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- [00:01]
Susan
Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.
- [00:08]
Beckett
Happy Women's History Month. We have decided to post a show every week in March. Of course, each and every day we focus on women's history around here. But this is our way of emphasizing our celebration of this particular temporarily lost, dedicated page of the calendar. Fortuitously, March has brought us Mardi Gras today, the perfect occasion to bring back from the vault our coverage of Marie Laveau. We've invited her back from 2017 and we'll see you next week with a brand new show.
- [00:39]
Susan
And now, without further ado, on with the show.
- [00:44]
Beckett
And here's your 30 second summary.
- [00:48]
Susan
Oh, here's one. To keep your boss from firing you, write his name on a piece of paper. Bury it in your backyard with a chopped up red candle and a black cat's tail.
- [01:01]
Beckett
How to keep your boss from firing you. Quit.
- [01:05]
Susan
I don't need no stinking Marie Laveau. Curse.
- [01:09]
Beckett
The end. Let's talk about Marie Laveau, the Voodoo queen of New Orleans.
- [01:16]
Susan
But first, let's drop her into history. In 1794, the US flag was changed to 15 stripes and 15 stars. Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin. The Louvre is open to the public. Our old friend Catherine the Great allowed Jewish people to settle in Kiev. And composer Ferdinand Schubert and rich mean Cornelius Vanderbilt were Both born in 1801. Thomas Jefferson became the third President of the United States. The first census of Great Britain counted approximately 10 million citizens. The state of Louisiana was under Spanish rule, but not for long. And in 1794 or 1801, Voodoo Queen and gifted marketer Marie Laveau is born in New Orleans.
- [02:03]
Beckett
Marie Laveau was likely born on September 16, 1801, although accounts do vary. She was the daughter of Marguerite Dargantal, free woman of color, and Charles Laveau, a free man of color. Though it must be stated that many histories you read will tell you that Marie's father was a white man, even so far as that he was a member of the state legislature. Not true. Her birth year is given in other places as 1794 or 1796. Like Marie Antoinette's family in a slightly, slightly earlier time frame. Many, many girls in this family were given the first name Marie to honor the Virgin Mary. Our Marie actually had an older half sister named Marie Louise, a younger half sister named Marie Dolos Dolores, and a stepmother named Marie Francoise. You could just cry trying to sort everybody out.
- [02:54]
Susan
No kidding. Her father and her mother were not married.
- [02:58]
Beckett
Okay, so let's Just say a baby named Marie of her known mother, whose dowry was later paid by a man named Charles Laveau, was baptized on the date above that. We said September 10th. That birth certificate lists the father as unknown. Maybe because, as Facebook likes to call it, it's complicated. Mama was unknown under the protection, as they say, of her long term white boyfriend, father of her other children.
- [03:26]
Susan
Their relationship was a plusage, which was really more of a way to skirt around people living and having relations. A woman being cared for by a wealthier man, and that's the relationship that her mother was involved with.
- [03:42]
Beckett
And Papa was about to marry somebody else.
- [03:46]
Susan
And somebody else that he was about to marry was a free woman of color, but of quite a bit of wealth. So he was about to put himself socially at a certain level. So keeping his name off of this document was probably for self preservation.
- [04:01]
Beckett
Well, all of this, this complication was a common enough occurrence around New Orleans at the time. And the local priest, who was known as Pere Antoine, would baptize these natural children, as they were called. Everybody either looked the other way or just didn't even think about it. Honestly, it was so common.
- [04:18]
Susan
Pere Antoine is quite a celebrity in New Orleans. He's still it. I mean, his memory still is. He was quite notorious. And then he found faith. And he kind of blended his faith with the culture of the area. He was doing it to bring people into the church. It rustled a lot of feathers. And the church actually tried to get him out, but his parishioners were like, no, not going to happen. This is our guy. There's even an alley named after him to this day. So that's how big he was.
- [04:48]
Beckett
So Mama was the daughter of an enslaved woman and she had herself been born into slavery. She'd been freed at 18 with no restriction, just completely freed by her master. And she was known as the plase or kept woman of an influential white government official. And she took his last name. And this man, of course, was not Marie's father. So there is a story, there's a whole story here that we're never going to know. How did Papa and Mama meet? What were the circumstances? We literally have no idea.
- [05:22]
Susan
Because Marguerite, Marie's mother lived with her common law husband, let's call him that, her day to day parent was her grandmother.
- [05:31]
Beckett
Another thing that was common enough to not raise comments at all, although it did lead to some confusion, especially when looking back through the records as to whose children were actually whose, since often the parents lived other places. So another thing, with all the names and then all the locations, super confusing. So our baby Marie was born at a time in New Orleans that it was going through great change. The Spanish had been in control of this area for some time, and they were a little, shockingly, a little more liberal with their policies on slavery, especially allowing slaves to buy themselves and their families free. The point is, I think that the Spanish people saw slaves as people. I mean, unlucky people, unfortunate people. Sucks to be them people, but people first, you know. And Americans saw slaves as property, and all the laws treated them according to that philosophy. So everybody was doing better under the Spanish rule, actually. So you could buy your family free, you could buy yourself free. In addition, plenty of enslaved people were allowed to live apart from their owners, and they could earn wages and save money. There was great mixing of the races. So both by blood, as we obviously see from before. How much more complicated could that be? And even socially, though, gosh, New Orleans, it was an entity all unto itself, unlike anywhere else in America, for sure. Women could own and operate businesses, too, also unusual, and they did in great numbers.
