Boukman Dutty - The Revolutionary Priest

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I am continuing my exploration of the great powers of Voodoo in this section of my site by examining the life of another famous priest. This week I focus on Dutty Boukman, the man considered by most to be the single most important person involved in the Haitian revolution against the French. His value to the people was considered so great that since his death he has become one of Voodoo famed Ioa; the guiding spirits.

It is unknown when Boukman Dutty was born but he was a Jamaican native who had been well educated despite being a plantation slave. His name literally translates as Dirty Bookman, a reference perhaps to the secret collection of works on occult lore that allegedly never left his side. As a slave he had precious little control over his life, and after spending much of his time growing up in Jamaica, as a young man he was sold to a Frenchman to begin life on the farm in Haiti.

The reason his original master gave for the sale was the he had insisted on teaching other slaves how to read. At the time there was a very real concern about the link between reading and social mobility and the last thing that the small controlling class wanted was for the far greater numbers of the slave population to have access to knowledge that might encourage them throw off their shackles and organise an uprising.

In many ways the Englishman foresaw the future as Boukman Dutty continued his systematic education of coworkers at the new plantation in Haiti. At the same time he was additionally exposing the local people to his own knowledge of voodoo. It is thought that he himself had not much more than a basic understanding of Voodoo at the time, but in August 1791 all that changed as a fire was lit inside him that ultimately changed the very course of Haitian history.

As with anything, voodoo power increases when infused with passion; the limits of your power become stretched and what was once impossible to your comprehension is achieved. Boukman Dutty found himself consumed by a passion to free the slaves of Haiti from French rule and oppression and, by harnessing the power of other local Voodoo priests was able to predict the leaders of a revolt that would free the island. At the Ceremony of Bois Caiman he foretold that Jean Francois, Biassou and Jeannot would lead the slaves to freedom. An animal was sacrificed and to the blood shared to offer each individual additional will and resolve from the incantations placed by Boukman Dutty.

Seven days later nearly 2000 plantations had been uprooted or razed and from those farms 1000 slaveholders had been killed as the Haitians sought a terrible vengeance for the decades of suffering they had endured. Two months after the ceremony, Boukman Dutty was dead and his head placed upon a pole by the French in an attempt to show him as a mere man, not as the legendary and inspirational leader of the uprising that so many considered him. Their ruse did not work and instead they were further impassioned and although it took over a decade they were eventually freed and most believe that without the work of Boukman Dutty Haiti may have remained under French rule for centuries, possibly even today.

So that is the story of Boukman Dutty; an ordinary man who became possessed with an extraordinary power and the capability to shake the foundations of his adopted country to the point that a relatively poor and simple country was able to rise up and defeat the French, and take the first step to ending the worldwide business of the slave trade.