Marie
Laveau
New
Orleans Voodoo Queen
Although
there is plenty of information about Marie
Laveau and her daughter and namesake in the
legends and lore of Old New Orleans, known
as Marie II, separating the fact from the
myth has always been a challenge for those
seeking a true history of this famous New
Orleans icon. Nearly everything that is known
about them originates in the secretive oral
tradition of the practitioners of Voodoo and
that information has been embellished with
hearsay and drama, making an already larger
than life persona absolutely formidable in
the tales that survive.
Among the
sites associated with New Orleans voodoo is
the tomb of its greatest figure, Marie Laveau.
For several decades this "voodoo queen"
held New Orleans spellbound-figuratively,
of course, but some would say literally, as
legends of her occult powers continue to captivate.
She staged ceremonies in which participants
became possessed by loas (voodoo spirits)
and danced naked around bonfires; she dispensed
charms and potions called gris-gris, even
saving several condemned men from the gallows;
and she told fortunes, healed the sick, and
herself remained perpetually youthful while
living for more than a century-or so it is
said (Hauck 1996; Tallant 1946).
Marie Laveau
Franck Schneider after George Catlin
c. 1920s
Oil on canvas
Marie Laveau is known throughout
the world as “the most famous and powerful
Voodoo Queen of North America.” In actuality,
this famous icon is really a combination of
two people – a famous mother and daughter
– who epitomized the sensational and
exotic appeal of Africanized Voodoo in 19th
and early 20th century New Orleans. Both women
thrived against the strong ethnic backdrop
of this First American Melting Pot, the gumbo
that is New Orleans, and their legend grew
along with their patrons. Rich and poor sought
them out, first the mother and later the daughter
in equal measure, to seek the aid of their
dark powers to control lovers, gain fame and
fortune, become pregnant, and exact revenge
on others important in their lives.
Marie I, the mother, reputedly
was born a Free Woman of Color in New Orleans
around 1794. She was a mulatto, a person of
mixed Black, White and Native American blood.
Some legends describe her as a Creole, a descendant
of the great French and Spanish aristocracies;
still others style her as the daughter of
a wealthy white Southern planter and his Negro
mistress. It is likely that she may have had
the blood of every one of these ethnic groups
coursing through her veins.
Marie I’s marriage to
Jacques Paris, a Free Man of Color from Saint
Dominique (Haiti), is recorded on August 4,
1819: This record lists for the first time
the names of Marie I’s parents, listing
her as an illegitimate daughter of Msr. Charles
Laveau and a Marguerite Darcantrel. Marie
was described as tall, beautiful and statuesque,
with curly black hair, golden skin and "good"
features (then meaning more white than Negro).
She and Paris took up residence in a house,
supposedly part of her dowry from Charles
Laveau, in the 1900 block of North Rampart
Street.
Paris disappeared soon after
the marriage, perhaps returning to Sainte
Dominique. A death certificate was filed five
years later without any certificate of interment;
Marie then began addressing herself as the
Widow Paris. She took up employment as a hairdresser
catering to the wealthy white and Creole women
of New Orleans and this is considered the
root of her enduring legend. For many of the
women looked upon Marie as a confidante, confessing
to her their most intimate secrets and desires
about their husbands and lovers, their estates
and families, their husbands’ mistresses
and business affairs, and their other heartfelt
wishes. What probably began as the delivery
of broad-shouldered good advice from one woman
to others ultimately grew into a force and
a legend that still resonates throughout New
Orleans today.
Around 1826, Marie took up with
Msr. Louis Christophe Duminy de Glapion, a
quadroon also from Sainte Dominique. They
lived in Marie’s North Rampart Street
house until his death in 1855 (some claim
possibly as early as 1835). Although she and
Glapion never married, Marie had 15 children
by him in rapid succession and ultimately
ended her hairdressing career to devote all
her energies to raising this brood. But Marie
by no means lost a clientele, for as she settled
into domesticity on Rampart Street she also
set about becoming the legend: The Voodoo
Queen of New Orleans.
Voodoo had been secretly practiced
by blacks and islanders in and around New
Orleans since the first boat loads of slaves
arrived from Africa and the Caribbean. New
Orleans was always more French-Spanish than
English-American, and the slaves had came
from the same parts of Africa that had sent
blacks to work the French and Spanish plantations
scattered throughout the colonial New World.
