In order to better understand how this process worked in the Haitian context, a closer examination of how free people of color and black Creoles related to indigeneity is necessary. According to Haitian historian Beauvais Lespinasse, free people of color sometimes sought patents to be recognized as having Indian rather than African origins. However, the French government in 1771 urged officials to not recognize these claims by free people of color (Lespinasse 237). Nonetheless, this demonstrates how some free people of color sought to identify with (fictitious?) indigenous ancestry rather than African to gain the same privileges of whites.[10] Intriguingly, Hilliard d’Auberteuil in the 18th century also noted the pattern of rich free people of color claiming Amerindian origin through the Indians of Saint-Christophe in order to gain the rights of whites (d’Auberteuil 82). While it is certainly possible that some of these families did indeed have partial Amerindian ancestry, it is clear that the main reason these families suddenly discovered or proclaimed it had more to do with increasing discrimination in colonial society.[11] But it may also explain why claiming indigeneity and the label of indigenous appealed to them in the later stages of the Haitian Revolution. Free people of color, and Creoles of African descent could easily envision themselves as the rightful heirs to the vanquished indigenous population devastated by the Spanish conquest. After all, some of them were already claiming Indian ancestry. It also provided an avenue to choose a common identity that united mixed-race and black Creoles while eventually including the African-born brought to the island against their will. For the latter, the use of indigeneity as the result of a forced relocation via the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade could serve the palingenesis of a new Haitian people.
Perhaps a clear example from the life of General Etienne Elie Gérin will establish this with greater clarity. According to the third volume of historian Joseph Saint-Rémy’s history Pétion, it was actually Gérin, the antiquaire, who first called the army in the Sud and Ouest the “Inca Army” (Saint-Rémy 75). This testimony is contradicted by the chronology of Thomas Madiou, who attributed the name to Dessalines and his circle. Nonetheless, descriptions of Gérin by Ardouin and Guy-Joseph Bonnet suggest he was quite interested in the island’s past. For instance, in the 6th volume of Beaubrun Ardouin’s monumental history, Ardouin repeats an anecdote he heard from Bonnet. Apparently, some time after the assassination of Dessalines, Gérin actually proposed remodeling Haiti as a caciquat, or cacicazgo, like the indigenous polities of the island in precolonial times (Ardouin 447). This political system would have established a supreme cacique with lesser caciques serving in the departments or provinces. Of course, the nobility would be created by the children of the signers of the Haitian Act of Independence. A similar story is likely recounted in Guy-Joseph Bonnet’s memoirs, in a critical discussion of Gérin. Again, he allegedly wanted to create a “superior cacique” in the constitution as the head of government (Bonnet 154). Saint-Rémy likewise reported a few more details on Gérin in the 5th tome of Pétion et Haïti: étude monographique et historique. While contrasting him and Pétion, he described the former as someone with a deep education and interest in the “Taino” indigenous population of the island. He was also said to have been inspired by Marmontel’s Les Incas when, in 1802, he began calling his army in the Sud and part of the Ouest the “Inca Army.” Last, but certainly not least, Gérin was interested in composing a Haitian Creole grammaire for use in education (Saint-Rémy 2).[12] Though the idea of establishing a new state as a caciquat was rather different from the title of Incas Gérin also used during the Revolution, it illustrates how even after the assassination of Dessalines, some still looked to indigenous, precolonial societies as a model for a free state.[13] Indeed, Gérin and some of the affranchis who had been to France may have even heard of Jean-Baptiste Picquenard’s novel that proposed a Peruvian origin of the “Taino” (Geggus 52). It is difficult to determine to what extent Picquenard’s novel would have influenced this discourse of indigeneity and the Incas in the last few years of the Haitian Revolution.[14] But one can easily imagine someone like Gérin, seeing a link between Haiti’s indigenous population and Peru, championing the use of the name Inca for the Indigenous Army.
Furthermore, allusions to the Inca abound in subsequent literature of Haiti. Voyage dans le nord d’Hayti by Hérard Dumesle even compared Vincent Ogé to Manco-Capack, who brought light to the ancient peoples of the Americas (Dumesle 75). This comparison to the founder of the Inca dynasty is no coincidence. Though published in 1824, Dumesle’s work clearly demonstrated an ongoing appeal of the Incas to Haitian readers well into the 19th century. Privileging Ogé rather than, say, an enslaved person, was also significant. Centering affranchis who were initially only fighting for their rights rather than slaves, Dumesle nonetheless reveals an affiliation with the Incas as an elite group who brought civilization or enlightenment to the Andes. Dumesle wanted to depict Ogé and his class as the ones who paved the road for a great, future society in which, to no surprise, their own privileges and power were not to be questioned.[15] In addition to Dumesle, other works by Haitian authors of the 19th century allude to the Incas. For example, a hymne haytienne entitled “Quoi? Tu te tais Peuple Indigène!” translated in Poetry of Haitian Independence, alludes to Haitians as children of the Sun while praising Dessalines (2).[16] Undoubtedly, Dessalines continued to welcome comparisons to the Incas despite renaming his army in 1803. Another tract, Baron de Vastey’s Le système colonial dévoilé, cites El Inca Garcilaso on its first page as a reference for the Spanish conquest of Peru, followed by a brief overview of the indigenous cacicazgos of Haiti (de Vastey 1).[17] Undeniably, Haitians aware of the history of the Americas were familiar with the Incas as a great civilization destroyed by Spanish avarice and cruelty, which they compared to French rapacity and inhumane exploitation of enslaved people and free people of color in Haiti.
