wounds cured and been healed of diseases by prayer in this chapel. To
this distant shrine come ladies from all parts of the city to make
the “novena”—the prayer of nine days, with the offer of the burning
taper—and here daily resort hundreds to intercede for themselves or
their friends. It is believed by the damsels of this district that if
they offer prayer daily in this chapel they will have a husband within
the year, and one may see kneeling here every evening these trustful
devotees to the welfare of the human race. I asked the colored woman who
sold medals and leaflets and renewed the candles if she personally knew
any persons who had been miraculously cured by prayer, or novena, in St.
Roch. “Plenty, sir, plenty.” And she related many instances, which were
confirmed by votive offerings on the walls. “Why,” said she, “there was
a friend of mine who wanted a place, and could hear of none, who made a
novena here, and right away got a place, a good place, and” (conscious
that she was making an astonishing statement about a New Orleans
servant) “she kept it a whole year!”
“But one must come in the right spirit,” I said.
“Ah, indeed. It needs to believe. You can’t fool God!”
One might make various studies of New Orleans: its commercial life; its
methods, more or less antiquated, of doing business, and the leisure
for talk that enters into it; its admirable charities and its mediaeval
prisons; its romantic French and Spanish history, still lingering in
the old houses, and traits of family and street life; the city politics,
which nobody can explain, and no other city need covet; its sanitary
condition, which needs an intelligent despot with plenty of money and an
ingenuity that can make water run uphill; its colored population—about
a fourth of the city—with its distinct social grades, its superstition,
nonchalant good-humor, turn for idling and basking in the sun, slowly
awaking to a sense of thrift, chastity, truth-speaking, with many
excellent order-loving, patriotic men and women, but a mass that
needs moral training quite as much as the spelling-book before it can
contribute to the vigor and prosperity of the city; its schools and
recent libraries, and the developing literary and art taste which will
sustain book-shops and picture-galleries; its cuisine, peculiar in its
mingling of French and African skill, and determined largely by a market
unexcelled in the quality of fish, game, and fruit—the fig alone would
go far to reconcile one to four or five months of hot nights; the
climatic influence in assimilating races meeting there from every region
of the earth.
But whatever way we regard New Orleans., it is in its aspect, social
tone, and character sui generis; its civilization differs widely from
that of any other, and it remains one of the most interesting places in
the republic. Of course, social life in these days is much the same in
all great cities in its observances, but that of New Orleans is
markedly cordial, ingenuous, warmhearted. I do not imagine that it
could tolerate, as Boston does, absolute freedom of local opinion on all
subjects, and undoubtedly it is sensitive to criticism; but I believe
that it is literally true, as one of its citizens said, that it is still
more sensitive to kindness.
The metropolis of the South-west has geographical reasons for a great
future. Louisiana is rich in alluvial soil, the capability of which has
not yet been tested, except in some localities, by skilful agriculture.
But the prosperity of the city depends much upon local conditions.
Science and energy can solve the problem of drainage, can convert all
the territory between the city and Lake Pontchartrain into a veritable
garden, surpassing in fertility the flat environs of the city of Mexico.
And the steady development of common-school education, together with
technical and industrial schools, will create a skill which will make
New Orleans the industrial and manufacturing centre of that region.
IV.—A VOUDOO DANCE.
There was nothing mysterious about it. The ceremony took place in broad
day, at noon in the upper chambers of a small frame house in a street
just beyond Congo Square and the old Parish prison in New Orleans. It
was an incantation rather than a dance—a curious mingling of African
Voudoo rites with modern “spiritualism” and faith-cure.