- [06:59]
Susan
The Spanish laws kind of came to bite the situation on the butt in a way, because towards the end of the time that the Spanish ownership of the territory, I guess 20% of the city's population was freed blacks. 20%, that's quite a bit. And with the 38% who were enslaved, this number was rising all the time, because, like you said, they had ways to make money. They were buying their freedom, and Spain was going, ooh, this is getting a little bit out of control. And they did establish a few laws to kind of slow down that growth of the free people of color. They banned the practice that Maureen's own mother was participating in, that concubine type of situation. They banned large black assemblies from congregating. There was a huge laundry list of things that they couldn't do, especially on days of religious observation, that is Sunday. And any women of color had to wear what was called a tin yon, which is like a headdress, a kerchief, to signify their kind of less than status. Although those women kicked back hard. These things that were supposed to make them look plain and simple. These women put flowers and needlework and these beautiful head scarves that were supposed to, you know, say, you are a less than person, became these huge status symbols.
- [08:15]
Beckett
They also, incidentally, became super fashionable. I am going to put on the Pinterest board a picture of Dolly Madison from almost the first year that Marie Laveau started her push toward popular voodoo practices. So the same year, Dolley Madison up in Washington D.C. has a glorious tignon on. So not only is it fashionable in New Orleans, not only is it pushed back against the sumptuary laws of the Spanish, it has transcended. This is streetwear that has become top drawer fashion for the elite in Washington.
- [08:47]
Susan
D.C. and of course, that now, given, you know, the conversations that are going on in our world, is that cultural appropriation.
- [08:56]
Beckett
I know it was a long time ago.
- [08:57]
Susan
It was a very long time ago.
- [08:59]
Beckett
So when our Marie was about 2 years old, Spain traded their Louisiana colony for Tuscany and Napoleon and France was now the boss. But something had happened in Haiti just off the coast, that was changing France's perception of Louisiana. Over a decade of slave revolt had made the whole profitable slave trade, sugar, rum, part of the New world, into this black hole to throw money down. And black residents there were systematically murdering the white residents of the island. It was known as Saint Dominique or Santo Domingo by the Spanish. And Napoleon could not really see messing with all this area. Frankly, I got other places to put my resources. I can't. I think the time for all this is done. And so we enter the only sentence of this story that America has probably learned in class. Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to America for $15 million. You know, adjusted for current money, that's $285 million, which is still a very good price because President Thomas Jefferson received the land between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi river from the Gulf coast all the way up to the Canadian border. This is not just New Orleans.
- [10:15]
Susan
It was almost double the territory that the United States had possessed up until that point. So this is a huge land deal. Huge.
- [10:23]
Beckett
So if we were to narrow our focus back to New Orleans, I have to tell you, the residents wept, they cried. They were very worried. They were very afraid for their future under the French at first, and then later under the more benevolent Spanish and then back to the French extremely briefly, this city was a thriving place. You know, merchants, ships, close knit communities, more racially diverse and proud of it, I have to tell you, than anywhere in the New world. And most people, including baby Marie, were Catholic. You know, French and Spanish, of course they were Catholic. In African culture, the food, the music, the stories, even religious practices were an important part of everyone's everyday life. Everyone's not just the people of color. And I imagine it had some of the, gosh, what would you even call it? Uniqueness? Weirdness. I mean, okay, Susan went to school there. She knows better than I. What I can't put my I can't put a word to the indefinable quality of New Orleans. I, you know, inclusiveness.
- [11:23]
Susan
I went to college there, and that's one of the reasons I moved there, because it was such a unique city, and it still is. And I personally know what it means to miss New Orleans, and I do every day. It's just such a great cultural center. It's the closest to, like, a European city that you can get in the United States. But it's like no European city that you've known, because all these different influences built the city. A lot of people think about New Orleans as being on the Gulf of Mexico, when in actuality, it's about 100 miles off. It was established on the highest level of land, and even then it isn't that far. I think it's like seven feet above sea level, the highest point. It's not that far at all. But it was a perfect spot for a port, you know, and that port would take you all the way up the Mississippi river, which goes right through the center of the United States. It's huge. It could take you right up to Canada. Whole different country. Right, right. It's a big deal. So all these different, you know, the French, the Spanish, the British, later, the Americans put their stamp on things. The Haitians, it's just this beautiful gumbo of a city. That's the word you were looking for?
- [12:31]
Beckett
Well, maybe. Yes, I think that's right. And I have heard of America. You know, we always refer to America as the melting pot. Everything just kind of becomes the same thing. But in a gumbo, everything retains its own character while mixing together quite happily.
- [12:44]
Susan
Funny you should say that, but that's exactly what the voodoo religion was in New Orleans. It wasn't like. Like a lot of people say the Haitians brought voodoo to New Orleans. That's not the case at all. It was already there. People brought it from Africa years before. It was kind of there in an incarnation. The Haitians brought some more, and it blended with what was already here. It blended with, in Marie Labeau's case, the Catholicism, and it created a whole new gumbo of religion.
- [13:11]
Beckett
So we will talk about the integration of the Catholic Church with voodoo a little bit later. But I have to say the dark forces, not voodoo forces, the actual dark forces. I refer to the Americans, the new bosses were gathering here. They were pretty much not okay with all this race mixing, number one, and all these exotic cultural practices, number two, and the weird food. I mean, this is all a recipe for interesting times, shall we say? And the freedoms began to harden up. Starting about now, I'm sorry to say, we have missed the golden age. So not much is known of Marie before the age of about 18. What we can say categorically, it is very unlikely that she got any kind of a formal education at all, other than, of course, a cultural one and a practical one, I. E. Running a house, cooking, that kind of thing. Through her whole adult life, she was not able to write and probably not able to read.
