Dessalines pre-authorized killing of French-allied whites but spared culturally assimilated ones.

Evidence

When he retreated from Saint-Marc, Dessalines’ troops had taken several hundred whites with them as prisoners. Among them was the French traveler Michel Descourtilz, who had been in the colony since 1798. Writing years later about his “captivity” at the hands of “forty thousand negroes,” he described a series of massacres perpetrated by Dessalines. The general, he claimed, had readied his black troops to eliminate white soldiers in the colony who might support a French attack. “Soldiers, these whites from France who are coming; if they are calm, it’s good, leave them alone.” “But,” he warned, “if I find out they have come to trick us, then watch out, soldiers!” When ordered to, his black troops were to arrest their white comrades-in-arms, “herding them like sheep,” in order to prevent them from joining the arriving enemy. Dessalines was not indiscriminate in his suspicion of whites, however, making it known that some—notably those who were assimilated enough to eat “callaloo” (a local dish)—might be spared “when needed.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 960

Categorization

• SHARE: The callaloo test—sparing whites assimilated enough to eat the local dish—is a wonderfully specific historical detail for anyone working on creolization or race boundary-marking.