Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

  Tell My Horse

  Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

  Zora Neale Hurston

  With a New Foreword by Ishmael Reed

  Series Editor: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

  To

  Carl Van Vechten

  God’s image of a friend

  Contents

  Foreword

  Part I

  Jamaica

  1 The Rooster’s Nest

  2 Curry Goat

  3 Hunting the Wild Hog

  4 Night Song After Death

  5 Women in the Caribbean

  Part II

  Politics and Personalities of Haiti

  6 Rebirth of a Nation

  7 The Next Hundred Years

  8 The Black Joan of Arc

  9 Death of Leconte

  Part III

  Voodoo In Haiti

  10 Voodoo and Voodoo Gods

  11 Isle de la Gonave

  12 Archahaie and What It Means

  13 Zombies

  14 Secte Rouge

  15 Parlay Cheval Ou (Tell My Horse)

  16 Graveyard Dirt and Other Poisons

  17 Doctor Reser

  18 God and the Pintards

  Appendix

  I Songs of Worship to Voodoo Gods

  II Miscellaneous Songs

  Afterword

  Selected Bibliography

  Chronology

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  FOREWORD

  A line from Countee Cullen’s famous poem “Heritage” typifies the attitudes of many “educated” white and black Americans for whom African and Neo-African religions are exotic faiths whose gods, “quaint…outlandish…,” and “heathen,” are “naught” to them. It took the restless intellect of Zora Neale Hurston to make Neo-African religion, and its gods, more than “naught.” The result was Tell My Horse, a major work of the Voodoo bibliography, which includes books written in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Creole as well as English. The majority of these works have yet to be translated, which makes Hurston’s work a treasure for the English reader who is curious about the subject. Though Voodoo had been driven underground by the time Tell My Horse was published, there has been a resurgence recently, due to the arrival in the United States of many of its followers from South and Central America and the Caribbean. Since white American readers are suspicious of the scholarship of those they deem to be aliens—they seem to need one of their own to translate—the efforts of such scholars as Robert Thompson, Robert Gover, and Michael Ventura and musicians like Kip Hanrahan and David Byrne have been invaluable in defusing some of the hysteria with which Neo-African religion has been regarded in the United States, a Protestant country. The contemporary misunderstanding of Voodoo was recently shown by the harsh criticism that African priests and Americans like Rev. George A. Stallings, Jr., received from the Catholic hierarchy as a result of their incorporation of the African style into western Catholic rites—even though such blending of styles has been long established in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Haiti, where it is said that the people are ninety-five per cent Catholic and one hundred per cent Voodoo. It is against this background that Zora Neale Hurston’s pioneer work can be appreciated, though one can understand why a writer tackling such a taboo subject would have appeared odd to the intellectually slothful of her time.

  But Tell My Horse, the result of Hurston’s travels to Jamaica and Haiti, is more than a Voodoo work. She writes intelligently about the botany, sociology, anthropology, geology, and politics of these nations in a style that is devoid of pompous jargon and accessible to the general reader. It is an entertaining book.

  Hurston’s gift for storytelling is immense, whether writing about the hunting of a wild boar by the Maroons at Accompong (“Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their…courage and ingenuity”), or an account of the extraordinary steps that Jamaicans take to appease a “duppy,” lest it return from the grave and do harm to the living. In one of the book’s very good interviews an informant tells Hurston that “the duppy…is the most powerful part of any man. Everybody has evil in them, and when a man is alive, the heart and the brain controls him and he will not abandon himself to many evil things. But when the duppy leaves the body, it no longer has anything to restrain it and it will do more terrible things than any man ever dreamed of. It is not good for a duppy to stay among living folk.”

  Part travelogue, Tell My Horse invokes the beauty of Jamaica and Haiti and the sacred zones where African gods continue to dwell—the “good” ones, the Rada group, and the “bad” ones, the Petros. The enemies of Voodoo have exploited rumors associating the Secte Rouge, a Petro sect, with human sacrifice in order to defame Voodoo, less a religion than the common language of slaves from different African tribes, thrown together in the Americas for commercial reasons. This common language was feared because it not only united the Africans but also made it easier for them to forge alliances with those Native Americans whose customs were similar. Voodoo has been the inspiration for the major slave revolts in this hemisphere, including the one that ousted the French from Haiti, but just as Christianity has been used by tyrants as a means for persecuting their opponents, Voodoo has been similarly abused.

