson arrived in New Orleans and with her, though unseen by ordinary eyes, stalked the spirit of an Indian chief, Black Hawk, who was destined to become a Voodoo saint, for Mother Anderson was a missionary and, as she said later, when she opened her church, she "had a message for the people."
A middle-aged colored woman who operated several spiritualist churches in Chicago, Mother Anderson was not a Voodoo. There was a great deal of Voodoo in Chicago as there was--and is--in all American cities with large Negro populations. Pupils of the two Laveaus had spread the beliefs and practices throughout the country. But Leafy Anderson claimed to detest Voodoo and to be its enemy.
Mother Anderson was the founder of many spiritualist churches that are now so popular in New Orleans among colored people and a poorer class of whites. Immediately upon her arrival in the city she opened a church and also a class to train women who wished to become "Mothers" and to follow her teachings.
Mother Doris who now has her own church, was trained by Mother Anderson and remembered that "there was eighty-five to one hundred of us in her first class and she charged
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a dollar a lesson. She taught healin' and prophesyin' and callin' up spirits. Of course most of 'em didn't ever finish 'cause everybody ain't got the power, but most of the Mothers in New Orleans now learned what they know from Mother Anderson." Mother Doris described how Mother Anderson dressed for her services. "Sometimes she wore all white wit' a purple veil, but other times she wore a gold gown wit' a Black Hawk mantle over her shoulders; it had a picture of Black Hawk sewed on it. Once in a while she wore a man's full dress suit, but that was only for special occasions."
All present day "Mothers" deny they practice Voodoo, and many of them don't. However, others use many of the oils and powders and sell a mild sort of gris-gris. Orleanians are quite accustomed to seeing the "Mothers" in the streets, for almost all of them wear their robes and headdresses at all times, but strangers are startled at the sight of the women in their trailing gowns of white, or gold brocade, or blue velvet, with matching veils that hang to the middle of their backs. There are two white "Mothers" in the city, both of whom were trained by Mother Anderson, and who both operate churches with large congregations composed of both races. Mother Anderson died in 1927, but she still appears to the women who carry on her work and gives instructions as to her wishes.
"Black Hawk is the saint for the South," said Mother Edwards, a huge fat Negress, who always wears a gown and veil of deep red satin. "Mother Anderson told us there was another Indian saint named White Hawk that took care of the North. We don't know much about him, but any time you wants to chase away evil you call Black Hawk and he'll take care of you."
Nearly all these spiritualist churches have statues of Black Hawk among the images of bona fide saints, for the churches are odd conglomerations of many sects. Most of them exhibit Roman Catholic statues and candles, and use incense and holy water. They sing Baptist and Methodist hymns, and the congregation "testifies" and suffers attacks of the "jumps" and
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the "jerks," such as are common to all cults of the revivalist type. The "Mothers" heal by prayer and the laying on of hands, hold spiritualist séances, and sometimes tell fortunes as a side line. And, though they all deny it, they sometimes do business in gris-gris. Their sincerity varies. Some are, apparently, extremely sincere and are known to do a great deal of charitable work among the poor of their neighborhoods. Others are outright charlatans and have accumulated small fortunes by duping the ignorant.
But, whether he likes it or not, Black Hawk has been adopted by the real Voodoos. Madame Cazaunoux thought very highly of him.
"He's new and he's young," said the old woman, "and, me, I didn't pay him no mind for a long time, but, goddamit, you gotta admit he's sure good when you is in trouble. I tried him lots of times and he sure has got a lot of power."
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