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of Black Studies
Yorùbá Influences on Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo
Ina J. Fandrich
Journal of Black Studies 2007 37: 775 originally published online 19 March 2007
DOI: 10.1177/0021934705280410
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JOURNAL
10.1177/0021934705280410
Fandrich
/ YORÙBÁ
OF BLACK
INFLUENCES
STUDIES / MAY
ON HAITIAN
2007
VODOU
YORÙBÁ INFLUENCES ON
HAITIAN VODOU AND
NEW ORLEANS VOODOO
INA J. FANDRICH
Northwestern University
The enormous impact of the Yorùbá religion on the New World African
diaspora has been well established by scholars, especially when referring to
the heavily Yorùbánized popular Creole belief systems of Cuba (Santería/
Lucumí, Palo) and Brazil (Umbanda, Candomblé). Far less known are the
connections between the Yorùbá faith and the African-based religions of
Haiti (Vodou) and New Orleans (Voodoo/Voudou). This article seeks to fill
these lacunae and explores the Yorùbá influences on these two neo-African
religious traditions both from a contemporary and historical perspective,
sorting through many misconceptions attached to the confusing and, for the
most part, derogatory English term Voodoo. Interestingly, it is the powerful
warrior spirits Eshu/Elegba and Ogun who proved to be the most resilient
survivors of Yorùbá cosmology in the Haitian and New Orleanian diaspora.
Keywords: Yorùbá; Voudou; Voodoo; African-based religions
The Yorùbá religion is generally regarded as the most salient surviving traditional African belief system in the New World. Indeed,
the Yorùbá people admirably held on to the spiritual ways of their
forebears against all adversities they endured under slavery. The religions of the ancient kingdoms of Ile Ife, Oyo, and Oshogbo—to
name just a few—survived successfully, especially in countries with
large, transplanted Yorùbá communities such as Cuba and Brazil, but
they also left a traceable impact on many regions throughout the
African diaspora of the Western Hemisphere, where enslaved
Yorùbá workers formed only a small minority of the overall African
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was originally presented at the Oricha World
2003 Congress in Havana, Cuba.
JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, Vol. 37 No. 5, May 2007 775-791
DOI: 10.1177/0021934705280410
© 2007 Sage Publications
775
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776 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / MAY 2007
or African American population. The resilient Yorùbá spirit grew
deep roots in the new environment. It adapted, adjusted, and began to
flourish once again in amazing rich cultural ways. Santería, the Spanish neo-Yorùbá religion of Cuba, and its Brazilian neo-Yorùbá counterparts Umbanda and Candomblé are today part of the national religious mainstream in these countries. Throughout Latin America,
Yorùbá traditions blended with Roman Catholicism, the religion of
the former colonial rulers from Spain, Portugal, and France. In this
manner, camouflaged as European saints, the Orisha divinities continued to be invoked, fed, and celebrated by their transplanted New
World devotees, who in turn expected protection and assistance from
their ancient spiritual guardians.1
Carried away by this amazing Yorùbá success story, several
American scholars have stressed the importance of the Orisha religion as if no other African belief system withstood the ordeal of the
Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean.2 Yet, even in countries
with decisively Yorùbánized cultural and spiritual national identities such as Cuba and Brazil, other African nations and ethnic
groups, too, managed to salvage much of their religious and cultural heritage, which they reasserted notably in the New World.
Central Africans from the vast Congo River basin in particular left
their mark in the Americas.3 For instance, Afro-Cuban religion has
two sides, la Regla de Ocha or Santería, which is based on Yorùbá
heritage, the right hand of the religion, and la Regla de Palo, the
Kongo-derived left-hand side. In Brazil, Kongo traditions also survived and thrived. For instance, Caporeira, Brazil’s popular African martial arts form, with its eerie berimbau music and breathtaking acrobatics, has Kongolese origin, and Kongolese cosmology
and cultural ways have influenced much of Brazil’s popular music,
dances, and art.4
It is surprising, then, to find out that many American scholars do
not choose the word Yorùbá or Kongo when describing Africanbased New World religions in general, but frequently use instead
the loaded and widely misunderstood word Voodoo as the generic
term. For instance, Rod Davis’s (1999) book American Voudou
introduces the reader to Orisha worshippers across the United
States as if Voudou in Louisiana, Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santería,
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Fandrich / YORÙBÁ INFLUENCES ON HAITIAN VODOU 777
and the traditional Yorùbá religion were the same. Orisha Voodoo
is also the name of a significant religious movement of African
Americans who became initiated in the ’70s and ’80s. They followed the example of Oba Osejiman Adefunmi I, one of the first
initiated African Americans from New York, whom they respect as
their king, and founded under his leadership Oyotunji Village in
North Carolina, a utopian African American community that lives
strictly according to traditional Yorùbá standards. This group is the
most visible example of a larger trend of African Americans seeking to return to their African religious roots. Following the footsteps of Marcus Garvey and the Nation of Islam, they perceived the
“White man’s religion,” Christianity, as highly oppressive and
sought to free their souls from the burdens it had imposed on them.