- [14:08]
Susan
No, not at all. And. And again, we're going back to the history of New Orleans, which. And I'm going to do this now because I know that somebody's going to write to us. The highest point in New Orleans is 20ft above sea level. Oh, they're going to write to us in 10 years. You know, New Orleans is 20ft above sea level.
- [14:25]
Beckett
It won't be in 20 years.
- [14:28]
Susan
No, probably not. A hurricane destroyed New Orleans within the first five years of its being built. They had to start from scratch. How about them apples?
- [14:35]
Beckett
After the first few times, you might adjust your.
- [14:40]
Susan
Oh, they did. They brought in engineers to build the canal system, which unfortunately failed during Katrina. But bad things happen. You learn from them and you go on from there. And they've done as best as they can for a city so close to the Gulf of Mexico, and it gets a lot of hurricanes and with large portions of it, you know, below sea level.
- [15:00]
Beckett
Well, Marie was married at 18 to Jacques Perry, also called Santiago Paris. Keep in mind, there's Spanish influences and French influences going all over the place. So you have different nationalities of names, but she was married by the same priest who had baptized her in the first place. Old pair.
- [15:18]
Susan
Antoine, again, I told you, this guy's a big deal. He's the man and he's the man with her. I mean, they had a pretty close relationship for her, you know, until he died.
- [15:28]
Beckett
Well, Jacques was a refugee from all that bloodshed over in Santo Domingo, and he was officially listed as a quadroon, which is one quarter African and 3/4 white. Her stepmother, another Marie, was referred to as a griff, which is the opposite. 3/4 black, 1 quarter white. Marie herself is referred to as a mulatress. It's only important, and I'm going to talk about this a tiny little bit, because it seems like this was a key identifier in New Orleans culture. So culture as we see it, having learned it and Gone with the Wind, is very binary, right? In the south, racially, there's white and there's not white. The end. There was A very, very clear triad system in New Orleans. There's black, there's white, and there is colored, for which there were many words for different combinations. The Americans could not get their heads around that, that system. But I think it's very important to know that when we say the word colored, that's the word that was used for a wide range of mixed race people and was considered its own separate category, by the way.
- [16:35]
Susan
Yeah, you know, and I had a lot of difficulty with that as I was like writing out points that I wanted to remember in my head. I'm wanting to write people of color and I'm looking at the word, you know, mulatto or, you know, colored. The past and the present having this little, you know, convergence in my brain.
- [16:52]
Beckett
Really, really. We mean nothing disparaging when we say the word colored because that's just the term of the day. Anyway. Just wanted to get that in there. You'll hear that word. And you know, at the end, you know what?
- [17:03]
Susan
I love that we just kind of skipped over her childhood. But you know why? Because there's really nothing written about it. I mean, we can speculate, of course, but we know that she wasn't educated, so that took out the whole school thing. We know that her grandmother and her mother taught her things about life. But there's a lot of Marie's life that was. Is still shrouded in mystery, which is probably the way she would have wanted it, I think.
- [17:27]
Beckett
Well, and until you are in the official record somewhere, the marriage, the baptism, that's kind of when she appears. That's all we can really say for sure. Well, Maurice Papa, who acknowledged her as his natural daughter, by the way, even though his name's not on the birth certificate, gave them a plot of land that they did not seem to ever live there. Yeah, it was like an investment property.
- [17:50]
Susan
They never lived there at first, when.
- [17:52]
Beckett
They took up the residence together as new man and wife, they lived in a little house on Bayou street that was owned also by Marie's father, although they he never deeded them that house. And Marie had two daughters with Jacques Felicite, who was born when Marie was 16, before they were married again. A common B, nobody cared. And Marie Angeli, born right after they were married. And then Jacques just vaporizes from the records he does.
- [18:24]
Susan
Have you ever heard the song by Bobby Bear called Marie Laveau?
- [18:29]
Beckett
Nope.
- [18:30]
Susan
I'll put it in the show notes. Surprisingly, it was written in part by Shel Silverstein. You know, the kids where the sidewalk ends. That's. I Know my daughter's first favorite poet. It's a little. You know, I don't even know what kind of music it is, but in it they talk about Handsome Jack and how he wasn't long for the world after he met Marie. And that's kind of what happened. This is our Handsome Jack, Handsome Jacques. He just.
- [18:59]
Beckett
Does it say in the story or in this song what happened exactly to Handsome Jacques? Because did he go back to Haiti? Maybe. But more likely, did he die in one of these yellow fever epidemics striking people down with such frequency? Probably.
- [19:14]
Susan
Well, in the song, it's implied that Marie struck him down.
- [19:17]
Beckett
Well, sorry, Shel Silverstein, I am discounting the fact that Marie did him in because it's really not in her character, as we will find out later. But if he was buried quickly in a mass grave due to yellow fever, that would not have been at all uncommon. Okay, so whatever the real story is, Marie had Jacques declared dead sometime after we lose him in the records and was hereafter known as the Widow Paris. And I'm sorry to say that both of these daughters disappear also early in their lives. We can get Felicite to about seven at her baptism, but the prevailing wisdom is that they both died in childhood. New Orleans was and is a very low lying city. Home to the aforementioned yellow fever, malaria, typhus, cholera. This is not the home of what you might call good sanitation. In addition to the regular old things stalking you in childhood at this time. You know, the diphtheria. The odds were not in your favor to make it and likely neither of them did.