After the blacks had won their independence
in the infamous slave uprising in Haiti (1803-1804),
the Creole planters escaping the rebellion
brought their loyal slaves with them to the
friendlier shores of southern Louisiana where
the French-Spanish culture was more familiar
and welcoming. The slaves were avid practitioners
of the ancient Vodoun and Yoruba religions,
and although deftly hidden among the intricacies
of the prevailing Catholic faith, the old
African beliefs thrived as the slave populations
grew.
Quickly tales circulated of
hidden and secret rituals being held deep
in the bayous, complete with the worship of
a snake god called Zombi, and orgiastic dancing,
drinking, and lovemaking. Almost a third of
the worshippers were white, desirous of obtaining
the "power" that was promised by
the priests and mambos directing these rituals.
These meetings frightened the white population.
Many slave owners began to fear that the blacks
were planning an uprising against them, as
had happened in Haiti. As a result, in 1817,
the New Orleans Municipal Council passed a
resolution forbidding blacks to gather for
dancing or any other purpose except on Sundays,
and only in places designated by the mayor.
The accepted spot in the City was Congo Square
on North Rampart Street, now located adjacent
to Armstrong Park. Blacks, most of them voodooists,
met, danced and sang in the stylized rituals,
overtly worshipping their gods while entertaining
(and frightening) the whites with their Africano
"gibberish".
By the 1830’s there were
many voodoo mambos in New Orleans, fighting
over control of the Sunday Congo Square dances
and the secret ceremonies still held on the
shores of Lake Pontchartrain. But when "Mamzelle"
Marie Laveau stepped forward to begin her
reign, contemporaries reported the other queens
faded before her; some succumbing to her powerful
gris-gris, some being physically driven away
by the brute force of Marie’s growing
mass of followers. Marie also gained control
of the Congo Square Dances by entering before
all the other dancers and entertaining the
fascinated onlookers with her snake.
Marie knew the sensation that
the rituals at the lake were causing and used
it to further the purposes of the voodoo movement
in New Orleans. She invited the public, press,
police, the New Orleans roués, and
others thrill-seekers of the forbidden fun
to attend. Charging admission made voodoo
profitable for the first time. Marie was always
a devout, practicing Catholic and she added
influences of that religion -holy water, incense,
statues of the saints, and Christian prayers
- to the already sensational ceremonies of
Voodoo.
Her entrepreneurial efforts
went even further by organizing secret orgies
for wealthy white men seeking beautiful black,
mulatto and quadroon women for mistresses.
Marie presided over these meetings herself
and they invariably became “secret”
public knowledge. Eventually, Marie Laveau,
with all of the secret knowledge which she
had gained from the Creole boudoirs combined
with her own considerable knowledge of spells
along with her undeniable magical abilities,
became the most powerful woman in New Orleans.
Whites of every class sought her help in their
various affairs and amours while blacks saw
her as their leader. Judges paid her as much
as $1000 to assure victory in elections; other
whites paid $10 (a high fee at the time) for
an insignificant love powder. But she never
charged the black community for her services.
At the age of 70, in 1869, Marie
gave her last performance as a voodoo queen.
She announced she was retiring and retired
to a home located on the more peaceful St.
Ann Street in the Old Quarter. But she never
completely retired. She continued her work
until at least 1875, when she is said to have
been active visiting the poor and imprisoned
and still giving readings in her home.
On June 16, 1881, Marie I, Widow
Paris, died in her St. Ann Street house. Reporters
of the day painted her in the most glorious
terms, a saintly figure of 98 (actually 87),
who nursed the sick, and prayed incessantly
with the diseased and condemned. Reporters
called her the recipient "in the fullest
degree" of the "heredity gift of
beauty" in the Laveau family, who gained
the notice of Governor Claiborne, French General
Humbert, Aaron Burr, and even the Marquis
de Lafayette. Her obituaries claimed she lived
a pious life surrounded by her Catholic religion,
with no mention of her Voodoo past. Even one
of her surviving children, Madame Legendre,
claimed her saintly mother never practiced
Voodoo and despised the cult.
Then a similar tall woman with
flashing black eyes, and the ability to control
lives, emerged as Marie Laveau II.
