Religious practice sustained insurgent morale, leadership, and honor rites.

Evidence

One French soldier reported how insurgent troops advanced to the tune of African music, or amidst a silence broken only by the “incantations of their sorcerers.” Another contemporary described how, as insurgents prepared to fight, religious leaders prepared ouanga (fetishes) and so “exalted the imagination of the women and children, who sang and danced like demons.” One young slave, Hyacinthe, who became a leader in the Western Province, was a religious leader, and carried a talisman made of horsehair into battle. And when insurgent leaders were killed, ceremonies were held in their honor. One insurgent leader was buried by the troops who had defeated him, but later “the negroes took him up and buried him again with great pomp.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 346