Bois Caïman

Bois Caïman, Gator Wood, near Le Cap in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, was the site of the meeting of enslaved Africans in August 1791 at which the first major slave insurrection of the Haitian Revolution was planned. The Vodou ceremony, attended by 200 enslaved Africans according to a witness, was presided over by the houngan Dutty Boukman and the mambo Cécile Fatiman, and is remembered above all for the sacrifice of a black Creole pig. Within days the Northern Plain was in flames; the French later captured and beheaded Boukman. No first-hand written account survives and some scholars doubt that it took place, but it became a symbol of resistance to oppression.