Dessalines swears no European will ever again set foot here as master

Three months after independence, Governor-General Jean-Jacques Dessalines spoke to the people on 28 April 1804 and swore that never would any European set foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor. He had just finished the killing of the remaining French colonists. The oath was not rhetoric: it was written into the imperial constitution of 1805 as article 12, with the word white in place of European, and it stayed in every Haitian charter after that. It was only struck out in 1918, under the American occupation, so that foreigners could own Haitian land.