Abstract
The whole process of creolization, which started with the Spanish colonization of Haiti, affected every aspect of the slave’s life. The emerging nativist religions had also borne the mark of the emerging creole culture. In different regions, in relation to the type of plantation
prevalent and the African origin of the slaves, various type of creolized, Afro-cults emerged. Haitian historians and ethnologists, as disciples of Dr. Jean Price-Mars, a theorist of Negritude, have always argued that differences that existed in voodoo in the beginning of the Eighteenth Century disappeared by the time of the Haitian Revoluion. According to these historians and ethnologists, during the regular voodoo meetings in which Maroons and slaves participated, the voodoo cult was unified and standardized, as a cohesive factor for revolutionary Blacks and Mulattoes.1 The underlying assumption in their writings is that ritual uniformity was necessary for racial solidarity and political unity. Data provided by colonial historians, missionaries, and travelers allow us not only to test this hypothesis, but also to reject it. Indeed, these data show rather the diversity of the cult during the whole colonial period.2 This observaion would be a very casual one if understanding the functioning of voodoo did not depend on the recognition of this pluralism and if contemporaneous voodoo cults had failed to appear differently from each other.