Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [453]
VIVRES: life stuff—roots and essential starchy foods.
VODÛN: generic term for a god, also denotes the whole Haitian religion.
YO DI: they say.
Z’ÉTOILE: aspect of the Vodou soul. “The z’étoile is the one spiritual component that resides not in the body but in the sky. It is the individual’s star of destiny, and is viewed as a calabash that carries one’s hope and all the many ordered events for the next life of the soul. . . .”8
ZAMAN: almond.
ZOMBI: either the soul (zombi astrale) or the body (zombi cadavre) of a dead person enslaved to a Vodou magician.
ZORAY: ears.
CHRONOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EVENTS
1789
JANUARY: In the political context of the unfolding French Revolution, les gens de couleur, the mulatto people of the colony, petition for full rights in Saint Domingue.
JULY 7: The French Assembly votes admission of six deputies from Saint Domingue. The colonial deputies begin to sense that it will no longer be possible to keep Saint Domingue out of the Revolution, as the conservatives had always designed.
JULY 14: When news of the storming of the Bastille reaches Saint Domingue, conflict breaks out between the petit blancs (lower-class whites of colonial society) and the land- and slave-owning grand blancs. The former ally themselves with the Revolution, the latter with the French monarchy.
AUGUST 26: The Declaration of the Rights of Man causes utter panic among all colonists in France.
OCTOBER 5: The Paris mob brings King and Assembly to Paris from Versailles. The power of the radical minority becomes more apparent.
OCTOBER 14: A royal officer at Fort Dauphin in Saint Domingue reports unrest among the slaves in his district, who are responding to news of the Revolution leaking in. There follows an increase in nocturnal slave gatherings and in the activity of the slave-policing maréchaussée.
OCTOBER 22: Les Amis des Noirs (a group of French sympathizers with African slaves in the colonies) collaborate with the wealthy mulatto community of Paris, organized as the society of Colons Américains. Mulattoes claim Rights of Man before the French Assembly. Abbé Grégoire and others support them. Deputies from French commercial towns trading with the colony oppose them.
DECEMBER 3: The French National Assembly rejects the demands of mulattoes presented on October 22.
1790
OCTOBER 28: The mulatto leader Ogé, who has reached Saint Domingue from Paris by way of England, aided by the British abolitionist society, raises a rebellion in the northern mountains near the border, with a force of three hundred men, assisted by another mulatto, Chavannes. Several days later an expedition from Le Cap defeats him, and he is taken prisoner along with other leaders inside Spanish territory. This rising is answered by parallel insurgencies in the west which are quickly put down. The ease of putting down the rebellion convinces the colonists that it is safe to pursue their internal dissensions. . . . Ogé and Chavannes are tortured to death in a public square at Le Cap.
1791
APRIL: News of Ogé’s execution turns French national sentiments against the colonists. Ogé is made a hero in the theater, a martyr to liberty. Planters living in Paris are endangered, often attacked on the streets.
MAY 15: The French Assembly grants full political rights to mulattoes born of free parents, in an amendment accepted as a compromise by the exhausted legislators.
MAY 16: Outraged over the May 15 decree, colonial deputies withdraw from the National Assembly.
JUNE 30: News of the May 15 decree reaches Le Cap. Although only four hundred mulattoes meet the description set forth in this legislation, the symbolism of the decree is inflammatory. Furthermore the documentation of the decree causes the colonists to fear that the mother country may not maintain slavery.
JULY 3: Blanchelande, governor of Saint Domingue, writes to warn the Minister of Marine that he has no power to enforce the May 15 decree. His letter tells of the presence of an English fleet and hints that factions of the colony may seek English intervention.