In the archipelago of the
Antilles, Haiti, became Hispaniola when it was taken by the Spanish in 1492.
The indigenous population, which stood at about 1.3 million at the beginning
of the 16th century, was decimated by cruel treatment, illness, and forced
labor in the gold mines. 
After fifteen years, only about sixty
thousand remained. In 1503 the first cargo of slaves from Africa
landed, brought in to replace native workers who showed the slightest
disinclination to work in the mines. Then in 1517 Charles V authorized
the importation of fifteen thousand black slaves. And in 1697, as a
result of the Treaty of Ryswick, Spain ceded to France a third of the
island, which took the name Saint-Domingue. (4)
Everything conspired to break down the African
culture. Starting with the journey to the New World, the slaves were
chained in pairs, regularly beaten, and always poorly fed, to ensure that
they had no strength to revolt. Then, once arrived on the island, they
were given new names, from mythology, or Roman history, according to the
plantation owner's whimsy.
As they were distributed among the plantations, the different ethnic groups
were systematically intermixed; slaves were meant to lose all memory of
family, lineage, and origins.
The only permissible religion was Catholicism, which had even served to justify the slave trade and slavery. It is in this context of being violently torn from their roots, of having their every word and gesture controlled, and above all, of having Christianity forced on them that the slaves tried to resume their cultural and religious traditions. Ancestral spirits, forces called supernatural, were regularly invoked and celebrated in secret, far from the eyes of the masters yet in the shadow of the Church, as the worship of saints and the Catholic sacraments served as a screen and a support for African beliefs. (4)
Slave
quarters on a plantation in Haiti.
19th century. engraving.
Color added by Gallimard. BN