Makandal’s real threat was poisoning, not armed band attacks

Evidence

Like these packets, Makandal’s life and the legends that emerged from it were the result of a potent encounter between African traditions and the world of plantation slavery. Makandal was a slave on a plantation in the parish of Limbé in the Northern Province, where he lost one of his arms while working in a sugar mill. Subsequently relegated to guarding the animals on his plantation, he eventually ran away into the hills. Later legends claimed that he gathered together a large band of fugitive slaves who attacked plantations, but in fact he sowed terror primarily by using poison. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 186

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the arc of the revolution: terror-by-poison as the precursor mode of resistance before open armed rebellion.