This particular story was made popular in the US by American Reverend Pat Robertson, one day after the 7.0 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, Legoane, and other cities on 12 January 2010. Roberston said on the "700 Club", a syndicated news show for the Christian Broadcasting Network (watch the clip here):

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, you know, Napoleon the Third or whatever... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you get us freedom the prince... true story... so the devil said okay, it’s a deal. And they kicked the French out. Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.

Roberston referred to the foundational, mythical moment that launched the Haitian Revolution: the gathering of the Bois Caïman (Bwa Kayiman).

The Vodou ceremony

In the most commonly reported version of the story, notably by Haitian historians Céligny and Beaubrun Ardouin in the 1850-1860s, a group of commandeurs (enslaved plantation overseers) led by an insurgent leader and associate of Toussaint Louverture named Boukman Dutty gathered in a forest on 14 August 1791 and participated in a Vodou ceremony. A priestess cut the throat of a black pig and the men drank its blood "with avidity". Boukman then swore to "lead the enterprise", and the men took the oath to follow him. Boukman told a prayer in creole that has been handed down traditionally: there are many versions, synthetized as follows (Heinl, 2005 and Price-Mars, 1928).

Good Lord who made the sun that shines upon us,

that rises from the sea,

Who makes the storm to roar;

and governs the thunders,

The Lord is hidden in the heavens.

And there He watches over us.

The Lord sees what the whites have done.

Their god commands crimes.

Ours gives blessings upon us.

The Good Lord has ordained vengeance.

He will give strength to our arms and courage to our hearts.

He shall sustain us.

Cast down the image of the god of the whites (Jetez portraits Dieu blanc).

Because he makes the tears to flow from our eyes.

Hearken unto Liberty

That speaks now in all our hearts.

The barebones version of story (described as the "superstitious ritual of an absurd and bloodthirsty religion") was first written in 1793-1794 by a Frenchman, Antoine Dalmas, a physician who participated in the interrogation of the insurgents (Dalmas, 1814). A later (and less disparaging) version written in 1819 by abolitionist Civique de Gastine, replaced the pig by a ram and added a line about the insurgents "abjuring the religion of their masters" (Gastine, 1819). But Haitian historian Thomas Madiou only briefly mentioned the meeting in his Histoire d'Haïti (1847) and did not talk about a Vodou ceremony (see also the report made by Garran de Coulon for the French National Convention in 1797-98).

Since then, the story has been enriched with further details drawn from oral tradition and further retellings by writers and poets: the name of the priestess (Cécile Fatiman, as claimed by a descendant), the nature of the oath, the ceremony taking place during a storm, Boukman being a Vodou priest himself, the fall of an owl, etc. The rejection of Christianity itself is not a regular part of the myth (though it can be interpreted as such, as did Gastine) and there is no pact with Satan. The Bois Caïman story is a fundational element of the national mythography of Haiti, celebrated in songs, paintings, books and official ceremonies: Bois Caïman is where a nation was born.

What exactly happened, including the date and place of the event, has been hotly debated among historians (see Fick, 1990; Hoffmann, 1999; Geggus, 2002) with some, like Hoffmann, even doubting that the ceremony actually took place. For Geggus, there were actually two meetings: a political one mentioned by contemporary sources, that happened on 14 August and gathered local "slave elites" at the Lenormand plantation, and a more secret religious one held a few days later, possibly on 21 August at the Bois Caïman. Or elsewhere, since the name of the place itself is remarkably elusive outside its own myth... Some recent works have tried to link some of the elements to actual African Vodou traditions. Geggus concludes:

The details of what happened at Bois Caïman thus remain elusive, beyond the fact that a pig was sacrificed in some sort of ceremony in preparation for war.

But why did Pat Roberston and other evangelicals use this Haitian mythmaking story as a proof that Haitians basically deserved their fate?

-> Part 2