  Hurston’s account of the Neo-African religion practiced in Haiti is fascinating. She gives a thorough description of the main loas (gods), their needs, their desires, and their powers. The details about art and dance are informative, though she describes the dance as “barbaric.” But the most interesting discussion in Tell My Horse concerns possession, that strange phenomenon during which a mortal is taken over by a god. (One wonders what would happen if “possession,” this amazing phenomenon, were as available to the millions of anxiety-ridden Americans as are the billions of toxic stress-reducing pills that are shoveled across drugstore counters and the illegal substances consumed by Americans that make ours a nation of junkies.)

  It is interesting to note that a growing number of psychiatrists and physicians are beginning to trace the mental and physical health problems of many blacks—in particular the lack of self-esteem—to the symbolic annihilation to which their culture is subjected by the white-pride school curricula and media. Perhaps another cause of this depression is the severance of any link to the images of their ancient religion. One wonders how the millions of Catholics and Protestants who came to these shores or the followers of Buddhism and Confucianism would have fared had their faiths been driven underground, depriving them of spiritual nourishment, or if their religions had been exposed to the kind of pillorying that Neo-African religion receives in the media and from the motion picture industry. Typical of the treatment accorded Voodoo was NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw’s sensational announcement that the drug murders occurring in Mexico in 1988 were the result of Voodoo rites; it was revealed later that the so-called drug cult had been inspired by a Hollywood “Voodoo” film entitled The Believers.

  Contemporary myths about black literature proliferate, but the fate of the average black writer, male or female, is the same: the nonavailability of their books; reviews that are often influenced by racist ideology or that exhibit a double standard; the difficulty in getting their views aired—these are just some of the problems that hamper their careers. Most would agree with Countee Cullen’s assessment that a black writer in a country in which they are treated as aliens is “a curious thing.”

  For Hurston, though, the human family has room for a President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, a “greedy detestable criminal,” as well as his son, known by the peasants of his time as “fine” an
d “intelligent.” In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, despite their flaws, the men are productive and talented. In Tell My Horse, Hurston describes, without sermonizing, the Jamaican practice of cultivating geishas for the delight of prospective grooms and comments in passing on the practice of polygamy. When commenting about the status of women in the United States, she sounds more like Phyllis Schlafly than Bell Hooks or Michelle Wallace: “The majority of men in all the states are pretty much agreed that just for being born a girl-baby you ought to have laws and privileges and pay and perquisites. And so far as being allowed to voice opinions is concerned, why, they consider that you are born with the law in your mouth, and that is not a bad arrangement either. The majority of the solid citizens strain their ears trying to find out what it is that their womenfolk want so they can strain around and try to get it for them, and that is a very good idea and the right way to look at things.” Ironically, many of today’s feminists would consider such thinking to be “retrograde.” Zora Neale Hurston has also gained the reputation of a racial chauvinist. She reserves some of her harshest opinions for black nationalists (Race Men), whom she dismisses as “windbags” and “demagogues.”

  The Zora Neale Hurston of Tell My Horse is skeptical, cynical, funny, ironic, brilliant, and innovative. With its mixture of techniques and genres, this book, originally published in 1938, is bound to be the postmodernist book of the nineties. But her greatest accomplishment is in revealing the profound beauty and appeal of a faith older than Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, a faith that has survived in spite of its horrendously bad reputation and the persecution of its followers.

  ISHMAEL REED

  PART I

  JAMAICA

  CHAPTER 1

  THE ROOSTER’S NEST

  Jamaica, British West Indies, has something else besides its mountains of majesty and its quick, green valleys. Jamaica has its moments when the land, as in St. Mary’s, thrusts out its sensuous bosom to the sea. Jamaica has its “bush.” That is, the island has more usable plants for medicinal and edible purposes than any other spot on earth. Jamaica has its Norman W. Manley, that brilliant young barrister who looks like the younger Pitt in yellow skin, and who can do as much with a jury as Darrow or Liebowitz ever did. The island has its craze among the peasants known as Pocomania, which looks as if it might be translated into “a little crazy.” But Brother Levi says it means “something out of nothing.” It is important to a great number of people in Jamaica, so perhaps we ought to peep in on it a while.

  The two greatest leaders of the cult in Jamaica are Mother Saul, who is the most regal woman since Sheba went to see Solomon, and Brother Levi, who is a scrontous-looking man himself.

  Brother Levi said that this cult all started in a joke but worked on into something important. It was “dry” Pocomania when it began. Then it got “spirit” in it and “wet.” What with the music and the barbaric rituals, I became interested and took up around the place. I witnessed a wonderful ceremony with candles. I asked Brother Levi why this ceremony and he said, “We hold candle march after Joseph. Joseph came from cave where Christ was born in the manger with a candle. He was walking before Mary and her baby. You know Christ was not born in the manger. Mary and Joseph were too afraid for that. He was born in a cave and He never came out until He was six months old. The three wise men see the star but they can’t find Him because He is hid in cave. When they can’t find Him after six months, they make a magic ceremony and the angel come tell Joseph the men wanted to see Him. That day was called ‘Christ must day’ because it means ‘Christ must find today,’ so we have Christmas day, but the majority of people are ignorant. They think Him born that day.”

