American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World (56 page)

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Authors: Rod Davis

Tags: #Body; Mind & Spirit, #General, #Religion, #Ethnic & Tribal, #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

BOOK: American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World
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Page 345
equally as mysteriously, during the dead of the night, place on his or her door steps a little red flannel sack containing a peach kernel, a piece of bone, a few goods feathers, a lizard's tail, the bill of a chicken, and a pinch of sulphur, or other similar articles, then sprinkle any old kind of dust about the sack, on the door step of the person to be "hoo-dooed." That nigger, when he or she wakes up in the morning and finds the "hoo-doo" has been at work on him or her, will take sick in nine cases out of ten, and remain under the doctor's care for weeks....
There is no law prohibiting the practice of "vou-douism" in this state or city, but the police when complained to of persons practicing the dark art, "kungerin' de spurits," as the negroes term it, and when they are reasonably certain of the guilt of the person accused or suspected of the "hoo-dooing," generally
Arrest the Practioner of Witchcraft and incarcerate him or her on the charge of malicious mischief and disturbing the peace. Recorders have frequently had to deal with this and ... to pass upon the cases of alleged "hoo-dooing."
.... Lovers "hoo-doo" their rivals and the dusky damsels who may have jilted them; "hoodoo" their creditors and those of their relatives who may have quarreled with them; "hoo-doo" their landlords, their wives and their children, and ''hoo-doo" their sweethearts to make them return their love!
.... To fully appreciate the astonishing extent of the belief of the negroes in the efficacy of the

 

Page 346
black art, it is necessary to sit through a trial of an alleged "hoo-doo" in one of the recorder's courts. The witnesses will tell in most positive and graphic manner of the exact nature of the "hoo-dooing," just what the "hoo-doo" did and just what ingredients were used in the invokation [sic] of the evil spirits. It is easy to realize how implicitly they believe in the nonsense.
Especially noteworthy about the various popular press accounts of voudou is that although in some cases some portions are truethere was dancing, and singing, and sacrifice (though not human), and in some black communities of the South hexing is common, even todayall of these activities were seen by terrified, ignorant, and contemptuous white observers who didn't know what they were seeing. There was no context. It was as if the history of Christianity had been written for Roman dailies based on observing services in which the "blood of the Lamb" was offered even to little children. As if everything we know of Judaism came from bemused reporters of Islam, or vice versa.
What most of us, and our ancestors, know of voudou, is but the culmination of the white attack on African culture, a no-quarter, interwoven campaign of laws and ideology in which the oppressor interdicted the accepted version of the ancestral belief, perverted it, tokenized it, and drove it into obscurity and illegitimacy. A phony aura of evil was allowed to survive as nothing more than proof of the foolishness and depravity of the very people from whom the real thing had been hijacked.
1
Zoe Posey material and other documents from that era are held in the Manuscripts Section, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans.

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