In the mid-19th century, doing voodoo seems to have been all the rage in New Orleans. Uppercrust Creoles pursued voodoo in much the same way that the trendy of today latch on to the latest New Age development. It was a hot topic of conversation in the posh parlors of well-heeled Creoles, but Orleanians paid much more than mere lip service to the practice of voodoo. Superstitious Creoles scrubbed their front stoops with brick dust to ward off curses and called regularly upon witch doctors and voodoo queens. For the most part, they sought advice on affairs of the heart and purchased gris-gris (voodoo charms), usually in the form of various love potions, powders, oils and ointments. For 19th century tourists, no trip to the Crescent City was complete without a visit to famed voodoo queen Marie Laveau.
The strange and exotic voodoo ceremonies drew throngs of thrill-seekers. Reporters frequently turned up to view the rites, and local newspapers of the period were filled with detailed, sometimes shocking accounts of voodoo conclaves and voodoo-related activities. But the ceremonies witnessed by the hordes and the reporters were often elaborate shows staged for outsiders. Voodoo was a mysterious, secretive cult whose more sinister aspects were carefully shielded from curious eyes.
Voodoo originated in the African kingdom of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin). Vodu was the region of the Dahomeans. The word vodu and its various forms - voodoo, voudou, vaudau, even hoodoo - encompassed all aspects of the religion, including the gods, the cult, the cultists and the rituals. One of the primary gods was Zombi (also called Damballah), which was a snake - usually a giant python. Among other things, the snake-worshippers believed that the first man and woman on earth were blind until the serpent gave them sight. The Bantu word zumbi means fetish, and the voodoo cult involved beliefs in sorcery and black magic.
When voodoo arrived in New Orleans, the cultists incorporated some of the characteristics of the Catholic Church. Statues of the Virgin Mary and pictures of the saints sometimes adorned voodoo altars, but the tenets of this religion bore no resemblance to Christianity.
By the late 1600s, the Dahomey were invading neighboring lands to capture slaves and sell them to European traders on what was called the African Slave Coast. By 1700, the Dahomean economy was propped up by the sale of about 20,000 slaves annually and the African kingdom prospered from the slave trade until well into the 19th century. Thousands of shackled Africans were transported by the French to the islands of Martinque, Guradeloupe and Haiti (then called Saint-Domingue). The slaves took with them their voodoo, which flourished in the French West Indies and is still practiced in Haiti.
By 1717, according to some accounts, more than 3,000 African slaves had been brought to Louisiana from the French West Indies. In the late 18th century, prompted by the fear of voodoo, the Spanish governor of Louisiana prohibited the importation of slaves from the Caribbean. But after around 1803, following a series of bloody rebellions in Saint-Domingue, French planters and their slaves began to pour into South Louisiana. Many of the French settled in New Orleans, and it was during the early 1800s that voodoo became firmly established in the city.
The first organized voodoo ceremony in New Orleans is said to have taken place in an abandoned brickyard on Dumaine Street. It was probably presided over by Sanite Dede, the first of the great voodoo queens (Voodoo was a matriarchy). The witch doctors and kings paled in comparison to the strong queens - always free women of color, never slaves - who reigned over the rituals). Repeated police raids on the brickyard drove the cultists out to Bayou St. John and Lake Pontchartrain. In 1817, the Municipal Council, fearful of voodoo-inspired slave uprisings, outlawed slave gatherings except on Sundays and in officially designated and supervised areas. Congo Square was one such legal meeting place. (Later renamed Beauregard Square, the plaza in front of Municipal Auditorium in what is now Armstrong Park is the old Congo Square). For many years the slaves gathered each Sunday afternoon in Congo Square, chanting, beating their tam-tams and dancing the Calinda and Bamboula.
Congo Square drew large crowds of gawkers, but the activity there was mere window-dressing. A pretty picnic compared to the grotesque and orgiastic illegal rituals that took place around the bayou and the lake. Most people in town knew it, and when word spread about a voodoo to-do on St. John's Eve, the roads leading to the designated site were clogged with the 19th century version of bumper-to-bumper traffic.
For voodooists, St. John's Eve (June 23) was the most important night of the year. Eyewitness accounts of St. John's Eve ceremonies on the lakefront include lurid tales of half-naked cultists whirling in fantastic dances around a huge bonfire and a boiling cauldron into which they tossed live chickens, snails, frogs, black cats and the ever-present snakes. Congo drums were beaten with the leg bones of buzzards and the crowd chanted "Li grand Zombi" as the reigning voodoo queen danced with the phython. It was said that the voodoos drank the blood of black cats, ripped live chickens apart and ate them, and that sometimes in the throes of a frenzied dance they clawed, bit and drew blood from each other. The presence of small coffins at the torch-lit rituals led to the belief, widespread among the Creoles, that white babies were kidnapped and sacrificed by the voodoos. The majority of voodooists were African-American, but there are many stories of whites -- particularly young women -- who participated in the rites.