The explanation of Voudooism (or Vaudouism) would require a chapter by
itself. It is sufficient to say for the purpose of this paper that
the barbaric rites of Voudooism originated with the Congo and Guinea
negroes, were brought to San Domingo, and thence to Louisiana. In Hayti
the sect is in full vigor, and its midnight orgies have reverted more
and more to the barbaric original in the last twenty-five years. The
wild dance and incantations are accompanied by sacrifice of animals
and occasionally of infants, and with cannibalism, and scenes of most
indecent license. In its origin it is serpent worship. The Voudoo
signifies a being all-powerful on the earth, who is, or is represented
by, a harmless species of serpent (couleuvre), and in this belief
the sect perform rites in which the serpent is propitiated. In common
parlance, the chief actor is called the Voudoo—if a man, the Voudoo
King; if a woman, the Voudoo Queen. Some years ago Congo Square was
the scene of the weird midnight rites of this sect, as unrestrained and
barbarous as ever took place in the Congo country. All these semi-public
performances have been suppressed, and all private assemblies for this
worship are illegal, and broken up by the police when discovered. It
is said in New Orleans that Voudooism is a thing of the past. But the
superstition remains, and I believe that very few of the colored people
in New Orleans are free from it—that is, free from it as a superstition.
Those who repudiate it, have nothing to do with it, and regard it as
only evil, still ascribe power to the Voudoo, to some ugly old woman
or man, who is popularly believed to have occult power (as the Italians
believe in the “evil-eye”), can cast a charm and put the victims under a
spell, or by incantations relieve them from it. The power of the
Voudoo is still feared by many who are too intelligent to believe in it
intellectually. That persons are still Voudooed, probably few doubt; and
that people are injured by charms secretly placed in their beds, or are
bewitched in various ways, is common belief—more common than the Saxon
notion that it is ill-luck to see the new moon over the left shoulder.
Although very few white people in New Orleans have ever seen the
performance I shall try to describe, and it is said that the police
would break it up if they knew of it, it takes place every Wednesday
at noon at the house where I saw it; and there are three or four other
places in the city where the rites are celebrated sometimes at night.
Our admission was procured through a friend who had, I suppose, vouched
for our good intentions.
We were received in the living-rooms of the house on the ground-floor
by the “doctor,” a good-looking mulatto of middle age, clad in a white
shirt with gold studs, linen pantaloons, and list slippers. He had the
simple-minded shrewd look of a “healing medium.” The interior was neat,
though in some confusion; among the rude attempts at art on the walls
was the worst chromo print of General Grant that was probably ever made.
There were several negroes about the door, many in the rooms and in the
backyard, and all had an air of expectation and mild excitement. After
we had satisfied the scruples of the doctor, and signed our names in his
register, we were invited to ascend by a narrow, crooked stair-way in
the rear. This led to a small landing where a dozen people might stand,
and from this a door opened into a chamber perhaps fifteen feet by ten,
where the rites were to take place; beyond this was a small bedroom.
Around the sides of these rooms were benches and chairs, and the close
quarters were already well filled.
The assembly was perfectly orderly, but a motley one, and the women
largely outnumbered the men. There were coal-black negroes, porters, and
stevedores, fat cooks, slender chamber-maids, all shades of complexion,
yellow girls and comely quadroons, most of them in common servant
attire, but some neatly dressed. And among them were, to my surprise,
several white people.
On one side of the middle room where we sat was constructed a sort of
buffet or bureau, used as an altar. On it stood an image of the Virgin
Mary in painted plaster, about two feet high, flanked by lighted candles
and a couple of cruets, with some other small objects. On a shelf below
were two other candles, and on this shelf and the floor in front were
various offerings to be used in the rites—plates of apples, grapes,
bananas, oranges; dishes of sugar, of sugarplums; a dish of powdered
orris root, packages of candles, bottles of brandy and of water. Two
other lighted candles stood on the floor, and in front an earthen bowl.
The clear space in front for the dancer was not more than four or five
feet square.
Some time was consumed in preparations, or in waiting for the
worshippers to assemble. From conversation with those near me, I found
that the doctor had a reputation for healing the diseased by virtue of
his incantations, of removing “spells,” of finding lost articles, of
ministering to the troubles of lovers, and, in short, of doing very much
what clairvoyants and healing mediums claim to do in what are called
civilized communities. But failing to get a very intelligent account of
the expected performance from the negro woman next me, I moved to the
side of the altar and took a chair next a girl of perhaps twenty years
old, whose complexion and features gave evidence that she was white.