- [20:19]
Susan
This is probably a good time for a break and when we come back, we'll find out what happens to the Widow Paris. I take daily walks and I love to listen to podcasts or radio dramas. And I am into one right now. It's called Madame Ram. I'm on episode five and it is so good. I love these. They're like movies for your ears. Madame Raymond's the story of Georgia Frontiere. And her story is one of ambition and power, scandal, and a relentless quest for respect and legacy. Georgia inherited the LA Rams after the sudden and mysterious death of her sixth, sixth husband.
- [21:08]
Beckett
Everyone underestimated her by thinking of her as, quote, just a trophy wife. But she defied expectations by taking her shot at a Super bowl trophy. How about that?
- [21:20]
Susan
Madame Ram is inspired by true events and follows the extraordinary rise of Georgia Frontier, who is played by Toni Collette. I remember her from Muriel's Wedding. That's when I first saw her. She was awesome.
- [21:34]
Beckett
In that it was a long time ago.
- [21:35]
Susan
I know, I looked it up.
- [21:36]
Beckett
It was 94, all right.
- [21:39]
Susan
But we follow Georgia from aspiring opera singer to showgirl and then onto a trailblazing NFL owner relying on her wit.
- [21:49]
Beckett
And astrological charts to make decisions. She turns the NFL on its head and to this day remains one of the most beloved, despised and controversial figures in modern sports.
- [22:01]
Susan
Madame Ram, the woman who took out a man's world and won.
- [22:06]
Beckett
Follow Madame Ram on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now. We are back. Marie's husband Jacques has died, disappeared or otherwise simply left our narrative. Bye bye, wouldn't we say?
- [22:37]
Susan
Au revoir, Jacques.
- [22:38]
Beckett
So Marie became involved with and committed to, I mean, a lifelong relationship, at least his life, with a white man named Christophe Glapion. Now, was it a marriage? I have to say no, because legal marriage between white and black, or white and colored, as we say, a fully separate category that was illegal. So, no, it wasn't a marriage. But they fully Kurt Russell, Goldie Honda, you know what I mean? Like, they are committed, like pairs of geese. They are not breaking up.
- [23:06]
Susan
Can I just say his whole name? Because, you know, we're like Christophe. No, it was Louis Christophe Dominique Donning de Glapion.
- [23:15]
Beckett
And I almost think that deglapion means that he had some nobility in his past. I'm not even going to go into genealogy. People will tell you, you will read that he was a man of color and he was not. He was definitely not. He was a white Frenchman and he.
- [23:29]
Susan
Was about 12 years older than Marie.
- [23:32]
Beckett
They had together as many as 15 children, though we can prove only only seven of them. And I'm sorry to say that only two of those children made it to adulthood. And I'm also sorry to say that both daughters were named Marie. So we've got Marie Heloise and Marie Philomne. More Marie's.
- [23:51]
Susan
And there was another infant daughter in the middle of that. Marie Louise.
- [23:55]
Beckett
Yes, but she doesn't enter the narrative because she didn't enter the life. They did have a son who lived almost seven years, but unfortunately he succumbed to one or another of the perils that were waiting for the child in such an environment at such a time. So we've got two daughters living with us. And now legend will tell you a funny story here. The story goes that there was a young man on trial for a serious crime and his family was absolutely frantic that the trial seemed to be going against him. And Marie Laveau is said to have put three Hot guinea peppers in her mouth and go to kneel at the cathedral. This is the Cathedral, St. Louis, a Catholic church, delivering her pain up to God. And then proceeded to the courtroom where she put the three peppers under the judge's bench and, I hope, got herself a glass of milk. Kids, do not put hot peppers in your mouth, even if you see it on YouTube. Except for there is a funny VAT 19 video that I'll put in the Pinterest board. Yes. So the young man was acquitted. Hooray. And according to the story, his grateful father gave Marie the deed to a Cottage on St. Anne's Street. The story's colorful. This story is spicy, but if you want the real story, it's vanilla as anything. Marie's grandmother died, and her house on St. Anne street between Rampart and Burgundy streets was sold. It's not there anymore, by the way, but it was sold so the heirs could divide their shares of the property. And Marie's husband, really, let's just call him the husband, he bought it for about $3,000. This is 56,000 in today's money. And he had a mortgage and everything. It's very unromantic. And I say, bring back the hot peppers.
- [25:37]
Susan
I don't know. I think it's kind of romantic that he wanted to take care of his wife and his family, his growing family. Ever growing. You know, I was looking into where that ide idea that they could have had up to 15 children came from. And it's quite possible that there were a number of children that lived with them that were from the community, because Marie, contrary to one of the versions of her, she had a very big heart and she was always taking care of her community. So that's a theory that made a lot of sense to me to kind of say, oh, that's where all those kids came from. Yeah.
- [26:10]
Beckett
She often brought in unfortunate neighbors, you know, street orphans, even if she didn't know them, to live in her house and took care of them. How about this? We will get into the voodoo. I'm sure that's why we're all here, probably. But I want to place the voodoo in the background of mundane life, like mortgages and taking in street orphans and et cetera, just for a minute, and tell you guys that Marie Laveau was a generous woman. So in addition to honestly feeding clothing and housing people that aren't even related to her, she posted bond for people of color who had run afoul of the law. And her house was not right on the road. Most of the others were, but hers was kind of set back on the lot. And the Lavaux Galapillon allowed Choctaw Indian families to set up their camps right in the front yard. Marie and her other relatives had an extensive knowledge of herbs and their properties. Yes, traditionally another quality of a witch or a voodoo practitioner. Also, if you recall from our Eleanor of Aquitaine podcast, a quality attributed to ladies of the manor in medieval times. Herbal medicine has a very respectable history. So if whatever was wrong with you could be cured without modern medicine, you'd be better off with Marie and women like her than you would be with a real doctor who's probably going to bleed you until you were weak. Whereas an herbalist might give you tea made from cinchona bark.
