Hurbon traces the word vodun to Fon usage around the Gulf of Benin, where guardian spirits belonged to village, family and lineage until the royal house of Abomey centralised the cult, absorbed the deities of its enemies and turned independent priests into court dignitaries. Carried across the Atlantic, those practices were rebuilt in Saint-Domingue under prohibition, sheltered behind saints' feasts, sacraments and processions, while flight into maroon settlements offered a second form of refusal. A long central stretch documents how outsiders then turned the religion into evidence against Haitians: travellers reporting cannibal banquets, Spencer St John's accusation of 1881, Daumier's caricature of the emperor Soulouque, and American writers of the occupation years who used superstition to argue that black self-rule had failed. The penal code of 1835 and the concordat with the Vatican gave the church legal means of persecution. Later pages set out the families of lwa and their pairing with Catholic icons.