WHEN BLACK MEN RULED

Taranaki Daily News, 26 June 1928, Page 11

WHEN BLACK MEN RULED

NEGRO REVOLT IN HAITI. Of all the grim patches in the history of the human race, none was grimmer—or more romantic —than the struggle of the negroes of Haiti for that independence which has now virtually ceased to exist. It all happened more than a hundred years ago, and the black men of Haiti ha _ since shown themselves unfit to maintain, without American supervision, independence on reasonably civilised lines; but the very fact that one negro revolt did so far succeed has a significance that lends political as well as romantic interest to “Black Majesty,” by John W. Vandercook. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the racial position in Haiti was triangular and intense. The white planters (Frenchmen for the most part) were oppressive, the negro slaves resentful of that oppression, and the numerous half-castes jealous and suspicous of the other two main groups. To live in Haiti then was to be sitting on a barrel of gunpowder, and, in due course, the fuse was fired bv the outbreak of the French Revolution. The Revolution brought freedom to the people of France, but it did not at once bring freedom to the negroes of Haiti. One night in August, 1793, the leaders of he black men met in the forest to plan rebellion. Thunder muttered down the raindrenched valleys. Sudden floods of lightning silvered the mountain peaks —and, as if born of the darkness and the storm, a giant negress appeared in the midst of the crowded open space. A long knife gleamed wet in her upraised right hand, her naked body was streaked with rain.

Slowly she 'began to sway in the movements of a dance regulated by some unheard rhythm within herself. It was a rhythm recognisable to all as one of the secret, unforgotten things of Africa treasured through the years of slavery. She sang a song, a song of the snake-gods, of old-time friends who dwelt in storm and aky and woods and now stood ready to help or hur.t, to be won by courage, io be appeased with blood. As her voice rose to a screaming moan, a tusked boar ran headlong, blinded and confused, into the clearing. With a movement so sudden the staring eyes around could scarcely discern it, the priestess flashed her knife down. The boar, with a squeal, slashed open from throat, to groin, rolled over dead. In a bowl lifted quickly to her the woman caught the warm blood. With appropriate incantations she handed it round the inner ring of men. Each drank and, as his lips touched the blood, swore by the name of Papaloi, the snake-god of Africa, that he would give his life, if need be, to the cause of black rebellion. And, eight days later, announced by the rolling of 200 hidden drums, the rebellion of tli'e negroes broke out in all its horror.

There is no space here to follow the fluctuating fortunes of the struggle, which continued for the next thirty years. Now the negroes prevailed, then the expedition sent by Napoleon, then the negroes. (It was yellow fever that prevailed in the end over the French expedition). The greatest of all the negro leaders was Toussaint L’Ouverture, ex-coachman and mighty warrior, who was tricked by the French under the guise of friendship, kidnapped, and sent to France to die in prison near Portarlier. He was followed by Dessalines, ‘the African slave, ferocious, unlettered,” who got himself crowned Jean Jacques le Premier —First Emperor of Haiti, fell into dissolute habits, and was murdered in the. end by mulattoes. And then came Henry

Christophe, the hero of Mr. Vandereook’s story; black slave boy, stable hand, waiter, sergeant in Toussaint’s army, and finally the leader and Emperor of his people. STATESMAN AND SOLDIER. I Henry was more than a barbarian. Emperor at last —he was crowned with barbaric pomp in 1811—he set vigorously about a programme of constructive administration. From Europe he imported teachers and traders. He created a currency system by declaring every green gourd in northern Haiti the property of the -State, collected the crops and nut on each gourd the value of twenty sous. “To this day the standard coin of Haiti is called the gourde.” He made a- commercial treaty with England. He organised his army to a high point -of efficiency. At the same time he established himself and family in pomp and built himself palaces in which the ritual of high Court li£® was rigidly observed. There was in his black heart that j weakness for glitter and, as time proved, the old barbaric streak of cruelty. IHe became megalomaniac and fearful, j and he built himself a mighty fortress on a high hill- —as if instinct told j him that he would one day stand at I Once Christophe, standing on the j wails of the Citadel, looked through his I telescope and saw a negro farmer more ! than a mile away in a valley far below ■ him, lying sound arieeji by the doer

of his mud-walled cottage. The King knew the man. Twice before he had reprimanded him for idling during the stipulated hours for work. His lips drew baek from his teeth in a snarl of sudden, senseless rage. He called for a captain of artillery and together they went into the cool, long gallery where the huge bronze cannon were ranged behind their little window in the wall. Tiie young captain, obedient but trembling, took aim, while Christophe grunted with the labour of dragging on the rones that turned the heavy gun carriage. It was ready loaded. Henry lit the fnse and the morning quiet was shattered with the reverberant resounding roar of the explosion. But the man asleep in tho sun did not hear. The hurtling eannou ball, superbly aimed, smashed him and his mud hut to- ” But Henry Christophe, Emperor of Haiti, was not to die by the hands of enemies. Still in his middle age he was seized with paralysis and, when the inevitable revolution broke out and the rebels approached the Citadel, he blew out his brains. The Black Empire of Haiti was fated not to stand; and "in Haiti now only a few remember Kins' Christophe’s, reign.” , ’ p J