- [27:35]
Susan
Oh, impressive.
- [27:38]
Beckett
That would help your malaria because it has quinine in it.
- [27:43]
Susan
That quinine that keeps popping up, doesn't it? You know, what she reminded me a lot of was we talked about, if you want to hear more about, you know, medicine from this time, the Lydia Pinkham, we talked about her. You know, she had picked up these recipes from her family and from her community that actually helped people where the doctors of the time were just hurting them, you know, with morphine and bloodletting. And in New Orleans, there was a yellow fever epidemic, and the city thought, hey, let's just shoot off cannons to help clear the air.
- [28:15]
Beckett
So, as you recall from the Lydia Pinkham episode that Susan was just talking about, Lydia Pinkham herself said, in a matter of advice, here's how you get better, my friend. You hear the doctor's carriage wheels outside of your house. Get yourself out of bed, drag yourself into the wardrobe, close the door, and don't answer anyone until you hear of the doctor. Drive away. That was her medical advice.
- [28:41]
Susan
Brilliant, brilliant medical advice. There's. I'm going to link people up to. The Melnick Medical Museum is an online resource, and it's got all kinds of traditional, you know, doctor treatments. It'll just blow your mind.
- [28:57]
Beckett
It might frighten you desperately. So there seems to be this vision of Marie Laveau's house as some kind of clearinghouse for freeing slaves, which seems to be, honestly, I have to tell you, just part of the mythology. The reality is, like many free people of color, Marie owned slaves. And it boggles our minds. We're used to that whole binary system. We talked about the one drop rule. Either you're white or you're not white. The situation in New Orleans was just more complicated than that. Marie and her husband owned at least eight slaves, you know, serially not all at the same time. One was an 8 year old child who stayed with the family for 24 years. So you think, oh, you know, adoption, she's part of the family. No, she was then sold, so not so much. Everyone seems to have been sold at a profit too, especially a baby born into the family, I. E. With no purchase price that eventually was sold for a socking profit at the age of 15. So there's some cold bloodedness here that I, you know, this isn't a stop on the underground Railroad and I, I don't know, I'm looking at these transactions and I don't see any kind of greater strategy of freedom here. I really don't like just the regular old cruel institution. We really do not have a clear indicator on how the slaves were actually treated within the household. I imagine if it was worse or better than her neighbors, it might be mentioned, but there's really nothing.
- [30:25]
Susan
Yeah. Although I did see, I'm not to say what you're talking about was predominant, but I did see a few instances where she helped them. You know, she bought slaves to help them buy their freedom. But flip side, you know, did they have to work it off at her house? Does that make sense at all?
- [30:42]
Beckett
I mean, yeah, there were a couple of slaves that had actually come to her in the first place with this condition put upon them. That was also very curious to me where they were sold with the understanding that they were to be manumitted. That's freed at the age of 25. So you were really only renting four years worth of labor or whatever because you knew legally they came to you with that condition upon them, you couldn't keep them. Marie actually used one of those slaves illegally as collateral on a loan, in fact at one point. So yes, I don't know. So I don't know if those are the slaves people say she bought to give them their freedom because she and her husband weren't the ones that ended up having to free them. It was the owners after.
- [31:26]
Susan
Right.
- [31:27]
Beckett
I just really can't untangle that. But I'm not sure there was a great benevolent society going on in the household. So. So here we are in this undeniably crowded house, people living in the front yard. You know, everyone's hanging out the wash and cooking and the other thousand mundane as we keep saying things to keep life going. Shopping, sewing, keeping the kids off their iPhones, all that stuff. Burying the fidget spinners in the yard, giving them the evil sign, hey, if.
- [31:56]
Susan
You bury it upside down like a St. Francis something happened good to your house.
- [32:01]
Beckett
I just don't know. You know what? Fidget spinners have the benefit of being 100% quiet, unlike bottle flipping, so.
- [32:07]
Susan
Oh, oh, I am with you 1000% on that one. And that bottle flipping.
- [32:12]
Beckett
Yeah, it's bad news. So Marie went to the cathedral on Sundays and participated in Mass at St. Louis Cathedral. And also this once a week, Marie would also hold a voodoo service, either in her house or her assistant's houses or in empty lots or the forest or Congo Square downtown. And they would go something like this. There was a setup of objects on a white cloth on the floor, assorted things, red peppers, rum, food, coins, gifts for the spirits. That's what that was. And whatever spirits they were going to talk to that day. And there were all shades of skin at these meetings. A particularly New Orlean. Wait, how do I say that? New Orleanian. Is that the word?
- [32:55]
Susan
Yes. That was very good.
- [32:57]
Beckett
Well, it was a state of being that wouldn't have happened anywhere else. And I have to tell you, the Catholic church in this town was integrated too. So it's geographical. It's not religion specific. So there was singing and there was music, and there were people who were called a servitor or assistants that served as, I guess, what, fetchers and carriers, placing this, saying that like an altar boy, maybe. And the priestess or priest, whoever you had, would dress in white or blue if the meeting was for what they called good work, let so and so have a baby, or please cure Antoine of this illness, you know, and she'd be wearing brown. If we needed to pursue a slightly darker course often, just please make this person go away. And that was considered dark enough to be wearing brown.
- [33:44]
Susan
Yeah.