They were not satisfied with the changes the Civil Rights movement had aimed for. Getting equal rights in a White man’s world
was not enough. They keenly understood that they had not achieved
true equality and freedom as long as their African cultural and religious heritage was still vilified, misunderstood, suppressed, and
misrepresented. Going back to the motherland and converting to
the religions of their African ancestors appealed to them as an
attractive solution for becoming “whole” again after 500 years of
oppression and displacement. In the spirit of Sankofa (an Akan/
Ashanti term for “Go back to your roots” or “Return to the way of
your ancestors”), many of them chose to become initiated into
Cuban Santería and Haitian Vodou lines and soon formed their own
African American communities. If their finances permitted, they
crossed the Atlantic Ocean and received initiation in Nigerian
Yorùbá lineages, Ghanaian Akan traditions, or Vodun temples in
Benin.5 The boundaries between these neo-African traditions are
often blurred, as many individual practitioners have received multiple initiations into several different traditions or practice combinations of various African-based spiritual paths.
The fusion between various African-based religious traditions is
especially prominent in Louisiana, where “Voodoo” has become a
generic term for any form of spiritual beliefs and practices remotely
associated with the Black continent. For instance, the Historic New
Orleans Voodoo Museum, an odd, small affair that sells Voodoo
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778 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / MAY 2007
stereotypes to curious, ignorant tourists, epitomizes this peculiar
fusion. A White New Orleanian artist with a passion for Voodoo
named Charles Gandolfo (1939-2001) founded it in 1972. He
seized the opportunity for a lucrative market in selling “Voodoo
dolls” and so-called authentic Voodoo ceremonies to curious visitors, capitalizing on New Orleans’s legendary Voodoo past. One of
the more prominent “Voodoo priestesses” that he had hired to perform pseudorituals for the tourists was the late Rose Jaffa Frank, a
flamboyant, dark-skinned African American young woman who
was initiated into a Cuban Palo line. Another “Voodoo priest”
appointed by Gandolfo was the late Oswan Chamani (1944-1995),
an Obeah man from Beliz. His wife Miriam, who now runs her own
Voodoo Spiritual Temple on Rampart Street, gets every day hundreds of visitors accompanied by their tour guides who introduce
her as an authentic New Orleans Voodoo priestess. Miriam
Chamani grew up in the Spiritual Church tradition in Chicago
(Costonie, 2004). She has no initiation into any African or African
diaspora religion. Her eclectic temple includes statues and objects
honoring every major Orisha, numerous Haitian lwa (Vodou spirits), some Egyptian deities, statues of numerous Catholic saints and
a large image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an altar with a picture of
the Dagbo Hounon Houna, the late “Pope” of African Voodoo or
Vodun from Benin, and an urn with the ashes of “Chickenman,” a
New Orleans Voodoo original who, like Miriam herself, was a selfappointed Voodoo priest. Her temple also houses a live python, the
key symbol of New Orleans Voodoo tradition. Sally Ann
Glassman, another New Orleans “Voodoo priestess” who is wellknown to the tourist industry, also represents this peculiar blending
of traditions. As a White Jewish artist originally from Maine, she
became initiated into a Haitian Vodou line in 1995 and now runs the
Island of Salvation Botanica, a shop for spiritual paraphernalia, and
her own nearly all-White Vodou society. Glassman leads a vegetarian life and does not permit animal sacrifices in her temple. She
gained national fame by designing a New Orleans Voodoo tarot
deck, which features prominent Orisha divinities such as Obatala,
Oshun, Ogun, Yemaya, and Shango next to classical Haitian Vodou
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Fandrich / YORÙBÁ INFLUENCES ON HAITIAN VODOU 779
spirits such as Damballah-Wedo, Ezili-Freda, and Guede, all integrated into one sacred cosmos. She also has cards for the religious
leaders, the Haitian Vodou priest (oungan) and priestess (manbo)
next to their Cuban counterparts the santero and santera as if they
all belonged to one and the same tradition. The whole mix is interspersed with cards for New Orleans Voodoo icons Marie Laveau
and Dr. John, the most famous priests of Louisiana Voodoo, and
jazzed up with cards such as “Courir le Mardi Gras” and “Carnival”
(Martinié & Glassman, 1992). But are Santería, Vodou, and Voodoo
really the same? Despite the astonishing recent fusion of traditions
in the Crescent City, the African-based Creole religions of Cuba,
Haiti, and Louisiana have distinct histories and developed in separate geographical locations.6 What are the historical connections
between Yorùbá religious traditions and Voodoo in the New
World?
