The Bois Caiman Ceremony of August 1791: A Bibliographical Reference

The Bois Caiman Ceremony of August 1791: A Bibliographical Reference

by Celucien L. Joseph, PhD

Today, Saturday, August 14, 2021 marks the two hundred and thirty years of the historical event known as the Bois Caiman Ceremony in Haitian history and in the history of abolition and anticolonialism, respectively. This bibliography contains the most important studies on the Bois Caiman conference or ceremony that initiated the slave insurrection associated with the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804); according to both oral and written traditions, the “Bois-Caiman” (Bwa Kayiman) was a religious ceremony that took place on the night of August 14, 1791. The significance of this religious and political event is substantial for many reasons. First, at the Bois-Caiman, a group of enslaved Africans gathered together to plan their emancipation out of the system of slavery. Second, they agreed to put an end to the colonial order at Saint-Domingue-Haiti. Third, they united because they believed in a common cause: the abolition of slavery in the island and the political freedom of Saint-Domingue. Fourth, this event led to the triumph of the Haitian Revolution. Finally, the Bois Caiman gave birth to the nation of Haiti. The list below includes both primary and secondary sources, and both articles and books on the subject matter.

Alexander, Leslie. 2011. “A Pact with the Devil? The United States and the Fate of Modern Haiti. Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.” ORIGINS: Current Events in Historical Perspective Published by the History Departments at The Ohio State University and Miami University, August 2019,
https://origins.osu.edu/article/pact-devil-unitedstates-and-fate-modern-haiti.

*Ardouin, Beaubrun. Étude sur l’histoire d’Haïti. Port-au-Prince: Dalencourt, 1958.

*Ardouin, Charles Céligny.  Essais sur l’Histoire d’Haïti. Port-au-Prince: n.p. 1865.

Barthélémy, Gérard. “Propos sur le Caïman: Incertitudes et hypothèses nouvelles.” Chemins Critiques, Vol. 2. No 3 (1992): 33-58.

 Béchacq, Dimitri. “Les parcours du marronnage dans l’histoire haïtienne Entre instrumentalisation politique et réinterprétation sociale.”  Ethnologies Volume 28, Number 1 (2006):204-240.

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/014155ar DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7202/014155ar

*Beauvoir-Dominique, Rachel. “Haiti: The Bois Caiman Meeting of 1791.” March 2002, http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/revolution/caiman.htm

*Bellegarde, Dantes. Histoire du peuple haitien (1492-1952). Port-au-Prince: n.p, 1953.

Butler, Melvin.  “The weapons of our warfare: Music, Positionality, and Transcendence Among Haitian Pentecostals.” Caribbean Studies, 36(2) (2008):23-64.

*Dalmas, Antoine.  Histoire de la revolution de Saint-Domingue Revolution. Paris: Meme Frères, 1814.

Dayan, Joan. Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkely: University of California, 1998.

Debbasch, Yvan Debbasch. “Le marronnage. Essai sur la désertion de l’esclave antillais, ” L’Année sociologique 3 (1963-1962), 1-112, 117-195.

Debien, Gabriel. Les esclaves aux Antilles françaises, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles. Basse-Terre : Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1974.

Desmangles, Leslie G. The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Diouf, Sylvaine. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. New York: NYU, 1998.

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge: Belknap of Harvard University Press, 2005.

 ____________. “Le Vodou, Miroir de l’histoire: Dialogue,” Tabou : Revue du Musée D’Ethnologie de Genève 5 (2007): 325-340.

*Dumesle, Herard. Voyage dans le Nord d’Haiti, ou, Revelation des lieux et des monuments historiques. Les Cayes: Imprimerie du Gouvernement.1824.

*Duvalier, Francois and Lorimer Denis. Oeuvres Essentielles du Dr. Francois Duvalier. Port-au-Prince: Presses nationales d’Haiti, 1968.

*Emmanuel, Paul. Panorama du folkflore haitien:presence Africaine en Haiti. Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l’Etat, 1962.

Farooq, Nihad M. “National Myths, Resistant Persons: Ethnographic Fictions of Haiti.” Journal of Transnational American Studies 5 (1) (2013),

https://escholarship.org/content/qt7bf413rj/qt7bf413rj.pdf?t=ncg9bd

Fick, Carolyn E. The Making Haiti: Saint Domingue Revolution From Below. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.

__________. “The French Revolution in Saint Domingue: A Triumph or a Failure?” in David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus (eds.), A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997.

 Fouchard, Jean. The Haitian Maroons: Liberty or Death. New York: Edward W. Blyden Press, 1972.

Gates, Henry Louis. 2010. “The Curse on Haiti.” November 2010, http://www.theroot.com/views/curse-haiti

Geggus, David P. (ed). The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 2002.

 ___________. Haitian Revolutionary Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.

Hoffman, Léon-François. Haitian Fiction Revisited. Pueblo: Passeggiata Press, 1999.

*—. “Histoire, mythe et idéologie. La cérémonie du Bois-Caïman.” Études Créoles 13(1) (1990): 9-34.

