Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2006 - (Page 48) HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION In the painting above, Lawrence depicts L’Ouverture when he collected forces at Marmelade on the island of St. Domingue and left with 500 men on Oct. 9, 1794, to capture San Miguel. During the truce, however, Toussaint is deceived and arrested by LeClerc (right). LeClerc believed that when Toussaint was out of the way, his troops would surrender. A full history of the Haitian Revolution and its impact upon New Orleans is on view at the Historic New Orleans Collection. COMMON ROUTES: St. Domingue & Louisiana (continued from page 45) ———————————— ———————————— sugar mills and refineries indicates that the émigrés “merely followed a movement” begun before the majority of them arrived. Recent scholarship also calls into question the common belief that Louisiana voodoo is descended from a “Haitian mother religion” imported by “All Louisianians are Frenchmen at heart.” the émigrés. Voodoo practices and practitioners — from the legendary “Bois Caiman” ceremony on St. Domingue in August 1791 to Marie Laveau, “voodoo queen” of 19th-century New Orleans — figure prominently in popular mytholo- PIERRE CLÉMENT LAUSSAT, FRENCH COLONIAL PREFECT 48 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2006 gy. Yet scholars are constantly discovering new facets of the story and re-evaluating long-held historical notions. A comprehensive discussion of voodoo’s roots in Africa, its New World transformation in St. Domingue/Haiti, and its
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