To answer this question, we have to define what Voodoo actually
is. We have at least four different meanings for this term: (a) Usually spelled V-o-d-u-n, it refers to the traditional religion of the Fon
and Ewe people residing in today’s Republic of Benin, the former
kingdom of Dahomey, West Africa; (b) spelled Vodou, it is the popular syncretic Afro-Creole religion of Haiti; (c) commonly spelled
Voodoo (in the 19th century usually spelled Voudou), it addresses
the Afro-Creole counterculture religion of southern Louisiana; (d)
but as mentioned above, Voodoo is also the common term in American English for any African-derived magical or religious beliefs
and practices, often associated with black magic and witchcraft.
The best known among these four is the second, Haitian Vodou,
which is possibly the most maligned and misunderstood religion in
the world. The vilification process began with the Haitian War of
Independence (1791-1804) when intense Vodou ceremonies empowered the enslaved African population to overthrow their French
slave masters and beat the mighty army of Napoleon Bonaparte, then
the most powerful military force in the world. Saint Domingue, as
the French colony was called before the revolutionary war, was the
wealthiest colonial territory in the Caribbean. Its extremely lucrative sugar and indigo production was extracted by brutal slave labor
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780 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / MAY 2007
on large-scale plantations. When Saint Domingue fell, Napoleon
was so fed up with his overseas holdings in North America that he
sold the entire Louisiana Territory to the American president
Thomas Jefferson. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 was the best
real estate deal in history. About one third of the North American
continent transferred into American control, thus more than doubling the U.S. territory over night. Once the United States had
gained a taste for the daunting vastness of their sheer boundless
new territory, they soon set their eyes toward the west coast and
were well on their way to becoming a world superpower. This year
[2003], the state of Louisiana celebrates enthusiastically the bicentennial anniversary of the purchase with great exhibits, conferences, and festivities. Every major Louisiana organization, including Louisiana State University where I am teaching, has hosted
events to join in the celebrations.
Very few of the discussions and lectures, however, have mentioned the fact that there would have been no Louisiana Purchase
had it not been for the determined enslaved Africans that overthrew
the French slaveholding colonial regime in Haiti. Their surprising
victory sent shock waves throughout the plantations across the
Americas. Planters suddenly came to the rude awakening that what
they had mistaken for bizarre but harmless “Negro superstitions”
was a considerable empowering spiritual force to be reckoned with.
Concomitantly, Vodou, the religion that had empowered the rebellious former slaves to kill and expel their masters, became a despicable evil in the literature throughout the Western Hemisphere, and
from the point of view of the slaveholders it was indeed a major
threat to their economical basis. Hollywood’s film industry continued this vilification process by producing big-screen pictures promoting gross stereotypes. Consequently, most Americans to this
day surmise Voodoo to be a particularly vicious form of witchcraft.7 Few people know that Vodou is the mystical bona fide popular religion of Haiti and developed under the yoke of slavery as an
assertion of resistance. Even fewer people understand that Haitian
Vodou and Voodoo (or Voudou) in Louisiana are not the same but
different, though related, traditions.
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Fandrich / YORÙBÁ INFLUENCES ON HAITIAN VODOU 781
THE ANCIENT KINGDOMS AT THE BIGHT OF BENIN
The Bight of Benin was the name the slave traders gave to the
region of today’s Benin and western Nigeria, the homeland of the
Yorùbá people. The Yorùbá have been city dwellers for a very long
time. They lived in ancient powerful cities for hundreds of years.
