Moana Nui Podcast

Cecile Fatiman - A Mambo or Vodooo priestess who with Dutty Boukman led a Vodu ceremony that is generally recognized as the spark that started the Haitian Revolution.

The ceremony is reported to have taken place on August 14, 1791, in a thickly wooded area near a enormand plantation known as Bois Caiman (Alligator Wood).

Cécile Fatiman was born to an African slave woman and a White Corsican man, and was sold as a slave to the French colony of Saint Domingue in the Caribbean. Cécile was a mambo, which is a high priestess in voodoo whose primary responsibility lies in maintaining the rituals and relationship between the spirits and the community. As a mambo Cécile presided over a ceremony with hougon Dutty Boukman at the Bois Caïman in August 1791. This voodoo ceremony encompassed both a religious ritual and a meeting that planned a slave rebellion against the French planters in Northern Saint-Domingue. During this ceremony Cécile cut thethroat of a pig an offered its blood to the attendees, and appeared to be possessed by the goddess Erzulie. Along with Dutty Bouman she urged the audience to take vengeance against their French oppressors and “cast aside the image of the God of the oppressors”. It was also prophesized that that the slaves Jean François, Biassou, and Jeannot would be leaders of a resistance movement and revolt that would free the slaves of Saint-Domingue.