Marie Laveau Glapion was born
February 2, 1827, one of the 15 children crowding
first the home on Rampart Street and then
the St. Ann Street cottage. It was never known
whether her mother, Marie I, chose the role
for her daughter, or whether Marie II chose
the role herself to follow in her mother’s
footsteps. By most accounts she shared her
mother’s features to an extraordinary
degree, a virtual replica of Marie I. Others
say the pupils of her eyes were half-moon
shaped and this is how you could tell daughter
from mother. Apparently, Marie II lacked the
warmth and compassion of her mother because
she seems to have inspired more fear and subservience
than her mother did. Like her mother before
her, she began work as a hairdresser; eventually,
however, she abandoned that profession to
run a bar and brothel on Bourbon Street, between
Toulouse and Saint Peter.
Marie continued operations at
the "Maison Blanche" (White House),
the house which her mother allegedly had built
for secret voodoo meetings and liaisons between
white men and black women. Marie II was proclaimed
to be a talented procuress, able to fulfill
any man’s desires for a price. Lavish
parties were held at the Maison Blanche offering
champagne, fine food, wine, music, and naked
black girls dancing for white men, politicians,
and high officials. They were never raided
by the police who feared that if they crossed
Marie she might "hoodoo" them.
Marie II continued in the rich
traditions and persona of the Voodoo Queen
began by her mother so many years before.
The Saint John's Day celebrations were especially
connected to the Voodoo rituals of the time,
celebrated along the shores of St. John’s
Bayou where it met the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.
The St. John celebration of 1872 was distinguished
by the presence of both mother and daughter
and began as a religious ceremony in the tradition
of Marie I. She came with a crowd singing.
Soon a cauldron was boiling with water from
a beer barrel, into which went salt, black
pepper, a black cat, a black rooster, a various
powders, and a snake sliced in three pieces
representing the Trinity. With all this boiling
the practitioners ate, whether the contents
of the cauldron or not is not known. Afterwards
or during the feast was more singing, appropriately
to "Mamzelle Marie." Then it was
cooling off time at which all stripped and
swam in the lake. This was followed by a sermon
by Marie II, then a half hour of relaxation,
or sexual intercourse. Then four naked girls
put the contents of the cauldron back into
the beer barrel. Marie I gave another sermon,
by this time it was becoming daylight and
all headed for home. Marie II continued these
yearly rituals throughout her lifetime.
Strangely, although Marie I
seemed almost to fade into obscurity, Marie
II "died" well within in the public
eye. Since the public had never made a true
distinction between mother and daughter, the
death of one ended the career of the other.
Marie II still reigned over the voodoo ceremonies
of the blacks and ran the Maison Blanche,
but she never regained high notice in the
press. Supposedly she drowned in a big storm
in Lake Pontchartrain in the 1890s, but some
people claimed to have seen her as late as
1918.
Death did
not end the power of the Great Marie Laveau.
Though the Widow Paris is reportedly
buried in the family crypt in St. Louis Cemetery
No. 1, the vault bears the name of Marie Philome
Glapion, deceased June 11, 1897. If this inscription
is correct, this would rightly be the burial
place of Marie II. But the vault still attracts
the curious and the faithful from all corners
of the globe and gifts of food, money, flowers,
candles, and artifacts can always be found
there. Believers and the simply superstitious
ask for Marie’s help in an elaborate
knocking and turning ritual, marking the white
stone with three crosses of red brick in the
effort to write their hopes on her memory.
Curiously, in St. Louis Cemetery
No. 2 there is another vault bearing the name
of Marie Laveau. This vault has red crosses
on it as well and is distinguished as the
"wishing tomb” where young women
can go to petition the great Voodoo Queen
when seeking husbands.
Many cemeteries around New Orleans
claim to be the last resting place of one
or both of the legendary Laveau women, but
the St. Louis No. 1 is recognized as the most
accurate location. Still, there are others
who insist that the Great Mamzelle never died
and that she even visits the cemeteries herself,
in disguise, chuckling with amusement at the
devotees who honor her legend even now.
A contemporary of Marie II told
Tallant (1946, 126) that he had been present
when she died of a heart attack at a ball
in 1897, and insisted: "All them other
stories ain't true. She was buried in the
Basin Street graveyard they call St. Louis
No. I, and she was put in the same tomb with
her mother and the rest of her family."
In Search
Of The Real Marie Laveau