Still, finding her in that company, and there as a participant in the
Voudoo rites, I concluded that I must be mistaken, and that she must
have colored blood in her veins. Assuming the privilege of an inquirer,
I asked her questions about the coming performance, and in doing so
carried the impression that she was kin to the colored race. But I
was soon convinced, from her manner and her replies, that she was pure
white. She was a pretty, modest girl, very reticent, well-bred, polite,
and civil. None of the colored people seemed to know who she was,
but she said she had been there before. She told me, in course of the
conversation, the name of the street where she lived (in the American
part of the town), the private school at which she had been educated
(one of the best in the city), and that she and her parents were
Episcopalians. Whatever her trouble was, mental or physical, she was
evidently infatuated with the notion that this Voudoo doctor could
conjure it away, and said that she thought he had already been of
service to her. She did not communicate her difficulties to him or speak
to him, but she evidently had faith that he could discern what every
one present needed, and minister to them. When I asked her if, with
her education, she did not think that more good would come to her by
confiding in known friends or in regular practitioners, she wearily said
that she did not know. After the performance began, her intense interest
in it, and the light in her eyes, were evidence of the deep hold the
superstition had upon her nature. In coming to this place she had gone a
step beyond the young ladies of her class who make a novena at St. Roch.
While we still waited, the doctor and two other colored men called me
into the next chamber, and wanted to be assured that it was my own name
I had written on the register, and that I had no unfriendly intentions
in being present. Their doubts at rest, all was ready.
The doctor squatted on one side of the altar, and his wife, a stout
woman of darker hue, on the other.
“Commençons,” said the woman, in a low voice. All the colored people
spoke French, and French only, to each other and in the ceremony.
The doctor nodded, bent over, and gave three sharp raps on the floor
with a bit of wood. (This is the usual opening of Voudoo rites.) All
the others rapped three times on the floor with their knuckles. Anyone
coming in to join the circle afterwards, stooped and rapped three times.
After a moment’s silence, all kneeled and repeated together in French
the Apostles’ Creed, and still on their knees, they said two prayers to
the Virgin Mary.
The colored woman at the side of the altar began a chant in a low,
melodious voice. It was the weird and strange “Dansé Calinda.” A tall
negress, with a bright, good-natured face, entered the circle with the
air of a chief performer, knelt, rapped the floor, laid an offering of
candles before the altar, with a small bottle of brandy, seated herself
beside the singer, and took up in a strong, sweet voice the bizarre
rhythm of the song. Nearly all those who came in had laid some
little offering before the altar. The chant grew, the single line was
enunciated in stronger pulsations, and other voices joined in the wild
refrain,
“Dansé Calinda, boudoum, boudoum
Dansé Calinda, boudoum, boudoum!”
bodies swayed, the hands kept time in soft patpatting, and the feet in
muffled accentuation. The Voudoo arose, removed his slippers, seized a
bottle of brandy, dashed some of the liquid on the floor on each side of
the brown bowl as a libation, threw back his head and took a long pull
at the bottle, and then began in the open space a slow measured dance,
a rhythmical shuffle, with more movement of the hips than of the feet,
backward and forward, round and round, but accelerating his movement as
the time of the song quickened and the excitement rose in the room. The
singing became wilder and more impassioned, a strange minor strain, full
of savage pathos and longing, that made it almost impossible for the
spectator not to join in the swing of its influence, while the dancer
wrought himself up into the wild passion of a Cairene dervish. Without
a moment ceasing his rhythmical steps and his extravagant gesticulation,
he poured liquid into the basin, and dashing in brandy, ignited the
fluid with a match. The liquid flamed up before the altar. He seized
then a bunch of candles, plunged them into the bowl, held them up all
flaming with the burning brandy, and, keeping his step to the maddening
“Calinda,” distributed them lighted to the devotees. In the same way
he snatched up dishes of apples, grapes, bananas, oranges, deluged them
with burning brandy, and tossed them about the room to the eager and
excited crowd. His hands were aflame, his clothes seemed to be on fire;
he held the burning dishes close to his breast, apparently inhaling the
flame, closing his eyes and swaying his head backward and forward in an
ecstasy, the hips advancing and receding, the feet still shuffling to
the barbaric measure.