- [33:45]
Beckett
They would light certain candles in the corners of the room, depending on what was happening. And the service would end in this energetic dance after everyone had asked for what they wanted, so prayed you might say, so you'd ask for what you want. And then there was a celebration dance, sang at the end. It really sounds quite lovely. I have to tell you. I learned a lot during this research. I was very sad that I had been misled for so long. It seems to me that voodoo is not what we're marketed to. Horror movies, I guess, or whatever. It's kind of more about harmony and nature. And they have this thought that there is an invisible parallel world kind of coexisting with the one we see. And it's all about balance and the laws of nature. And the media has really wrecked up its image. I am very delighted to Say that it seems more gentle than I was led to believe. Do you think?
- [34:39]
Susan
Well, yeah, I do. It's definitely. Although I don't know that I'm going to blame the media on it. I'm going to blame people who practiced it with ill intent, I guess, is a good way to put it.
- [34:51]
Beckett
That's fair.
- [34:51]
Susan
Yeah. And you know what I loved? Voodoo was actually very much a matriarchy. Three quarters of the practitioners were women. Can you find any church anywhere that has that many women in it?
- [35:04]
Beckett
No. I wonder if it has a lot to do with the fact that nature traditionally. I mean, it's Mother Nature, right? Mother Earth. Or if it's focus on nature makes women a more logical practitioner.
- [35:17]
Susan
Sure. Or maybe it was a place that women could be leaders.
- [35:21]
Beckett
Fair enough. The Catholic Church, especially per Antoine, was really pretty accommodating about Vodou, in particular from Haiti, that had changed into New Orleans. Voodoo, which is its own type of animal there, and other African folk religions in general, they were both hierarchical. There's a main powerful being in both. God in one case or Bondier in the other. There's a host of lesser supernatural beings whose role is sort of as a go between. You can't talk to the superior being because he's, you know, superior. He's way up there. Saints in the one case and spirits in the other will go talk to the superior being for you. They will intercede for you. They'll plead your case. And the African religions had this tradition. Say they overtook a neighboring tribe and encountered local gods as they came across them. They would incorporate them because obviously this local God is operating. Why would we make him mad? We are no fool. We will incorporate him into our pantheon. And obviously these Spanish people have some power, and their God obviously has some power. Let us incorporate this local God, the Spanish people's God, into our gods. Let's ask their gods for help, too. Why not? I mean, Maman Brigitte is associated with St. Brigitte, and she's sometimes pictured as a white woman with long red hair. I'm just saying St. Anthony is affiliated with Yam Tzu, St. Peter, with Legba, the guardian of the gate to the spirit world. Now, we've heard of St. Peter at the gate. This is Legba at the gate. It's the same guy as far as they're concerned. You know what I mean?
- [36:59]
Susan
Oh, I totally know what you mean. And I'm so glad that you put that that way. And I'm glad it was you that did it, because I know that there's A lot of Christian people that are saying, how could Marie possibly justify practicing all these dark arts with her Catholicism? It just doesn't mesh. You just said why it does. Right there. Boom. That's how Marie thought. Good job.
- [37:20]
Beckett
Well, and I don't even think voodoo is dark arts. I guess we'll get into that later.
- [37:23]
Susan
You don't. I'm talking about the people that think it is.
- [37:27]
Beckett
There's pageantry in both, there's ritual in both, there's sacred objects. And you know what? There's something called a devil. Well, voodoo certainly understands bad spirits. You know what? We'll fold that in too. Fair enough. And I guess the church's point is maybe not I say the church, but at least per Antoine, who held sway over this whole city, per Antoine's view is, you know what, that's fine. We're going to bring them in nicely, calmly with this similarity. I don't see a problem with this. They can do both. And then you know what? We can hammer out the doctrine as we go. Everybody's been baptized. Right? So that's fine. Though the Americans, the new bosses, the Protestants, for the most part, I guess I have to say the Protestants were very suspicious of all of this in enthusiasm. And they were frightened of these practices. You know, not the least of which reason why is that. The slave revolt in Haiti had begun with a voodoo sacrifice of a black pig. And all these refugees from that very island are now sitting here in New Orleans doing who knows what. You know, that is pretty scary. I guess if. If you heard of a massacre of all white people based on this religion, you know, it conflates in your mind, you know, they caused the death with this religion. And then they're all over here doing. I don't know what they're planning. Who knows what, you know, fear of some uprisings like that happening in the south were evidently a major way that people could get non slaveholding whites to fight in the civil war. And I never thought about that before. They could literally point to what they called Santo Domingo. You know, remember that happened and these people are still around here. This could happen to you. You better help us. I didn't realize that was happening.
- [39:14]
Susan
Yeah, and you know that, you know, let's go back and not just blame the media, but it's that kind of thinking that gave voodoo the name. It has that negative connotation that you think of that. I think that played a huge role in it.
