Good Morning POU! How many of you have heard of Cecile Fatiman?
Cécile Fatiman (fl. 1791–1845) was a Haitian Vodou priestess and revolutionary. Born to an enslaved African woman and a Corsican prince, she lived her early life in slavery, before being drawn to the Enlightenment ideals of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” and Haitian Vodou, which shaped her desire to end the institution of slavery in Haiti. Together with Dutty Boukman, she led a Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman and incited enslaved people to rise up against slavery, in an event that marked the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. She later married fellow revolutionary leader Jean-Louis Pierrot, with whom she had a daughter. She was reported to have lived a long life, dying at the age of 112.
Described as a Mulatto with green eyes, Fatiman refashioned the Enlightenment ideals of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” for the Haitian context, upholding black women’s bodily integrity and property rights. She also embraced Haitian Vodou, which caused fear among French colonists.
Bois Caïman was the site of the first major meeting of enslaved blacks during which the first major slave insurrection of the Haitian Revolution was planned. It was Cecile Fatiman that presided over a ceremony at the Bois Caïman. Within the dense forests of Northern Haiti and in the middle of a thunderstorm, 200 enslaved people from a number of nearby plantations gathered and Cecile called on them to revolt against slavery.
Although Fatiman entered the historical record through the reports of Antoine Dalmas, a plantation doctor who observed the ceremony she performed at Bois Caïman, little archival evidence exists of Fatiman’s life, which has left significant gaps in her biography. Unconventional historical methodologies have therefore been used in order to assemble her personal story. Using a dialectical method, gaps in the archival record have been filled with diaspora literacy. For example, Étienne Charlier confirmed her presence in oral history of the revolution through interviews with descendants of the revolutionaries. Her participation in the Bois Caïman ceremony was confirmed in 19th century family records, provided by her grandson Pierre Benoit Rameau, a general who led Haitian resistance to the United States occupation of Haiti.
Despite her central role in the incitement of the Haitian Revolution, Fatiman is often missing from historical narratives of the period. In celebrations of male figures such as Boukman, Henri Christophe, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Toussaint L’Ouverture, many women in the Haitian Revolution, including Fatiman herself, are often ignored entirely. Fatiman’s own role in the revolution has been excluded from accounts by some historians, such as Jean Fouchard, who relied largely on colonial documents and tended to omit women from the historical record. Seeking to downplay the role of Vodou in the revolution, Léon-François Hoffman and Franck Sylvain even contested the existence of the Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman. But historian Carolyn Fick was able to say with certainty that the Bois Caïman meeting was historically factual.