FRANçOIS MACKANDAL

'François Mackandal' (died 1758) was a famous leader of the Haïtian Maroons. The Maroons were mainly black slaves that escaped from plantations and made their lives in the mountains and hills, banding together with other former slaves to form communities. Mackandal was an escaped slave from one of the plantations on Haïti. In addition Mackandal was a vodou priest or ''houngan''. He came to lead the Maroons in opposition to the island's French planters.
Mackandal was a charismatic leader who had the ability to unite the different Maroon bands to create a network of secret organizations with the slaves still on plantations. Most of the planters and owners on the islands fervently believed that Mackandal planned to drive every white from the colony by using poison or through the fear of being poisoned. François Mackandal would lead raids into plantations almost exclusively at night burning them and killing the owners. He was eventually captured and burned alive in 1758 in the public square of Cap-Français, which today is Cap-Haïtien. He was captured only because of a betrayal within his group. However before his death he was able to lead a six year rebellion against the white owners. In that time it is thought that François Mackandal and his followers were responsible for the killings of over 6 000 white people either through poison or the raids on the plantations.^[1][2][3]

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See also

Footnotes

External links

See also

★ Haitian Revolution

Footnotes

1. A Brief History of the Caribbean, , Jan, Rogozinski, Facts on File, Inc., 1999, ISBN 0-8160-3811-2
2. The Slave Rebellion of 1791
3. The History of Haiti and the Haitian Revolution

External links

★ Mackandal site by Mark Davis

★ The Louverture Project: François Mackandal