- [39:27]
Beckett
So as Susan said before, Marie worked as a hairdresser for white women. One of the Very best conduits for all kinds of information, if you ask me. She heard the white gossip from her cl, everybody else's gossip from their servants and their slaves. And in the right hands, or specifically in the right head, all of this information could become a powerful tool, maybe rising to the level of blackmail. Although that does not really seem to be in character for Marie Laveau. I think she just used it in her practice to kind of aid in convincing people or aid in cementing her reputation. I think she held individual consultations at either her own house or in a customer's house. So you'd. You'd bring Marie your problems and she would put them before the spirits. She didn't demand of the spirits. She asked. You always provided offerings. And it's amazing what the spirits told her, wasn't it? That you hadn't told anyone except your friend whoever while you were getting your hair done. It's amazing what Marie could tell you that the spirits told you. So those details bolstered her credibility. Her knowledge of the hidden lives of everyone and her reputation grew. Her public manner was that of dignity and of self assurance. And she reminds me a lot of. In the best possible way. Please do not think I'm insulting her. The Godfather. I think, you know, Marie Laveau handled things you didn't want to get on the wrong side of someone who evidently had so much power. She had the ear of all the spirits and she had all this prestige. And you can find, I would say you can find many recipes for voodoo work, for charms to banish someone which always involved dust from their footprints, which is pretty cool. To love. Charms in which you turn a statue of St. Anthony upside down until he gives you what you want, which I think is just great. We can just link you to those rituals. I. You know, it's more interesting to just read for yourself anyway. There's ingredient lists and techniques, etc.
- [41:29]
Susan
I have a whole book of it. I'll. I was going to recommend it in the media section.
- [41:34]
Beckett
Okay. Okay, Very good. So, you know, we are not going to go too much into the day to day practice of individual wishes and dreams and hopes. But Marie did make and sell what was called grigri bags. They're these voodoo amulets that you wear and they contain things like notes often written out of the Quran, by the way, which I didn't realize. Oh, bones. Lucky charms. Not the kind that come in the box, although those marshmallows are super. What?
- [42:05]
Susan
I'm just imagining you sitting down with your big bag of Marshmallows from Lucky Charms?
- [42:10]
Beckett
No, my father in law lives right where they make those marshmallows. You can buy whole bags of just the marshmallows, but they would not fit in a gris. Also they get super sticky.
- [42:18]
Susan
And plus that's not enough. I mean, these are little bags that you can wear around your neck, right? Yeah.
- [42:25]
Beckett
So there might be carved rocks in there, or herbs or grave dust, whatever you needed for your specific situation, either for protection for the wearer or to cause harm to someone else. So we're going to link you to all those rituals and information on the grigri and you can read all of that for yourself. But what Marie practiced more than anything else is what I'm leading up to here is I'm going to call it headology. And that is a term from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. And in my opinion, it's the basis for a lot of religious practice. Yes, hedology, which I am going to define as what people truly believe in is what is real to them. So the way in which a guy sees himself and his surroundings equals his reality. So I guess the point of hedology is if you change how he views the things or himself, you can alter reality for him. It's magic. I mean, what would I call this self fulfilling prophecy? The placebo effect?
- [43:21]
Susan
Well, no, because when you believe something to be true, you. That's a great way to explain it. And it, you know, if I believe that Jesus was the son of God, Jesus was the son of God, you don't believe that, but that's okay because you believe something else just as strongly. Gosh, if more people did that, it.
- [43:37]
Beckett
Might not matter if there are actual spirits or gods. I'm not even sure it matters so much in hedology because if you've created a belief in the first place, with upbringing, maybe in your case, or trappings or reputation, or you pull out your wand and turn a teapot into a kitten or whatever, whatever you did in the first place to create the belief. Like, okay, so a test would have to be to take non believers and put them in a double blind test. Like you have half of them get whatever treatment and half of them don't because a believer is a corrupt experiment. They're already halfway there. Do you know what I'm saying?
- [44:11]
Susan
No, I don't.
- [44:11]
Beckett
Marila Vo has an advantage because her people are already halfway to changing their own destiny before she even gets to them.
- [44:20]
Susan
Sure. And in addition to her, you know, her potions and Concoctions and, and bags. She's got intelligence, you know, she's got information. So when one of her hair clients says something that alludes to the fact that she thinks that her husband is cheating on her, and Marie knows for a fact that her husband is cheating on her, Marie can offer her services, right? So, and that's how she built up her client base. So when that woman finds out that her husband is indeed having the affair and something has happened because Marie has said something to someone else down the line to make it stop or make the husband move away or whatever, suddenly this woman whose husband was cheating on her and was in this terrible situation, it's resolved. And as far as she's concerned, Marie's.
- [45:10]
Beckett
Potions did that when it was really the telephone tree.
- [45:14]
Susan
Exactly, exactly. It wasn't that pepper that she put under the judge's chair, you know, that changed his mind. It was something else that happened behind the scenes that no one really knows about. You know, there's so many pieces to that puzzle and only Marie was the person to be able to complete it in her head. And she certainly wasn't telling anybody how it happened.
- [45:34]
Beckett
Well, so I, I guess we all know that I am the goddess Skepticles. I, I don't necessarily believe in anything without categorical proof. So I actually really, really like these explanations which seem to me to have an evidence trail. So, yes, so we have an evidence trail. We also have branding. Now, we have to say nobody really knows what Marie Laveau looks like. According to her daughter Philomen. Her mother never sat for a photographer, certainly, and she never sat for a portraitist either. So all the pictures we see of her are speculative portraits based on descriptions.
- [46:12]
Susan
I guess probably better than, you know, White Jesus, who also never sat for a portrait.
- [46:19]
Beckett
Oh, there you go. So Marie Laveau had a back catalog of results. Marie Laveau knew things. Marie Laveau was things. So I would really love to talk about those things. But now it's time to take a little break and we will be back and we will explore the character of Marie Laveau and all of her many facets. This episode of the History Chicks is brought to you by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, pastries and pastas.
