 | | Some years ago Congo Square was the scene of the weird midnight rites of this sect, as unrestrained and barbarous as ever took place in the Congo country. All these semi-public performances have been suppressed, and all private assemblies for this worship are illegal, and broken up by the police when they are discovered.
|
Warner was able, he said, to find someone who knew of a voudou ceremony anyway, and he thus attended. The ceremony was sans sacrifice, though it did have dancing, invocation of the Apostles Creed, and singing and use of fruit-laden altarsall of which would have fit at a voudou ceremony, depending on what kind of ceremony it was. Warner could not conceal his consternation, however, at the discovery of a twenty-year-old female seated next to him:
|
| | [Her] complexion and features gave evidence that she was white. Still, finding her in that company, and there as a participant in the Voudoo rites, I concluded that I must be mistaken, and that she must have colored blood in her veins. Assuming the privilege of an inquirer, I asked her questions about the coming performance, and in doing so carried the impression that she was kin to the colored race. But I was soon convinced, from her manner and her replies, that she was pure white. She was a pretty, modest girl, very reticent, well-bred, polite, and civil....She told me, in the course of the conversation, the name of the street where she lived (in the American part of town), the private school at which she had been educated (one of the best in the city), and that she and her parents were Episcopalians. Whatever her trouble
|
|