Most of these cities had their own king, the oba, and their own
sacred shrines for the local divinities that, according to their belief,
watched over them as divine patron saints. For instance, Ifá, the
divine principle of destiny and fate, was at home in the city of Ile
Ife, the mythological birthplace of the Yorùbá people, where,
according to the Yorùbá, all earthly life began. Obatala, the serene
Yorùbá divinity of whiteness, wisdom, and creativity, had his oldest and most sacred temple also in this town. Oyo was the home city
of Ogun, the divine blacksmith, the spiritual force that rules iron,
war, soldiers, policemen, and all technology. Oyo was also the site
of Shango’s main shrine, the former legendary king of this city. He
is the divinity of lightning, fire and magic and represents the principle of divine rulership. Oshogbo, the Yoruba center for art and creativity, beautifully located near the mysterious Oshun River, was
the home of Oshun, the divinity of love, beauty, fertility, and material wealth.
These mighty old Yorùbá city-states had not only an exquisite
culture. They also had formidable armies, because they were constantly at war with one another and with their neighbors. In the 17th
and 18th centuries, the city of Oyo emerged as the dominant kingdom over all of Yorùbáland. Their chief enemy was the city of
Whydah, the ruling city of the neighboring kingdom of Dahomey,
today’s Republic of Benin. The rivalry between Oyo and Whydah
lasted for several centuries. In the 18th century, Oyo was strong and
conquered Whydah. Consequently, many Fon and Ewe-speaking
Dahomeyans ended up in slavery and formed the majority of the
labor force in the then-booming sugar industry of French Saint
Domingue, today’s Haiti. In the 19th century, Oyo was weak and
Whydah was dominant. Hence, thousands of Yorùbá people were
captured and made the gruesome Middle Passage to the New
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782 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / MAY 2007
World. By then, the Haitian revolution had successfully overthrown their French colonizers and put an end to slavery on the
island. Haiti had become the first and only independent Black
republic in the Western Hemisphere (except for some of the maroon
territories throughout the Americas).8 The sugar industry was now
flourishing in Cuba, and Yorùbá people were shipped in large numbers to the sugar plantations there. Hence, Yorùbá heritage (language, culture, philosophy, and technology) had an enormous
impact on Cuba. Some parts of the island’s African population still
speak Yorùbá dialects today. Afro-Cuban religions such as Lucumí
and Santería, though influenced by Spanish Catholicism preserved
much of the Yorùbá pantheon of divinities, the oricha, and kept the
Yorùbá philosophical divinatory system of Ifá alive.9 Divination
priests, trained in the Yorùbá Ifá system, the babalawos, are to this
day essential players in Cuban social, religious, and cultural life.
The rivalry between Dahomey and Yorùbáland caused centuries
of war and conflict but also created a substantial cultural exchange
between the two neighboring territories. When the Dahomeyans
and the Yorùbá did not fight with one another, they intermarried,
traded, and celebrated with one another. Their divinities are very
similar and have at times the same or similar names.
VODOU IN HAITI
As we have seen, when compared to Cuba, the number of
Yorùbá people that arrived on the island of Haiti during the 18th
century was relatively small and accounted for but a small percentage of the overall enslaved African population there. Hence, the
Haitian popular neo-African religion Vodou does not have a visible
overall Yorùbá character. The major African cultural and religious
influences on Haiti came from Dahomey and the Kongo. Nevertheless, there was an indirect Yorùbá influence present in Haiti that
was transmitted through the Dahomeyans because much of Dahomey’s culture and religion had already been Yorùbánized for centuries prior to the arrival of the European slave traders at the shores of
the Bight of Benin. In addition, the enslaved Yorùbá people who
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Fandrich / YORÙBÁ INFLUENCES ON HAITIAN VODOU 783
were taken directly from Nigeria in the 18th century also had a
traceable impact on the Haitian religion, despite their minority status. Nago was the term that the slave traders used to designate the
people from the Yorùbá kingdoms and, indeed, we find an entire
Nago “nashion” or spirit nation, a cluster of related divinities in
Haitian Vodou. It is no surprise that in a situation of utter helplessness and defeat, the enslaved Yorùbá and Dahomeyan people concentrated on invoking their mightiest warrior spirits, Elegba, or
Legba as he was known in Dahomey, and Ogun, or Gu as the
Dahomeyans called him, the divinities of the crossroads and of war.