Consequently, the salience of the Incas to the Haitian revolutionaries was an established and meaningful symbol of independence. Indeed, even outsiders were struck by its use in Haiti. A clear example can be seen in the work of Jean Abeille, the author of Essai sur nos colonies, et sur le rétablissement de Saint Domingue, ou considérations sur leur législation, administration, commerce et agriculture, published in 1805. Abeille, writing in favor of the French reconquest, actually referred to Haitians as “prétendus incas” (Abeille 17). In Abeille’s view, the leaders of independent Haiti were tyrants and a moral outrage, yet one notes how the Inca appellation of the Haitian leaders was still used. Another source, a report from 1804, even alluded to Dessalines as “jefe de la casa de los Incas” (AGI ESTADO, leg 68, exp 3).[18] Haitian assertions of indigeneity and the Inca title were clearly understood by French and European observers, who would have shared this broader Atlantic World conceptualization of the Incas. For Abeille, a former planter in Saint Domingue, the idea of Dessalines as an Inca ruling an “empire of liberty” was anathema, hence his description of it as embodying the opposite of the virtues attributed to the Incas in the idealized French historical and literary production on Peru.
The continued reference to Dessalines and early Haiti as Incas, plus ongoing Haitian interest in the same affiliation, express a Haitian pattern in a general trend of Creole nationalism in the 19th century. While in the case of Haiti, there were few or no “Taino” left, the powerful and widespread appeal of the Inca Empire and its symbolism in the Atlantic World resonated in the Antilles.[19] Thus, even in a land without a recognized, surviving indigenous people, the image of the “Indian” and its romanticized Inca incarnation, appealed to those desirous of independence. Unsurprisingly, free people of color may have been more influenced by the Inca trope, but the use of the Inca title by Dessalines even after 1803 attests to its broad appeal. Like their creole patriot counterparts in the South American republics, the future Haitian elite borrowed from a shared corpus of tropes, symbols and meaning to “avenge the Americas.”
[10] Note historian Thomas Madiou’s claim to have Amerindian ancestry through his mother’s family; see Madiou, Autobiographie.Some affranchis were probably accurately reporting their ancestry.
[11] The scholarship of John Garrigus is particularly strong on the contours of race and increasing hostility directed against free people of color after the Seven Years War. See Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue.
[12] Sadly, for posterity’s sake, Gérin’s interests in promoting Haitian Creole in education were not taken seriously by his contemporaries. Such a move, and so early in Haitian independence, could have led to higher literacy rates, assuming schools were actually established and funded.
[13] Early 19th century Haitian understandings of “Taino” chiefdoms of the precolonial era likely drew from references to it by Charlevoix, Moreau de Saint–Méry and encyclopedias. One wonders if Gérin’s plan for the nobility created from the families of the signers of the Act of Independence was designed to recreate the so-called nitaino status.
[14] Picquenard’s novel, Zoflora ou la bonne négresse, anecdote coloniale, may have had only a very limited circulation in Saint Domingue. Nonetheless, though a novel, the author posited a Peruvian origin of the “Taino” while noting similarities in color, moeurs, and religions.
[15] David Nicholls has aroused much debate about the so-called “mulatto legend” of Haitian history he attributed to Beaubrun Ardouin and other historians of 19th century Haiti. But this discourse of the Haitian people as not “ready” for republican governance or “civilization” and requiring elite tutelage has deeper roots in the Haitian Revolution. For views of 19th century Haitians about Africa and the “Guinean” customs seen as retrograde, Thomas Madiou’s Histoire d’Haiti is illustrative.
[16] Additional poems are worthy of mention here, but the symbolic references to the Sun in early Haitian poetry were not always drawing on Inca symbolism.
[17] More could be said about the problematic ways in which Baron de Vastey wrote about indigenous peoples of the Americas. Despite his familiarity with El Inca Garcilaso, in another work, Réflexions sur une lettre de Mazères, he incorrectly associated khipu with Mexico. In his desire to defend Africa and the black race as not entirely uncivilized, he boldly ranked Africans as more civilized than the Indians of the Americas.
[18] The same source also described Dessalines as “General of Mexico.” If so, then the hemispheric dimensions of Dessalines’ claim to be the Avenger of the Americas was rhetorically promoted by this.
[19] Although we respect Taino revivalist movements, the evidence for Saint Domingue indicates a very small presence of “Amerindian” peoples in the French colony. The percentage of that group that may have, to some degree, been descendants of the indigenous population of the island, was likely an even smaller number. Those looking for more evidence of Hispaniola’s indigenous people in this period (18th century) are more likely to find traces of it in the Spanish colony.
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