Martha Ward - Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau

Voodoo Queen

The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau

By Martha Ward

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Copyright 2004 by Martha Ward

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ward, Martha.

Voodoo queen : the spirited lives of Marie Laveau / by Martha Ward.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-57806-629-8 (alk. paper)

1. Laveau, Marie, 17941881. 2. VoodooismLouisianaNew OrleansHistory19th century. I. Title.

BL2490.W37 2004

299.675092dc22 2003018292

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available

This book is dedicated to Madame Marie Laveau
and Mamzelle Marie Laveau, and to the hope of mercy,
racial justice, and the protection of all our children.
SO BE IT.

Chapter 1.
Who in Heaven or Hell, Africa or France, Was Marie Laveau?

Chapter 2.
Catholic in the Morning, Voodoo by Night

Chapter 3.
Working Wife, Widow, Mistress, and Voodoo Divorce

Chapter 4.
Marie Laveau Brings the New Orleans Saints to Town

Chapter 5.
Color Schemes and Protection Policies on St. Ann Street

Chapter 6.
Freedom la Mode, la Marie

Chapter 7.
Life in the Cities of the Dead

Chapter 8.
At the Altar of Love and Luck

Chapter 9.
Madame Laveaus Prayers, Poisons, and Political Pull

Chapter 10.
How John, the Devil, and Mamzelle Marie Hoodooed the Media

Chapter 11.
A Tale of Two Sisters

Chapter 12.
The Last Queen of the Voodoos Returns from the Dead

Postscript:
Events in the Lives of the Marie Laveaus

It is a prime-time story when free women of color use their spiritual gifts to confront suffering and injustice, and white men in power accuse them of witchcraft. Marie Laveau, the legendary founder and priestess of American Voodoo, was in real life two women with the same namea mother and her daughter, both Creoles of New Orleans. Yes, they worked their magic on a citys soul, and year after year thousands of visitors make pilgrimages to the famous tomb said to hold their remains. Yet, until now, the story of their spiritual and historic lives has been unavailable, and the legends of sorcery and evil deeds that encircle them have gone unchallenged.

Hysterical reporters in the nineteenth century accused the Laveaus of wizardry, heresy, and dancing naked with snakes. Marie the First, the mother, healed those with yellow fever and cheated the hangmans noose with her magical powersor so it is said. Her daughter, Marie the Second, hypnotized the police force and cured domestic violence. The gossips still swear that they knew how to make white women roll on their bellies, work gris-gris on judges in murder trials, and cause husbands to disappear forever. Wealthy white New Orleanians insisted that the wily Maries operated a street-level system of intelligence through which they gained information and exerted backstairs power over those who stood in their way.

The Laveau women were guilty as charged. Both women led dangerous, secret livesbut not because of midnight ceremonies in graveyards. They were free women in a slave society, French Catholics in an Anglo-Protestant nation, and Creole leaders in the largest and strongest community of color in America. They were gens de couleur librefree people of color. Both loved men they could never marry. Their families, already linked in illegal love, defied their church and the law to help slaves escape and blacks, bond and free, to assemble and dance together in defiance of the law.

Figure 1. The tomb of the Widow Paris ( Michael P. Smith, New Orleans)

The Laveaus led colorful lives in one of the most colorful cities in the world. Their woman-centered story began in 1803 just as ill-bred foreigners from a nearby, new nation called the United States purchased their territory from France. It spanned the golden years of Creole culture and the glittering but dangerous life of antebellum New Orleans, then moved into the traumas of Civil War. The death of the first Marie Laveau in June 1881, and the disappearance of the second at the end of Reconstruction in 1877 parallel the passing of Creole life. Their embodied visions of justice and mercy died with them.

Voodoo was not just a religionit was the raw edge of survival. People dropped dead on the streets as epidemic plagues consumed the city. Slavesale houses ringed the French Quarter, and public executions drew Mardi Grassize crowds. White men with power played racial politics for keepsbut they could not collect the garbage or bury the dead. When things went wrong in the neighborhoods of New Orleans, the civil authorities blamed the Voodoos.

New Orleans is a place where you invite the dead to your parties, where the smells of a spicy gumbo and the sounds of a jazzy backbeat fill the air. The city was a crucible of transformation that forged a vibrant Creole culturea New World people whose ancestors were French, West African, Spanish, Central African, Catholic, Native American, and who had pinches of many other groups or nations added like spice to a good gumbo, people who created a unique collective culture from the ingredients they had on hand. Voodoo, jazz, the regions world-famous cuisine, and the dancing ironwork that graces the citys architecture have Creole roots. The spirit of New Orleans that attracts millions of visitors to the smells, tastes, sounds and sensory richness of the fabled city is in large measure the legacy of Creole culture.

Isnt Voodoo dangerous? What happens to you if you tell its secrets? White friends whisper questions like these to me when I meet them on the street or attend dinner parties at their homes. Arent you afraid of Voodoo? they ask. You dont believe in Voodoo, do you? An African American neighbor looked around carefully before he announced, Me, I dont have nothing to do with that Hoodoo stuff. Its some powerful to mess with. You take care, hear. A state librarian begged me to write a biography of a woman with more quality and substance than she thought Marie Laveau had. A New Orleans historian dismissed my quest, Its merely folklore; and another colleague remarked, Oh, womens history.

The two most common concerns I hear are these: First, Voodoo is evil, satanic, demonic. A person who trashes or trifles with power like that can get hurt, the voices warn. Second, people caution me that no reliable sources of information about Marie Laveau are available. Either they never existed or they have been stolen, destroyed, or spirited away. Materials from the official histories pay little attention to women, particularly women of color; and the Laveausin common with many women of their centuryleft nothing in writing. Yet Marie Laveau in her many reincarnations rules the imagination of New Orleans. For many, she is still a member of the community; they consult her for problems and visit with her on her special holidaysthe Feast of All Saints in November and the Eve of St. John the Baptist in June. To some the Maries were like Mosesa magician who led his people out of bondage. Marie as a still-living ancestor continues to visits the citizens of the city in their dreams and visions.