The Legba-Elegba-Eshu cluster of divinities both continued and
transformed in Haiti. Derivatives and continuities of this divinity
appear on either one of the two main religious rites of Haitian
Vodou, among the Rada spirits stemming primarily from Dahomey
and among the fierce, mainly Kongo-based Petwo divinities. On the
Rada side, we find, for instance, an old mighty lwa named Papa
Legba. He is the gatekeeper of all spiritual forces and needs to be
invoked at the beginning of every ceremony. Papa Legba usually
appears as an old man who moves slowly in a very distinct manner.
He is thus a very different character from the Cuban Eleguá, who is
often depicted as a mischievous playful trickster that acts like a
small child asking for hard candy and toys (see Table 1). These
childlike aspects of Eleguà merged in Haiti with an lwa called Ti
Marassa, the sacred twins. Elegba aspects also appear in the spirit
family of Guede, the Haitian divinity that rules death, sexuality,
small children, and humor.
We also encounter some formidable Elegba-like characters on
the Petwo side, the Congo-derived spiritual tradition. For instance,
Bawon Calfou (Baron Carrefour, meaning “the Baron of the Crossroad”) is believed to be a brother of Bawon Samdi (“Baron Saturday”), the ultimate ruler over the spirits of the dead, who is also the
most powerful magician of all Haitian lwa spirit entities. Guede,
Legba, and the Bawon (the Baron), like their Cuban cousin Eleguá,
all appear in black, red, black and red, or black and purple outfits,
wear dark glasses and a tall black hat, and walk with a cane when
they manifest during a ceremony.
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784
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Eleguá (El Niño de
Atocha, St. Anthony
of Padua)
Obatalá (Our Lady of
Mercy)
Ochún (Our Lady of
Caridad del Cobre)
Yemayá (Our Lady of
Regla)
Oyá (Our Lady of
Candeleria, St.
Theresa)
Changó (St. Barbara)
Ogún (St. Michael, St.
George)
Oxum (Virgin Mary)
Yemanja (Our Lady of
Candeias)
Yansa (St. Barbara, the
wife of St. Jerome)
Xango (St. Michael)
Ogum (St. George)
Cuba
Oricha (Catholic Saint)
Exu (the devil, St.
Jerome in Rio, St.
Anthony in Bahia)
Oxala (Jesus)
Brazil
Orixa (Catholic Saint)
Haiti
Lwa (Catholic Saint)
New Orleans
Spirit (Catholic Saint)
Maybe Blanc Dania
Maybe Joe Ferraille (St.
Papa Ogou, Ogou Ferai (St.
Michael, St. Joan of Arc)a
Jacques Majeur), Ogou
Badagri (St. Michael), Ogou
Balinjo, Ogou Shango,
Ogou Jeroug (a member of
the Petwo rites)
Ogou Chango (St. Michael)
Batala, Ogou Batala
Papa Legba (St. Anthony of
Papa Laba (Liba) (Limba) (St.
Padua, St. Lazarus, St. Peter)
Anthony of Padua, St. Peter)
a. Suggested by Teish (1985) and Long (2001), but no clear Yorùbá link established.
Èsú/Elegbàra (Guardian of
the Crossroads, Trickster;
place: crossroads)
Ôbàtálá (Creator, Whiteness, Wisdom, Peace;
place: sky)
Osun (Love, Beauty, Sex,
Wealth; place: sweet
water, the Osun River)
Yemôya (Motherhood;
place: the ocean)
Õyá (Rage, Mother of the
Dead; place: storms,
winds, thunder, and
lightening)
Sàngó (Kingship, Rulership, Magician; place:
fire, lightning)
Ògún (War, Iron, Technology, Transformation;
place: blacksmith shop,
railroads, war)
Yorùbá
Òrisà
TABLE 1
Selected Yorùbá New World Transformations and Continuities (With Catholic Saint Representations)
Fandrich / YORÙBÁ INFLUENCES ON HAITIAN VODOU 785
The second important Yorùbá Orisha that survived successfully
in the Haitian diaspora is Ogun, in Haiti known as Papa Ogou. The
Papa Ogou cluster of spirits includes Met Ogoun (Master Ogun),
Ogou Ferrai, Ogou Badagris, Ogou Balenjo, Ogou Shango, Ogou
Batala, and many more depending on the region.10 It is interesting
that the ancient Yorùbá divinity of whiteness, wisdom, and creation, Obatala, did not merge with Danballah-Wedo, his closest
Haitian counterpart, the Dahomeyan spirit representing the
same attributes. The Haitian Batala, or Obatala, stays within the
Nago spirit family and becomes an aspect of the Ogou cluster (see
Table 1).11 “The most prominent figure among the Nago divinities
that survived in Haiti is Ogou Ferrai (or Ogoun Feraille). His Catholic symbolic representation is Saint Jacques Majeur (Saint Jacob
the Elder), who appears on Haiti’s chromolithographs as a handsome knight in shining armor on horseback. Ogou Ferrai is
believed to have been a great warrior in the Haitian struggle for
independence. The revolting enslaved Africans of Haiti credit his
aid for winning the battle against Napoleon’s army. His vévé, or
spiritual symbol, appears centrally in the Haitian national flag.
