1791, August 14–22: (The Vodou Covenant at Bois Cayman): While the elite classes contested power, 700,000 enslaved people, mostly new arrivals from Africa, w…

1791, August 14–22: (The Vodou Covenant at Bois Cayman): While the elite classes contested power, 700,000 enslaved people, mostly new arrivals from Africa, watched with a sense that their hour had come. On the night of August 14, 1791, a commandeur named Boukman held a final secret meeting in a remote wood known as Bois Cayman. Following Vodou forms, Boukman and a manbo sacrificed a pig, and the attendees swore a fearful oath of obedience and death to all whites. Boukman delivered a powerful invocation calling on the “Good Lord” to grant vengeance against the god of the whites who “commandeth crimes”. Just after ten o’clock on August 22, the drums changed their beat, and the sky reddened as the enslaved rose to burn estates and slaughter their enslavers across the Plaine du Cap.