Slave religions forged plantation-wide communities that crossed individual estate boundaries.

Evidence

African religions also put down roots in the soil of plantations, changing in the process. They entered into dialogue with the practices of Catholicism, whose saints were imbued with a new meaning by worshipers in both Africa and the Americas. In Saint-Domingue the Arada slaves from the Bight of Benin, who were the majority during the first decades of the eighteenth century, brought the traditions of the Fon and Yoruba peoples, which were joined by those brought by the Kongo slaves who eventually became the island’s majority. In a world organized to the production of plantation commodities, where slaves were meant to be laborers and nothing more, religious ceremonies provided ritual solace, dance and music, but most importantly a community that extended beyond the plantation. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 160

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains Vodou’s syncretic formation from Fon, Yoruba, and Kongo traditions mingled with Catholic saint worship.