LOUISIANA VOODOO (VOUDOU)
Louisiana’s Voodoo tradition was long held to be an offspring of
its Haitian cousin Vodou, introduced by the large number of Haitian
refugees that arrived in New Orleans and the southern part of the
Pelican State at the beginning of the 19th century. However, by then
Africans had already resided in Louisiana for almost a century and
had developed their own neo-African counterculture religion. Already, 19th-century writers noticed distinctive differences
between New Orleans Voodoo (then usually spelled V-o-u-d-o-u)
and its Caribbean cousin with the same name. Although Haitian
Vodou has an elaborate system of lwa grouped into the Rada and the
Petwo rites, Louisiana Voodoo allegedly “lost” its spiritual complexity and had hardly any African divinities. The common explanation for this phenomenon was that Vodou could not flourish in
antebellum New Orleans as successfully as in Haiti because of the
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786 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / MAY 2007
higher White-to-Black population ratio and the stricter social system. These sociological and psychological circumstances may
have contributed to these religious discrepancies. However, the
sheer demographic numbers of enslaved Africans in Louisiana are
convincing in this context. They reveal that Louisiana, unlike Cuba
and Haiti, received hardly any enslaved Yorùbá or Dahomeyans
(Hall, 1992). New Orleans’s African population was Kongo dominated with a strong affinity with the spirits of the dead. Nago people arrived only during the Spanish colonial rule in a significant
number, many of whom were females specifically “imported” to run
the city’s markets as vendeuses or marchandes (market women).
Dahomeyan influence occurred only indirectly through the Haitian
refugees who “flooded” the city after 1808. In 1809 alone, more
than 10,000 Haitians arrived, and doubled the city’s population.
They brought their Vodou religion with them, which ultimately
merged with the already existing New Orleans or Louisiana Voodoo traditions. During the French colonial regime, 80% of the
enslaved Africans came from one single ethnic group: the Bamana
(also called Bambara) people from the Senegal River basin (today’s
Senegal, Gambia, and Mali), most of them stemming from one single ethnic group, the Bambara people. The majority of the remaining
20% were Kongolese and some Dahomeyans (Hall, 1992). Despite
their rather different geographical origins, these two cultures blend
easily into one another. Eighteenth-century Louisiana Voodoo maintained a marked Senegambian flavor,12 with some Kongolese elements blended in, until the end of the 18th century. During the late
Spanish and early American period, a large number of Kongolese
people arrived and created a lasting Kongolization of New
Orleans’s African American community.13
Like the Haitian Voudouisants, Voodoo practitioners in New
Orleans had elaborate, magical practices that included “spiritual
work” with various Catholic saints, but their pantheon of spirits
consisted of an almighty God called Li Grand Zombi, a small number of saints, and the spirits of the dead. The word Zombi derives
etymologically from the Kongo Bantu term nzambi, which means
“God” in the Kikongo language. In fact, the very same term nzambi
is used for God in Kikongo Bible translations. Ironically, most of
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New Orleans’s enslaved Kongolese were probably Roman Catholics long before they were captured and deported into the New
World. It is therefore not surprising that one of the most popular
saints of New Orleans Voodoo tradition was Saint Anthony of
Padua, the patron saint of the Kongo.14 He was also the favorite
saint of the key figure in New Orleans Voodoo tradition, Voodoo
Queen Marie Laveaux (1801-1881).15 In Haitian Vodou and Cuban
Santería, Saint Anthony of Padua was associated with Eshu or
Elegba (Eleguá in Cuba and Papa Legba in Haiti). In New Orleans
Voodoo, Saint Anthony may have had only marginal connections
with the Yorùbá keeper of the crossroads. Eshu or Elegba found a
stronger representation in a spirit named Papa Laba or Papa Limba
or Liba, who was usually associated with Saint Peter, the keeper of
the keys to heaven that connect the sphere of mortal humans with
that of immortal divine spirits. There are also some traces of an
Ogoun-like divinity in Louisiana called Joe Ferrai and a spirit
entity named Danny Leblanc, or Blan Dan, who could have been a
surviving variation of Obatala or his Haitian counterpart Danballah. But there is no clear evidence for the devotion of either one
of these two spirits. The only clearly traceable Yorùbá divinity in
Louisiana is then Papa Laba, a New World variation or continuity
of Eshu or Elegba, syncretized with Saint Peter (see Table 1).