*—. ““Le Vodou sous la Colonie et pendant les Guerres de l’Indépendance.”  Conjonction: Revue franco-haïtienne 173 (1987): 109-135.

Hurbon, Laennec. Le barbare imaginaire. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1988.

James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Joseph, Celucien L. “Redefining cultural, national, and religious identity: The Christian-Vodouist dialogue?” Theology Today 73 (2016): 241–62.

*—. “The Rhetoric of Prayer: Dutty Boukman, The Discourse of “Freedom from Below,” and the Politics of God.” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion 2:9 (June 2011):1-33.

—. Haitian Modernity and Liberative Interruptions: Discourse on Race, Religion, and Freedom. Lanham: University Press of America, 2014.

Julien, J.B. Emmanuel Francius. La cérémonie du bois-caïman. Port-au-Prince : Editions L’Ordre Nouveau, 1991.

Laguerre, Michel. Voodoo and Politics in Haiti. London: MacMillan Press LTD, 1989.

Largey, Michael. Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Louis, André J. Voodoo in Haiti: Catholicism, Protestantism & a Model of Effective Ministry in the Context of Voodoo in Haiti. Mustang: Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC, 2007.

Louis, Bertin M. “Haiti’s Pact with the Devil?: Bwa Kayiman, Haitian Protestant Views of Vodou, and the Future of Haiti.” Religions 10 (8) (2019): 1-15.

—. “Haitian Protestant. Views of Vodou and the Importance of Karactè within a Transnational Social Field.”  Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 17 (1) (2011): 211-222.

—. My Soul Is in Haiti: Protestantism in the Haitian Diaspora of the Bahamas.  New York: New York University Press, 2014.

*Madiou, Thomas. Histoire d’Haiti  Volume 1. Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de Jh Courtois, 1847.

Menneson-Rigaud, Odette. “Le rôle du Vaudou dans l’indépendance d’Haïti . ” Présence Africaine 17-18 (1953): 43-67.

 *Métral, Antoine. Histoire de l’insurrection des esclaves dans le nord de Saint-Domingue.  Paris, 1818.

Métraux, Alfred. Voodoo in Haiti. New York: Pantheon, 1958.

—. Le vaudou haitien. Paris: Gallimard, 1958.

Miller, Paul B. “Boukman in Books: Tracing a Legendary Genealogy.” In Hanétha Vété-Congolo, The Caribbean Oral Tradition: Literature, Performance, and Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
pp.167-190.

Mintz, Sydney et Michel-Rolph Trouillot. “The Social History of Haitian Vodou .” In Donald Cosentino, Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. Los Angeles, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History  (1995): 123-147.

*Moreau de Saint-Rémy, M.L.E. Description topographie, physique, civile, politique et Historique De la partie française de l’isle Saint-Domingue. Philadelphia: Chez l’auteur, 1796.

McAlister, Elizabeth. “From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan: The Evangelical Rewriting of Haitian History”. Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses. 41 (2) (2012): 187–215.

*Najman, Charlie. “Le Serment du Bois-Caïman.” Documentary (Film). Paris, 1991.

—. Dieu seul me voit. Paris: Balland, 1995.

*Pressoir, Catts, Ernst Trouillot et Hénock Trouillot. Historiographie d’Haïti. Mexico, Instituto de geografia e historia, 1953.

*Price-Mars, Jean. Ainsi Parla l’Oncle. Quebec: Editions Lemeac, 1928.

Ott, Thomas O. Haitian Revolution 1789-1804. Nashville: University Tennessee, 1987.

Ramsey, Kate.  The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

—. “Without One Ritual Note: Folklore Performance and the Haitian State, 1935–1946.” Radical History Review, no. 84 (2002): 7–42.

*Rigaud, Milo. La tradition voudoo et le voudoo haïtien. Paris: Niclaus, 1953.

Salnave, Rodney. “Boukman didn’t know how to read”. November 2, 2016.
Updated sept. 22, 2020. [online] URL:
http://bwakayiman.blogspot.com/2016/10/boukman-didnt-know-how-to-read.html

Simidor, Daniel. “The Bois Caiman Ceremony: Fact or Myth.” March 2002.
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/revolution/caiman.htm

Simpson, George Eaton. “The Belief System of Haitian Vodun.” American Anthropologist 47, no. 1 (1945): 35–59.

*Sylvain, Franck. Le serment du Bois Caïman et la première Pentecôte. Port-au-Prince: Henri Deschamps, 1979.

Thornton, John. “African Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution.” Journal of Caribbean History 25 (1993): 58–80.

__________. “’I am the subject of the King of Congo’: African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution,” Journal of World
History 4: 2 (1993): 181-214.

 __________. “On the trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas,” The Americas 44:3 (1988), 261-278.

*Trouillot, Duverneau. Le Vaudoun: apercu historique et évolutions. Port-au-Prince: lmprimerie R. Etheaart, 1885.

*Trouillot, Henock. Introduction a une histoire du vaudou. Port-au-Prince: Editions Fardin, 1970.