The two most famous names in local voodoo lore are Doctor John and Marie Laveau. A free man of color who claimed to be a Sengalese prince, Doctor John was an enormous man whose ebony face was marked with hideous tattoos. In the 1840s he bought a veritable harem of female slaves and a house on Bayou St. John. He exerted great power over the Creoles, who flocked to his house to purchase charms and have their fortunes told. He seemed to see into their homes and know their innermost secrets. In fact, he did - the servants in many prominent Creole homes spied for him and sold him information. When he died in 1884, famed writer Lafcadio Hearn wrote a flowery elegy that was published in Harper's Weekly.
The name of Marie Laveau is, of course, legendary in New Orleans. There were at least two voodoo queens named Marie Laveau - mother and daughter - and possibly others. The first was a tall, handsome and mean-eyed woman who was said to have been the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy white planter and a mulatto. The reddish cast of her skin indicated some Indian blood. In 1819, at the time of her marriage in St. Louis Cathedral to Jacques Paris, a native of Santo Domingo, she was a devout Catholic. Paris mysteriously vanished shortly after the marriage, and she began calling herself the Widow Paris. She worked as a hairdresser, listening to gossip and secrets while she arranged the tresses of aristocratic white ladies. A few years after Paris vanished, she became the mistress of a quadroon named Louis Christophe Duminy de Glapion, with whom she had 15 children. They lived in a cottage (long ago razed) on St. Ann Street between North Rampart and Burgundy Streets. The disappearance of her husband and her move into voodoo may or may not have been connected; in any case, by 1830 Marie was the queen and a force to be reckoned with. She is said to have eliminated other queens through the use of powerful gris-gris, literally "voodooing" them to death.
She reigned over the Congo Square doings, and danced with the snake at the Lake Pontchartrain rites, to which she extended invitations and charged admission. Everyone in the city was terrified of her, and she is said to have had police and politicians in her pocket. Fantastic tales were told of the house on St. Ann Street - that it contained a 20-foot python, mummified babies, skeletons and two altars, one for "good luck" and the other for "bad luck." Marie retired in 1869, and her "luck" ran out in June, 1881. Long before her death, her daughter, born in 1827, had gained as much notoriety as Marie, perhaps even more. Other queens reigned after them, but none ever had the power or the fame of the Laveaus.
The Laveau-Glapion tomb is in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, near the Basin Street entrance. The stark-white tomb is always adorned with burnt candles, flowers and voodoo offerings. It probably holds the remains of the Widow Paris and may also be the final resting place of the second Marie Laveau. Many believe that it is, but others maintain that Marie II, exiled by her family after the death of her mother, is buried elsewhere. Some say that her spirit is restless and cannot be contained.
Voodoo is scarcely the force it once was. It is not, however, completely dead. There are stores from New Orleans to New Haven that carry voodoo accoutrements with descriptive names -Love Oil, Courting Powder, Controlling Powder, Get-Together Drops, Follow Me Drops and Boss Fix Powder. Believers still use the "mojo hand" - a small cloth filled with pieces of deceased reptiles, birds, animals or people - to "fix" (hoodoo) someone or something. The most popular and potent gris-gris is a root called "Johnny the Conqueror," also known as High John and Big John. Big John has turned up in several blues recordings, such as Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man" and Muddy Waters' "Hootchie Kootchie Man."
Another voodoo-related blues tune is John Lee Hooker's "Crawling King Snake Blues," and in the '60s, rock-and-roller Mac Rebenneck, duded out in feathers and face paint, adopted the name Doctor John.
Perhaps the most impressive proof that voodoo is still with us is its use in modern day medicine. According to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, voodoo is of increasing interest in Southern schools of medicine and psychiatry. Doctors in respectable medical schools have consulted voodoo doctors, especially with regard to the treatment of paranoid schizophrenics.
This article was specially written by Honey Naylor, regular contributor to Fodor's Travel Guides and many other popular travel publications, to help you become quickly acquainted with New Orleans. This material may not be reproduced without permission of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau Public Affairs Department, and full credit must be given to the author. It was updated and edited in January, 1995.