Louisiana Voodoo
Louisiana Voodoo, also known as New Orleans Voodoo, was an African diasporic religion that existed in Louisiana and the broader Mississippi River valley between the 18th and early 20th centuries. It arose through a process of syncretism between the traditional religions of West and Central Africa; Haitian Vodou and Catholicism. No central authority controlled Louisiana Voodoo, which was organized through autonomous groups.
From the early 18th century, enslaved West and Central Africans—the majority of them Bambara and Bakongo—were brought to the French colony of Louisiana. There, their traditional religions syncretized with each other and with the Catholic beliefs of the French. This continued as Louisiana came under Spanish control and was then purchased by the United States in 1803. In the early 19th century, many migrants fleeing the Haitian Revolution arrived in Louisiana, bringing with them Haitian Vodou, which contributed to the formation of Louisiana Voodoo. Practiced primarily by black people, but with some white involvement, Voodoo spread up the Mississippi River to Missouri. Although the religion was never banned, its practice was restricted through laws regulating when and where black people could gather. Growing government opposition in the mid-19th century brought multiple arrests and prosecutions, while increased press attention directed greater attention to prominent Voodoo practitioners like Marie Laveau. Voodoo died out in the early 20th century, although some of its practices survived through hoodoo.
Information about Voodoo's beliefs and practices comes from various historical records, but this material is partial and much about the religion is not known. Historical records reveal the names of various deities who were worshiped in Voodoo. Prominent among them were Blanc Dani, the Grand Zombi, and Papa Lébat, whose identities derived from various African divinities. These were venerated at altars and offered animal sacrifices; several sources refer to the involvement of live snakes in rituals. Spirits of the dead and Catholic saints also played a prominent role. Each Voodoo group was independent and typically led by a priestess or less commonly a priest. Membership of these groups was provided through an initiation ceremony. Major celebrations occurred at Saint John's Eve, which in the 19th century was marked by large gatherings on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Also playing an important part of Voodoo practice was the production of material charms, often known as gris-gris, for purposes such as healing and cursing.
Louisiana Voodoo has long faced opposition from non-practitioners, who have characterized it as witchcraft and devil-worship, negative attitudes that have resulted in many sensationalist portrayals of the religion in popular culture. From the 1960s, the New Orleans tourist industry increasingly used references to Voodoo to attract visitors, while the 1990s saw the start of a Voodoo revival, the practitioners of which drew heavily on other African diasporic religions such as Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santería.
Definitions
Louisiana Voodoo was a religion, and more specifically an "African diasporic religion", a native African American religion, and a creole religion.Louisiana Voodoo has also been referred to as New Orleans Voodoo, and—in some older texts—Voodooism. The scholar Ina J. Fandrich described it as the "Afro-Creole counterculture religion of southern Louisiana".
Louisiana Voodoo emerged along the Mississippi River valley, and especially in the city of New Orleans, during the 18th and early 19th centuries before dying out in the early 20th century. It was informed heavily by the traditional African religions brought to the region, predominantly from West Central Africa and Senegambia, but also took influence from the Native Americans of the Mississippi River Valley, French and Spanish settlers, Anglo-Americans, and Haitian migrants bringing with them Haitian Vodou.
The historical record for Voodoo is fragmentary, with much information about the religion being lost and not recoverable. It was a largely oral tradition, with its followers often being illiterate or uninterested in committing information about their practices to writing. It had no formal creed, nor a specific sacred text, and had no unifying organized structure or hierarchy. Practitioners often adapted Voodoo to suit their specific requirements, in doing so often mixing it with other religious traditions. Throughout its history, many Voodoo practitioners also practiced Catholicism and integrated Catholic elements into their practice of Voodoo. In turn, the Catholic Church largely ignored Voodoo throughout much of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The prominent 19th-century Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau for instance regularly attended Mass at a Catholic church, and was close friends with the Catholic Friar Antonio de Sedella, who worked with her in ministering to the sick.
Etymology and terminology
The term Voodoo derives ultimately from vodu, a term meaning "spirit" or "deity" among the Fon and Ewe languages of West Africa. Although the spelling Voodoo is now the most popular way of referring to the Louisiana religion, variant spellings have been used over the years, including Voudou and Vaudou. In modern scholarship, the spelling Voodoo is sometimes used for the Louisiana practice to distinguish it from Haitian Vodou. When the religion was active, its practitioners often referred to themselves as Voodoos, although elsewhere they have been called Voodooists.A related term is hoodoo, which may originally have been largely synonymous with Voodoo. The historian Jeffrey Anderson noted that the distinction between the two terms is "blurry" and "depends heavily on who explains them". Some Voodoo practitioners evidently called what they did hoodoo; in 1940, one practitioner was recorded as saying that "Voodoo means the worker, hoodoo the things they do". The historian Katrina Hazzard-Donald noted that in parts of Louisiana, hoodoo and Voodoo would have been "viewed as indistinguishable in many respects by outsiders and believers alike." Attempting to clarify things, by the 21st century there was a general scholarly consensus that the terms Voodoo and hoodoo should be used to describe two distinct phenomena. Thus, the term hoodoo has come to describe "the brand of African American supernaturalism found along the Mississippi", meaning the use of charms and spells, often to heal or to harm, that need not make any reference to deities. In this, hoodoo differs from the specific religion, with its priesthood and organised deity worship, that is characterized by the term Voodoo.
