Bois Caïman

Bois Caïman is a forested area in the Northern Plain of Haiti, near the Morne Rouge mountains and the plantation district of Lenormand. On the night of August 14, 1791, enslaved leaders from plantations across the North Province gathered there to perform a Vodou ceremony that launched the coordinated uprising of August 22, 1791 — the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. The site is sacred in Haitian national memory as the ground where the revolution was spiritually inaugurated. Its exact location has been debated and partly mythologized; the forest itself was later cleared for agriculture. Haitian and diasporic communities have sought to commemorate and protect the site, though it has faced both neglect and evangelical-Christian campaigns to suppress its significance.