1797 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only
The word vaudou enters a colonial decree for the first time
Sonthonax banned the meetings by name, and Toussaint banned them again three years later.
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1797 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only
A colonial official describes the dance called Don Pedre
Onlookers caught the convulsive movements and drove the dancers on to a crisis.
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1797 · Diasporayear only
A refugee from Saint-Domingue blames Philadelphia's wharves for the fever
Three thousand five hundred dead, and a doctor who argued the poison rose out of wet timber.
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1797 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only
Moreau de Saint-Mery divides human skin into one hundred and twenty eight parts
Eleven ranks, a fixed count of parts for each, and no route back to the white category.
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1797 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only
Moreau de Saint-Mery describes a ceremony and calls it a bacchanal
The first account of Vodou to come close to the thing itself, written by a man who despised it.
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1797 · Haitianyear only
Thomas dates uncontested control of the island to 1797
The argument opens with a claim that runs a year ahead of the record.
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1797 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only
A planter historian blames the revolt on European abolitionists
Bryan Edwards denies that oppression drove the rising and blames outside agitators instead.
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1797 · Diasporayear only
A black Bostonian tells his lodge that Haiti is the coming dawn
Prince Hall reads the revolt in the French West Indies as grounds for hope in the United States.
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c. 1797 · Haitianapproximate
A German print dresses the planters of Saint-Domingue as Germans
To make viewers identify with the colonists, printmakers gave them local clothes and local rooms.
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