Every moment his own excitement and that of the audience increased. The
floor was covered with the débris of the sacrifice—broken candy, crushed
sugarplums, scattered grapes—and all more or less in flame. The wild
dancer was dancing in fire! In the height of his frenzy he grasped a
large plate filled with lump-sugar. That was set on fire. He held the
burning mass to his breast, he swung it round, and finally, with his
hand extended under the bottom of the plate (the plate only adhering to
his hand by the rapidity of his circular motion), he spun around like a
dancing dervish, his eyes shut, the perspiration pouring in streams from
his face, in a frenzy. The flaming sugar scattered about the floor, and
the devotees scrambled for it. In intervals of the dance, though the
singing went on, the various offerings which had been conjured were
passed around—bits of sugar and fruit and orris powder. That which fell
to my share I gave to the young girl next me, whose eyes were blazing
with excitement, though she had remained perfectly tranquil, and
joined neither by voice or hands or feet in the excitement. She put the
conjured sugar and fruit in her pocket, and seemed grateful to me for
relinquishing it to her.
Before this point had been reached the chant had been changed for the
wild canga, more rapid in movement than the chanson africaine:
“Eh! eli! Bomba, hen! hen!
Canga bafio té
Canga moune dé lé
Canga do ki la
Canga li.”
At intervals during the performance, when the charm had begun to
work, the believers came forward into the open space, and knelt for
“treatment.” The singing, the dance, the wild incantation, went on
uninterruptedly; but amid all his antics the dancer had an eye to
business. The first group that knelt were four stalwart men, three of
them white laborers. All of them, I presume, had some disease which they
had faith the incantation would drive away. Each held a lighted candle
in each hand. The doctor successively extinguished each candle by
putting it in his mouth, and performed a number of antics of a saltatory
sort. During his dancing and whirling he frequently filled his mouth
with liquid, and discharged it in spray, exactly as a Chinese laundryman
sprinkles his clothes, into the faces and on the heads of any man or
woman within reach. Those so treated considered themselves specially
favored. Having extinguished the candles of the suppliants, he scooped
the liquid from the bowl, flaming or not as it might be, and with
his hands vigorously scrubbed their faces and heads, as if he were
shampooing them. While the victim was still sputtering and choking he
seized him by the right hand, lifted him up, spun him round half a dozen
times, and then sent him whirling.
This was substantially the treatment that all received who knelt in the
circle, though sometimes it was more violent. Some of them were
slapped smartly upon the back and the breast, and much knocked about.
Occasionally a woman was whirled till she was dizzy, and perhaps swung
about in his arms as if she had been a bundle of clothes. They all took
it meekly and gratefully. One little girl of twelve, who had rickets,
was banged about till it seemed as if every bone in her body would be
broken. But the doctor had discrimination, even in his wildest moods.
Some of the women were gently whirled, and the conjurer forbore either
to spray them from his mouth or to shampoo them.
Nearly all those present knelt, and were whirled and shaken, and
those who did not take this “cure” I suppose got the benefit of
the incantation by carrying away some of the consecrated offerings.
Occasionally a woman in the whirl would whisper something-in the
doctor’s ear, and receive from him doubtless the counsel she needed. But
generally the doctor made no inquiries of his patients, and they said
nothing to him.
While the wild chanting, the rhythmic movement of hands and feet, the
barbarous dance, and the fiery incantations were at their height, it was
difficult to believe that we were in a civilized city of an enlightened
republic. Nothing indecent occurred in word or gesture, but it was so
wild and bizarre that one might easily imagine he was in Africa or in
hell.
As I said, nearly all the participants were colored people; but in the
height of the frenzy one white woman knelt and was sprayed and whirled
with the others. She was a respectable married woman from the other side
of Canal Street. I waited with some anxiety to see what my modest little
neighbor would do. She had told me that she should look on and take
no part. I hoped that the senseless antics, the mummery, the rough
treatment, would disgust her. Towards the close of the séance, when
the spells were all woven and the flames had subsided, the tall,
good-natured negress motioned to me that it was my turn to advance into
the circle and kneel. I excused myself. But the young girl was unable
to resist longer. She went forward and knelt, with a candle in her hand.
The conjurer was either touched by her youth and race, or he had spent
his force. He gently lifted her by one hand, and gave her one turn
around, and she came back to her seat.
The singing ceased, The doctor’s wife passed round the hat for
contributions, and the ceremony, which had lasted nearly an hour and a
half, was over. The doctor retired exhausted with the violent exertions.
