Ceremony of Wood-Caiman

The ceremony of the Wood-Caiman is regarded in Haiti as the founding document of the revolution and the war of independence: it is the first great collective rising of Haiti against slavery, the equivalent of the catch of the Bastille for the France.

UNESCO has chooses the August 23rd in reference to the rising which followed this event like day for the to remember the Draft négrière and its abolitions

Wood-caiman

Wood-Caiman is a place moved back of the dwelling Lenormand de Mézy on the island Saint-Domingue, current Haiti.

Dutty Boukman organized there a ceremony Vaudou E for a great number of slaves, the night of the August 14th 1791. A black pig was sacrificed and the assistants drank his blood in order to become invulnerable. Certain people also think that Boukman and the slaves who surrounded it would have made a pact with the devil. Boukman ordered general rising then.

This rising take place the night of the August 22nd where the slaves of five dwellings burned them and massacred the white, including women and children. During ten days, the plain of North was in flames. One deducted nearly 1000 assassinated white, 161 burned sugar refineries and 1200 coffee-plantations. Boukman pushed until advancing in front of the Cape-French. It is only whereas the authorities counteracted. Boukman perishes with the combat, with the head of its troops.

As it passed for invulnerable near the slaves, one exposed his head to the Cape.

In spite of the response, the revolt was not overcome. Other chiefs succeeded Boukman: its lieutenants Jean-François and Biassou, as All Saints' day which was not called yet Louverture.

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