  I went to the various “tables” set in Pocomania, which boils down to a mixture of African obeah and Christianity enlivened by very beautiful singing. I went to a “Sun Dial”—that is a ceremony around the clock (24 hours long). The place was decorated from the gate in, with braided palm fronds and quacca bush. Inside the temple, the wall behind the altar was papered with newspapers.

  There, the ceremony was in the open air. A long table covered with white. Under this table, on the ground, lighted candles to attract the spirits. There was a mysterious bottle which guaranteed “the spirit come.” The Shepherd entered followed by the Sword Boy, carrying a wooden sword. After him came the Symbol Boy with a cross, chanting. Then came the Unter Boy with a supple jack, a switch very much like a rattan cane in his hand. During the ceremony he flogged those who were “not in spirit” that is, those who sat still. They are said to “cramp” the others who are in spirit. The Governess followed the Unter Boy. She has charge of all the women, but otherwise she functions something like the Mambo of Haiti. She aids the Shepherd and generally fires the meeting by leading the songs and whipping up the crowd. There followed then the Shepherd Boy who is the “armor-bearer” to the Shepherd.

  Their ceremony is exciting at times with singing, marching, baptisms at sacred pools in the yard. Miraculous “cures” (Mother Saul actually sat down upon a screaming Chinese boy to cure him of insanity); and the dancing about the tables with that tremendous exhalation of the breath to set the rhythm. That is the most characteristic thing of the whole ceremony. That dancing about the lighted candle pattern on the ground and that way of making a rhythmic instrument and of the breathing apparatus—such is Pocomania, but what I have discussed certainly is not all of it.

  These “Balm yards” are deep in the lives of the Jamaican peasants. A Balm Yard is a place where they give baths, and the people who operate these yards are to their followers both doctor and priest. Sometimes he or she diagnoses a case as a natural ailment, and a bath or series of baths in infusions of secret plants is prescribed. More often the diagnosis is that the patient has been “hurt” by a duppy, and the bath is given to drive the spirit off. The Balm Yard with a reputation is never lacking for business. These anonymous rulers of the common people have decreed certain rules and regulations for events in life that are rigidly adhered to. For instance the customs about birth and death. The childbed and the person of the newborn baby must be protected from the dead by marks made with bluing. When it is moved from this room, the open Bible must precede it to keep off the duppies, and so on.

  Tables are usually set because something for which a ceremony has been performed is accomplished. The grateful recipient of favor from the gods then sets a table of thanksgiving. No one except the heads of the Balm Yard and the supplicants are told what it is for. Most of the country products are served with plenty of raw rum. The first and most important thing is a small piece of bread in a small glass of water as a symbol of plenty.

  And then Jamaica has its social viewpoints and stratifications which influence so seriously its economic direction.

  Jamaica is the land where the rooster lays an egg. Jamaica is two per cent white and the other ninety-eight per cent all degrees of mixture between white and black, and that is where the rooster’s nest comes in. Being an English colony, it is very British. Colonies always do imitate the mother country more or less. For instance some Americans are still aping the English as best they can even though they have had one hundred and fifty years in which to recover.

  So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation. So everybody who has any hope at all is looking out for the next generation and so on. The color line in Jamaica between the white Englishman and the blacks is not as sharply drawn as between the mulattoes and the blacks. To avoid the consequences of posterity the mulattoes give the blacks a first class letting alone. There is a frantic stampede white-ward to escape from Jamaica’s black mass. Under ordinary circumstances the trend would be towards the majority group, of course. But one must remember that Jamaica has slavery in her past and i
t takes many generations for the slave derivatives to get over their awe for the master-kind. Then there is the colonial attitude. Add to that the negro’s natural aptitude for imitation and you have Jamaica.

  In some cases the parents of these mulattoes have been properly married, but most often that is not the case. The mixed-blood bears the name with the bar sinister. However, the mulatto has prestige, no matter how he happened to come by his light skin. And the system of honoring or esteeming his approach to the Caucasian state is so elaborate that first, second, third and fourth degrees of illegitimacy are honored in order of their nearness to the source of whiteness. Sometimes it is so far fetched, that one is reminded of that line from “Of Thee I Sing,” where the French Ambassador boasts, “She is the illegitimate daughter of the illegitimate son of the illegitimate nephew of the great Napoleon.” In Jamaica just substitute the word Englishman for Napoleon and you have the situation.