My Life as a Slave

Today we have a guest blogger. Her name is Belinda Daniel and she was once a slave on a Haitian plantation. She started out in the fields but then became a housekeeper in the master’s house.

My name is Belinda and I’m here to tell you about being a Haitian slave. It was hard work in the fields. Rows and rows of sugar cane stretched as far as the eye could see. I was young when I first started field work so we had work like weeding and topping the cane before harvest. The work never seemed to end always something to be done day in and day out especially around harvest.

Many slaves went into the sugar works and came out missing an arm or leg, some even died. Sugar harvest was one of the saddest times of the year for the plantation slaves. We lost many good people to the sugar works.

When I was about sixteen, my mistress needed more help in the house for a big party she was throwing. I had helped our cook sometimes when she needed a few extra hands so I was taken out of the fields and put into the big house to work. I learned how to scrub floors and make beds and shine silver ‘til you could see your reflection in it.

My mistress knew exactly how she thought everything should be done and if you did not obey orders she would slap you so hard it would make your head spin. I tried to follow every order and do everything just like she liked it so I would not get hit. When mistress got in a bad mood, it was best to stay away. When she felt cruel, she would give the servants so many chores that there was no way to complete them all. Then she would beat us and call us stupid and lazy. Mistress’s most common form of torture was pinching. Anytime she felt like it, she would pinch me and remind me to be a good slave. Sometimes I went home at night with huge bruises from her pinches.

Since I worked in the big house, I received better food and clothing than the field slaves because mistress needed the house slaves to look good for company. I wanted to learn how to speak better and learn correct grammar so I listened to how the whites talked and tried to imitate them.  My desires to better myself lead the field workers to resent me and say that I was uppity and thought that I was better than everyone else.  I knew that I was not any better than any other slave, but my dream was to runaway and I believed that the more educated I seemed the more people would help me. I knew that it would be hard but I wanted to make it to a maroon community where they could protect me and not send me back.

I never had a chance to run away the revolution came before I could make a break for freedom, but that’s another story. Thank you for listening!

Sources:

Glymph, Thardia. Out of the House of Bondage. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Clinton, Catherine. The Plantation Mistress, New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.

Labor in Saint Domingue

 Saint Domingue grew to be the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean. The colony was considered the jewel in France’s Caribbean crown. What made the colony so profitable you might ask? It was the sweet, white stuff we put in all desserts and coffee, sugar. The tiny colony settled on just one-third of what used to be called Hispaniola came to be the world’s leading sugar and coffee exporter. Producing sugar was not easy. It took a large labor force and many long hours. To supply this need, plantation owners eventually turned to one of the world’s oldest solutions of cheap labor, slavery.

In the early years, plantation owners imported indentured servants from Europe to work the fields. These servants had their trip to the Caribbean paid for in exchange for a term of service to a plantation owner. This service could last from anywhere between three to seven years or longer. After their service was completed, they were given a small plot of land or money and sent on their way to make their own fortune. Many servants came to the island because they saw an easy fortune to be made. It was possible, although as the years went on the chance grew slimmer, that a servant who completed his term could become a plantation owner, but that was for the lucky ones who survived.  

Sugar was not an easy commodity to produce. Harvesting was a twenty-four hour a day job that occurred several times a year. The sugar canes themselves were very sharp and painful to work with. It was also a very hot climate on Saint Domingue, and many workers died their first year on the island. In light of these harsh conditions, many Europeans did not desire to go to the Caribbean and workers were scarce. Many of the servants who did come did not come by choice. Ship captains needing to meet their quota of servants roams the city streets of Europe looking for unlucky people, especially men, who they could snatch up and impress into service in the Caribbean.

Eventually the supply of servants grew smaller and smaller and the demand for sugar grew larger and larger. Europeans had an insatiable appetite for sugar. They put it on every type of food imaginable. They kept massive piles of it in storehouses as a symbol of their wealth. To keep the supply coming, a new source of workers had to be found and needed to be found quickly.

To solve this shortage of labor, the Saint Domingue plantation owners turned to African slaves. It was the perfect solution. They had a seemingly endless supply which was needed because the mortality rate was still astronomical, and they could keep them for life. At its peak, Saint Domingue would have over 800,000 slaves living on its plantations. In contrast there were only 30,000 whites living on the island. Before too much time had passed, owners would realize what a massive mistake they had created with this imbalance.

Sources:

Fick, Carolyn. The making of Haitian:the Saint Domingue revolution Revolution from below. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990, Chapter 1.

 Stanley L. Engerman (1983). Contract Labor, Sugar, and Technology in the Nineteenth Century. Journal of Economic History, 43 , pp 635-659 doi:10.1017/S002205070003028X

Priest or Potion?

The country of Haiti has two main religions: Roman Catholicism and Voodoo. Roman Catholicism is the official religion of Haiti while Voodoo is the more underground religion.  “Roman Catholicism of Haiti is typically Haitian in its institutional forms, its colorful and formal rituals, and its strict doctrinal emphases; it represents an extensive effort on the part of the clergy to respond to the religious, social, and cultural needs of Haitians. Concurrently, Voodoo is the folk religion on Haiti that pervades the framework of Haitian culture.”[1] While it seems the religions should compete, they actually manage to work harmoniously together in this country.

Roman Catholicism was first introduced to Haiti by Columbus. It continues to be the religion of the elites and officials of the island. As such, it is also financially supported by the government. Catholicism is a very ritual based religion, and worshippers know what to expect at each service. Priests serve as intermediaries between humans and God. It is a very spiritual religion and depends on the faith of the follower instead of hard reality.  

When people think of voodoo, the image conjured up in the minds of most people outside of the religion is of crude dolls with pins in them, and old women priestesses bent over cauldrons throwing in herbs and unidentifiable animal parts to brew up potions. Voodoo is thought to be a very dark mystical religion. It is mainly the religion of the lower classes which helps support the misconceptions.

Voodoo came to the island from the African country the Kongo by slaves imported by the European plantation owners. It is not a strict religion like Catholicism. The practice of Voodoo differs in each location.  It is also a very individualistic religion. While there are Voodoo priests, they serve as teachers and leaders and not intermediaries between humans and the gods. Each person communicates directly with the Iwa, the Voodoo gods. Worshippers want to be possessed by an Iwa by having the Iwa “mount” them and control their actions. By having a possession, it shows the worshipers commitment to Voodoo and raises their religious authority in the community.  

 

Put side by side, it seems that these two religions are entirely incompatible. How could a highly idealized, elite religion ever be harmonious with a mystical, peasant cult? As contradictory as it would seem, some Haitians practice both Catholicism and Voodoo. In their lives, Catholicism serves as an overarching theology and Voodoo acts as an everyday practical religion. This is often the result of a government push against the practice of Voodoo.

The government of Haiti and the Catholic priests do not approve of the practice of Voodoo. They have often scourged Haiti hunting down and destroying Voodoo paraphernalia and imprisoning followers of the religion. This threat has forced Voodoo and its followers underground. Voodoo temples are often undistinguishable from other buildings and do not look like other houses of worship. Followers of the religion do not usually disclose the fact that they practice Voodoo to the public at large.

In spite of the contradictions and the government, both religions are still an integral part of life in Haiti. 

   

Sources  

Desmangles, Leslie. The Faces of the Gods Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Dayan, Hoan. Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Pictures courtesy of: http://blackwasp19.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/princess-and-the-frog-voodoo-evil/ and http://climbthepeak.net/index.php?p=1_22_Holy.

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[1] Desmangles, Leslie. The Faces of the Gods Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992, 1.