CONCLUSION
The English term Voodoo is very confusing because of the multiple meanings associated with this complex and controversial
word. Until very recently, persisting racist assumptions about African history and culture prevented American scholars from recognizing the regional variations of Africa’s rich cultural traditions
and the unique migration patterns of African nations and ethnic
groups in the history of the transatlantic slave trade and in the formation of African New World diaspora communities. According to
these racist assumptions, the world was divided into Black and
White, implying that Whites had distinct European histories and
cultures worth studying, whereas the past of African nations was
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788 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / MAY 2007
blurred into one amorphous, “primitive” set of superstitions and
jungle “fetish rites” that had no historical evolution, all lumped into
the dubious and usually derogatory term Voodoo. Once we overcome these prejudices and examine closely the particular histories
of the beliefs and practices collectively denounced as Voodoo, we
gain a much more nuanced perspective on the African cultural
transmission patterns.
Despite the widespread notion that Yorùbá beliefs and practices
were dominant throughout the Afro-Caribbean and circum-Caribbean
world, a careful analysis of Yorùbá influences on Haitian Vodou and
Louisiana Voodoo prove otherwise. Demographic data suggest that
Yorùbá people were a relatively small minority among the enslaved
African population of either territory. Nevertheless, Yorùbá beliefs
and practices did have an undeniable impact on these two sister traditions with the same name. It is interesting but not surprising that it
was the mighty Yorùbá warrior spirits, Elegba and Ogun, that found
their place in the Afro-Creole popular religions of Haiti and New
Orleans. The Haitian people turned to Ogun for help when they
fought their war for independence and credited Ogun’s might for
their success. Both Haitians and New Orleanians alike adopted the
belief in the spiritual principle of Eshu/Elegba, the powerful Yorùbá
lord of the crossroads who mediates between the living and the dead,
between the realms of humans and the divine, without whom nothing
can come into being. It is this divini- ty, then, that proved ultimately to
be the most resilient Yorùbá spiri- tual force in these two Africanbased Creole New World traditions.
NOTES
1. For an excellent introduction to the Yorùbá religion as a transnational faith community, see Abimbola (1997). For an interesting discussion of transnational syncretism, see
Apter (1991).
2. See, for instance, Davis (1999).
3. Today, there are three modern states that have developed from the ancient kingdom of
the Kongo: Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the former Zaïre), and the
Republic of the Congo.
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Fandrich / YORÙBÁ INFLUENCES ON HAITIAN VODOU 789
4. For a good introduction to the Yorùbá and Kongo cultural heritage and their New
World diaspora, see Thompson (1984).
5. In the huge urban centers of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and
Houston, with a large Latin American population, la Regla de Ocha, a Hispanic-Yorùbá New
World adaptation, was especially successful in this neo-African spiritual revival movement
of the late 20th century.
6. Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert (2003) offer a well-researched overview of
the differences and similarities between the Creole religions of the Caribbean. See Teish
(1985) for a very readable, personal introduction to the magical practices associated with
New Orleans Voodoo as compared to Haitian and Neo-Yorùbá traditions. See also Long
(2001).
7. “Nine out of ten laypersons, asked for their first association with witchcraft, reply
‘voodoo,’” according to Lucy Mair’s (1969) prominent cross-cultural study of witchcraft.
“They suppose it to be a particularly sinister form of witchcraft, as if one were any more sinister, in imagination, than another” (p. 234). Today, most Americans still associate black magic
and witchcraft (especially sticking needles in so-called Voodoo dolls) with Voodoo.