As for the patients, I trust they were well cured of rheumatism, of
fever, or whatever ill they had, and that the young ladies have either
got husbands to their minds or have escaped faithless lovers. In the
breaking up I had no opportunity to speak further to the interesting
young white neophyte; but as I saw her resuming her hat and cloak in the
adjoining room there was a strange excitement in her face, and in her
eyes a light of triumph and faith. We came out by the back way, and
through an alley made our escape into the sunny street and the air of
the nineteenth century.
V.—THE ACADIAN LAND.
If one crosses the river from New Orleans to Algiers, and takes Morgan’s
Louisiana and Texas Railway (now a part of the Southern Pacific line),
he will go west, with a dip at first southerly, and will pass through a
region little attractive except to water-fowl, snakes, and alligators,
by an occasional rice plantation, an abandoned indigo field, an
interminable stretch of cypress swamps, thickets of Spanish-bayonets,
black waters, rank and rampant vegetation, vines, and water-plants;
by-and-by firmer arable land, and cane plantations, many of them
forsaken and become thickets of undergrowth, owing to frequent
inundations and the low price of sugar.
At a distance of eighty miles Morgan City is reached, and the broad
Atchafalaya Bayou is crossed. Hence is steamboat communication with New
Orleans and Vera Cruz. The Atchafalaya Bayou has its origin near the
mouth of the Red River, and diverting from the Mississippi most of
that great stream, it makes its tortuous way to the Gulf, frequently
expanding into the proportions of a lake, and giving this region a great
deal more water than it needs. The Bayou Teche, which is, in fact, a
lazy river, wanders down from the rolling country of Washington and
Opelousas, with a great deal of uncertainty of purpose, but mainly
south-easterly, and parallel with the Atchafalaya, and joins the latter
at Morgan City. Steamers of good size navigate it as far as New Iberia,
some forty to fifty miles, and the railway follows it to the latter
place, within sight of its fringe of live-oaks and cotton-woods.
The region south and west of the Bayou Teche, a vast plain cut by
innumerable small bayous and streams, which have mostly a connection
with the bay of Côte Blanche and Vermilion Bay, is the home of the Nova
Scotia Acadians.
The Acadians in 1755 made a good exchange, little as they thought so
at the time, of bleak Nova Scotia for these sunny, genial, and
fertile lands. They came into a land and a climate suited to their
idiosyncrasies, and which have enabled them to preserve their primitive
traits. In a comparative isolation from the disturbing currents
of modern life, they have preserved the habits and customs of the
eighteenth century. The immigrants spread themselves abroad among those
bayous, made their homes wide apart, and the traveller will nowhere
find—at least I did not—large and compact communities of them, unalloyed
with the American and other elements. Indeed, I imagine that they are
losing, in the general settlement of the country, their conspicuousness.
They still give the tone, however, to considerable districts, as in the
village and neighborhood of Abbeville. Some places, like the old town of
St. Martinsville, on the Teche, once the social capital of the region,
and entitled, for its wealth and gayety, the Petit Paris, had a large
element of French who were not Acadians.
The Teche from Morgan City to New Iberia is a deep, slow, and winding
stream, flowing through a flat region of sugar plantations. It is
very picturesque by reason of its tortuousness and the great spreading
live-oak trees, moss-draped, that hang over it. A voyage on it is one of
the most romantic entertainments offered to the traveller. The
scenery is peaceful, and exceedingly pretty. There are few conspicuous
plantations with mansions and sugar-stacks of any pretensions, but the
panorama from the deck of the steamer is always pleasing. There is an
air of leisure and “afternoon” about the expedition, which is heightened
by the idle case of the inhabitants lounging at the rude wharves and
landing-places, and the patience of the colored fishers, boys in scant
raiment and women in sun-bonnets, seated on the banks. Typical of this
universal contentment is the ancient colored man stretched on a plank
close to the steamer’s boiler, oblivious of the heat, apparently asleep,
with his spacious mouth wide open, but softly singing.
“Are you asleep, uncle?”
“No, not adzackly asleep, boss. I jes wake up, and thinkin’ how good de
Lord is, I couldn’t help singin’.”