Mackandal's Poisoning Campaign

François Mackandal, a One-armed Haitian Vodouisant and maroon leader, organized a network across the Northern Plain from approximately 1751 to 1758, distributing poisons to enslaved people to kill slaveholders, livestock, and other colonists. He operated through a clandestine network of plant-medicine practitioners and leveraged Vodou spirituality to organize and bind his conspirators. French colonial authorities estimated hundreds of deaths before they captured Mackandal in January 1758. He was burned at the stake at Cap-Français on January 20, 1758. Mackandal became a central figure in Haitian revolutionary memory, regarded as the first major leader of armed resistance against slavery in Saint-Domingue.