Beliefs
Deities
Although it displayed its own spiritual hierarchy, Louisiana Voodoo had no formal theology. Many practitioners of Voodoo did not see their religion as being in intrinsic conflict with the Catholicism that was dominant along the Mississippi River, and thus practiced both religions. Despite this, there was no clear evidence of the Christian God being incorporated into the Voodoo pantheon. Anderson suggested that Voodooists may have seen the worship of God as something that was best done in a Christian church.The names of Louisiana Voodoo's deities were recorded in various 19th-century sources. These deities seem to derive predominantly from spirits venerated around the Bight of Benin. In contrast to Haitian Vodou, there is no evidence that these were divided into groups known as nanchon.
One of the most important deities was Blanc Dani, also known as Daniel Blanc or Monsieur Danny. The earliest records of him date from 1880, and it is probable that he derives from Dan or Da, a deity venerated by the Fon and Ewe people and whose worship centred largely around Ouidah. In West Africa, Dan is associated with the color white and this may explain suggestions from the Louisiana material that Blanc Dani was perceived as a white man.
Although there are no specific references to Blanc Dani being a serpent, the prominence of snakes within Louisiana Voodoo might have been an allusion to Blanc Dani, for Dan is often associated with snakes in both West Africa and in his Haitian form, Damballa. Another recorded name, Dambarra Soutons, may be an additional name for Blanc Dani. A similar figure, Grandfather Rattlesnake, appeared in the 19th-century folklore of African-American Missourians and may also be a development of the same West African character.
It is also possible that Blanc Dani was ultimately equated with another deity, known as the Grand Zombi, whose name meant "Great God", „Great Soul“ or "Great Spirit;" the term Zombi derives from the Kongo Bantu term nzambi. Another prominent deity was Papa Lébat, also called Liba, LaBas, or Laba Limba, and he was seen as a trickster as well as a doorkeeper; his name stems from the Yoruba deity Legba, with Fandrich suggesting that he was the only one of these New Orleans deities with an unequivocally Yoruba origin.
Monsieur Assonquer, also known as Onzancaire and On Sa Tier, was associated with good fortune in Louisiana Voodoo. His name may suggest an origin in the Yoruba figure Osanyin.
Another Louisiana character, Monsieur Agoussou or Vert Agoussou, was associated with love. Vériquité was a spirit associated with the causing of illness, while Monsieur d'Embarass was linked to death. Charlo was a child deity. The names of several other deities are recorded, but with little known about their associations, including Jean Macouloumba, who was also known as Colomba; Maman You; and Yon Sue. There was also a deity called Samunga, called upon by practitioners in Missouri when they were collecting mud.
Ancestors and saints
The spirits of the dead played a prominent role in Louisiana Voodoo during the 19th century. The prominence of these spirits of the dead may owe something to the fact that New Orleans' African American population was heavily descended from enslaved Bakongo people, whose traditional religion placed strong emphasis on such entities. The importance of the dead is also suggested by the significance that was accorded to graveyard soil by Voodoo practitioners, something that also bears parallels in the religions of West Central Africa. In Louisiana, the term zombi—probably derived from the Kikongo term nzambi—was historically often used to describe a ghost or spirit, or sometimes also a wizard or ritual specialist.As Africans arrived in Louisiana, they adopted from Catholicism and so various West African deities became associated with specific Catholic saints. Papa Lébat was for instance linked to Saint Peter, and Mama You to the Virgin Mary. These linkages were largely forged by similarities between the corresponding figures; Papa Lébat was for instance seen to open the way for practitioners, while Saint Peter is traditionally portrayed holding keys. Interviews with elderly New Orleanians conducted in the 1930s and 1940s suggested that, as it existed in the closing three decades of the 19th century, Voodoo primarily entailed supplications to the saints for assistance. Among the most popular was Saint Anthony of Padua; this figure is also the patron saint of the Bakongo, a likely link to the heavily Bakongo-descended population of New Orleans. These correspondences between Catholic saints and African-derived deities are similarly evident in many other African diasporic religions.