8. Impressive and powerful maroon communities existed, for instance, in Brazil, the
quilombos or mocambos, in Jamaica, and also in colonial Louisiana. See R. Bastide (1978),
Barrett (1988), Hall (1992).
9. For an excellent history of Afro-Cuban religious history, see Brandon (1993).
10. See Courlander (1960), Deren (1953), and Metreau (1972).
11. For a fascinating discussion of the Yorùbá deity Ogun and his various transformations in New World African diaspora, see Barnes (1997).
12. Senegambians were brought to Louisiana because of their highly valued agricultural
expertise to create Louisiana’s rice and indigo plantations. They had an enormous impact on
Louisiana’s culture because of their strong presence during the forming years of the territory
under French colonial rule. They influenced greatly the foodways (to this day, southern Louisiana’s cuisine is rice based), folklore, and popular religion. For instance, the notorious grisgris, the Louisiana term for a dangerous Voodoo charm, derived etymologically from a
Mende expression stemming from the Senegambian region (Hall, 1992).
13. This strong Kongolese immigration pattern during the late 18th and early 19th century is well documented in Hall’s (2000) data bank, which includes all boat indexes and all
court and notary records about Africans in Louisiana from the French colonial period until
1820, well into the American antebellum period. This data bank covers most records about
Africans in Louisiana and traces well their ethnic heritage. It is accessible to the public electronically on the Internet.
14. An excellent study of the Kongolese Antonian movement is found in Thornton (1998).
15. For more information on Laveaux and 19th-century New Orleans Voodoo, see Fandrich
(2005).
REFERENCES
Abimbola, W. (1997). Ifa will mend our broken world: Thoughts on Yorùbá religion and culture in Africa and the diaspora. Roxbury, MA: Aim Books.
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790 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / MAY 2007
Apter, A. (1991). “Herskovits’s Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora.
Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 1(3).
Barnes, S. ed. (1997). Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New. Second Edition. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Barrett, L. (1988). The Rastafarians. Boston: Beacon.
Bastide, R. (1978). The African religions of Brazil: Toward a sociology of interpenetration of
civilizations (H. Sebba, Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Brandon, G. (1993). Santería from Africa to the New World: The dead sell memories.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Costonie, T. (2004) Priestess Miriam and the Voodoo Spiritual Temple: A brief history (self
published).
Courlander, H. (1960). The Drum and the Hoe: Life and Lore of the Haitian People. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Davis, R. (1999). American Vodou: Journey into a hidden world. Denton: University of
North Texas Press.
Deren, M. (1953). Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Fandrich, I. (2005). The mysterious Voodoo queen Marie Laveaux: A study of powerful
female leadership in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Routledge.
Fernández Olmos, M. and Paravisini-Gebert, L. (2003). Creole Religions of the Caribbean:
An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo. New York: New
York University Press.
Hall, G. M. (1992). Africans in colonial Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press.
Hall, G. M. (2000). Louisiana slave database, 1719-1920. Available from http://www.ibiblio
.org/laslave
Long, C. M. (2001). Spiritual merchants. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Mair, L. (1969). Witchcraft. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Martinié, L., & Glassman, S. A. (1992). The New Orleans Voodoo tarot. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books.
Métraux, A. (1972). Vodou in Haiti. Trans. Hugo Charteris. New York: Schocken Books.
Teish, L. (1985). Jambalaya: The natural woman’s book of personal charms and practical
rituals. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Thompson, R.F. (1984). Flash of the Spirit: African and African American Art and Philosophy. New York: Vintage.
Thornton, J. (1998). The Kongolese Saint Anthony Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the
Antonian movement, 1684-1706. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ina J. Fandrich is presently a Katrina Fellow/Visiting Scholar at the Alice Berline
Kaplan Center for the Humanities at Northwestern University. She holds an M. Div.
in Theology from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and an MA and a PhD from
Temple University in Religious Studies. She has taught at numerous colleges and universities, including Temple University, South Dakota State University in Baton
Rouge, where she served as faculty member of Religious Studies, African and African
American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. She has researched African and
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Fandrich / YORÙBÁ INFLUENCES ON HAITIAN VODOU 791
African Diaspora religious traditions throughout the Atlantic world and is specialized in Louisiana’s Voodoo (Voudou) and Hoodoo tradition. Her publications include
The Mysterious Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveaux: A Study of Powerful Female Leadership in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (Routledge, 2005). Her research has been
featured in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Chicago Tribune, and The New
York Times as well as in several radio and television documentaries.
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