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chapter nine The Influential Yoruba Past in Haiti Kevin Roberts Among their forced New World destinations, large numbers of Yoruba arrived in Haiti. Even with the comparatively early end to the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the island as a result of the Haitian Revolution, forced migrants from the Bight of Benin, both Yoruba and non-Yoruba, constituted such a large proportion of the slave force in Saint Domingue that their cultural heritage remains an important influence on modern Haitian culture. In fact, in the realms of religion, art, and language, Yoruba culture is fundamental to Haiti’s distinctive syncretic culture. In short, this geographically small component of the immense Yoruba diaspora illustrates the cultural influence of the Yoruba, even when enslaved, on the New World. The amalgam of West African cultures present in Saint Domingue during enslavement, although diminishing some elements of Yoruba culture, accentuated those characteristics that other African cultural groups shared. By adopting a broad temporal view from enslavement to post-independence to modern Haitian culture, this essay illustrates the deeply seated nature of Yoruba culture in a unique component of the Yoruba diaspora. Enslavement The height of the demand for slaves by Saint Domingue slave owners during the 1780s coincided with the period when the Yoruba constituted a large share of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As a result, the number of Yoruba slaves present in Haiti, and the influence of Yoruba on the colony’s syncretic slave culture, were both higher than if the two processes had not converged in the 1780s. Of the nearly one million slaves from the Bight of Benin who were 177 Falola_Childs,Yoruba Diaspo 2/2/05 1:34 PM Page 177 sold into slavery in the New World, approximately one-third were shipped to Saint Domingue. In fact, the aggregate of slave imports from the Bight of Benin to the next three most common destinations—Jamaica, Martinique, and Barbados—barely equals the number shipped to Saint Domingue alone. The fifth most common destination, the Bahia Province of Brazil, received only onequarter of the number of Benin peoples who arrived in Saint Domingue, and the eighth most common destination, Cuba, received just one-sixth. Nonetheless , scholarship on the influence of both the Yoruba and other Benin peoples on Bahia and Cuba far outnumbers that on Haiti.1 Although this essay does not provide the full correction needed, it does highlight the existing opportunities for scholars to rectify that gaping hole in the literature on slave culture in the New World. Overall the most recent figures indicate that nearly 700,000 Africans were sold into slavery in Saint Domingue. The largest share of this figure came from West-Central Africa, where more than 330,000, or approximately 48 percent, of the total slave imports to Saint Domingue originated. The only other region of Africa whose inhabitants sold to Saint Domingue number more than 100,000 was the Bight of Benin. Nearly 200,000, or 27 percent, of Haiti’s total imports originated from the Bight of Benin, with many of them being Yoruba.2 Estimates on the number of Yoruba sold into slavery in Haiti vary; the imperfect methodology of corroborating fluidly defined ethnonyms with ports of departure in Africa makes that task even less exact. Historian Philip Curtin estimates that slaves from the Bight of Benin composed the second-highest proportion of slaves in Haiti, ranking behind slaves from West-Central Africa. According to Curtin’s figures, approximately 173,000 slaves, or 28 percent of slave imports to Saint Domingue, from the Benin region were sold into enslavement on the island. Of this number, perhaps one-quarter or one-third were ethnic Yoruba, and the largest group from the Benin region were from the coast of Dahomey. Increasing warfare between the Oyo Yoruba state and Dahomey state likely contributed to the large number of persons from each group being present in the trans-Atlantic traffic.3 In spite of their political differences and warring, the slaves from Oyo Yoruba and Dahomey had many linguistic and cultural similarities that they accentuated under enslavement in Saint Domingue. As the work of John Thornton has shown convincingly, enslaved Africans had far more linguistic and cultural similarities than differences to accentuate under their common duress of enslavement . The presence in Saint Domingue of Dahomean slaves identified as “Arada” and of Oyo Yoruba slaves identified as “Nagô,” as well as the subsequent emergence of Vodou, is...

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