- [46:58]
Susan
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- [47:27]
Beckett
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- [47:43]
Susan
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- [48:11]
Beckett
You heard us, free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com chicks. That's wildgrain.com chicks or you can use promo code chicks at checkout. So we are back and we have discovered that Marie Laveau was in fact many things, one of which, sadly at this point in our story, was a widow. Christophe died suddenly when she was 54 and he left her in significant financial trouble due to, it looks like some poor investments and it almost caused her to lose her home. His family, when he died, fought to keep any inheritance from her and from their children. Marie Laveau had gone to the extent of applying to the United States government for his war pension and had to back date her own birth date to try to, quote, prove that she had been married to him during his service. So she made herself in the official record significantly older, which might account for people mistaking her birth dates. But they denied her petition, you know, saying that wasn't good enough proof for them. So she didn't get any money that way. Kristoff had thought before he died that he had kind of countered the issue of white men not being able to leave things to their mixed race families anymore by having sold the house to a colored friend long ago who had given it to one of the children because transfer of property between colored people was perfectly legal. He thought he circumvented that and he sort of did. But there was still a mortgage and that was not accounted for and another family friend had to step in and save her financially. So this whole time this family had not been living rich and high on the hog, the cottage. We can probably show you some pictures of similar cottages, even though this one is no longer around. It was a grand establishment.
- [50:22]
Susan
The impression that I got was they were pretty simple. And I was so impressed that throughout their marriage, and I'm calling it a marriage, they. That she managed to keep his name out of all of her. Her business dealings, I guess, is what we're going to call it. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't connected to her in that at all, which I thought was probably a, really difficult, and B, you know, I mean, he was with her. He. They were doing things together. They were not, you know, having parallel lives.
- [50:52]
Beckett
Think about this. How much is your husband really involved in podcasting? And it happens all around him.
- [50:58]
Susan
Yes, he's completely oblivious of it, actually.
- [51:02]
Beckett
Well, so Marie was also. In addition to being the widow, she was also the woman approached by town officials during the yellow fever epidemic of 1853, which ended up killing 8,000 people that year in New Orleans alone. That is a large percentage of the population. African Americans in general and Marie Laveau in particular, were thought to be immune to the disease. And you know what? Curiously, mostly, in fact, adults were, because once you've had it, you have natural immunity and you're not going to get it again. And you saw that child mortality rate. Do you know what I mean? Many, many didn't survive, but they already. Already hadn't survived. The ones that weren't immune were already gone. And it was sometimes called the stranger's disease because it so often struck immigrants who had not had it before and didn't have an immunity. City officials had delayed reporting this outbreak until well over a thousand people had died. And they were afraid that if they put a quarantine on the city, which was the only known tactic that worked, it would wreck up trade. And so they lied and they kept it a secret, and they therefore facilitated its spread throughout the United States as visitors carried it upriver. You had a few days before symptoms would come, and, man, they did not do the world a service that day. But Maria and her followers, they did step in and they nursed and they cared for the patients. They were very visible in their bravery. Let me just tell you. And like we talked about in the Clara Barton episode, her brother was in torment until he received treatment that prevented doctors from seeing him and got better. Like the Lydia Pinkham episode when she said, hide in the wardrobe and don't let the doctor see you. There was no cure for yellow fever. You were better off letting nature take its course and having Marie Laveau and friends mop your forehead and whisper words of comfort in your ear and get you a new blanket than you ever were with the official medical establishment. Their treatment was copious amounts of mercury.
- [52:58]
Susan
That and this is where they would have done something brilliant like shoot off a cannon to clear the air. Yeah, that's so gonna work.
- [53:06]
Beckett
I think they were still operating under the miasma theory of disease and maybe the loud noise would blow the miasma away. And they also did one thing that actually might have helped, since this is a mosquito borne illness, is they would burn barrels of tar to create smoke. And maybe that did keep the mosquitoes away. But they're still operating under. Let's replace the miasma with something else. So no one even knew that it was a mosquito borne illness until 1900. So there's. There's no cure. There's still no cure, which is really sad. Get your vaccines, kids. Can you believe that there's still no known cure for yellow fever?
- [53:39]
Susan
Yeah, it's crazy.
- [53:40]
Beckett
Well, it was a terrifying disease. You'd vomit these black coffee ground like things and there's massive organ failure and of course you turn yellow. Thus the name. And though Maria and friends had in fact been as safe as kittens, no one knew that. You know what? She didn't even know that. Think about that, how brave that is. They had no idea that they were perfectly fine. The street cred of these people right now cannot be overestimated.
- [54:06]
Susan
No, it can't. And it can only help Marie's reputation around town. Because if you had just had Marie sit with your child and suddenly your child is finally better. How did that happen? Why isn't Marie sick? Is it her voodoo? Is it her gris bag that she's got hanging around her neck, you know, marketing people?
- [54:22]
Beckett
And she didn't cure everyone. Of course she didn't. Nature didn't cure everyone. And that's who you're depending on. But her patients ended up on the whole a lot better off than those that were interfered with. And I think that's the reputation that she has gained here. So she's evidently Marie was the voodoo queen who led these extravagance ceremonies on the biggest holiday in the voodoo calendar, which is called St. John's Day, and it's June 23rd and I am guessing it's a. Gosh, it's like Mardi Gras plus the fourth of July kind of, plus a church picnic. These were all night celebrations. I mean everybody's dancing and singing, there's drums, there's SHOUTING there's bonfires all along Lake Pontchartrain. This gathering scared the crap out of the local government, by the way. Cemented their fear and suspicion of voodoo, I guess. I don't know, glorified and cemented the faith of her followers. So well done for walking that tightrope.
- [55:18]
Susan
Oh, totally. And, you know, we use the term voodoo queen. The queens are the only people that can lead these ceremonies. It's not like, you know, oh, you're the shoe queen, or, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah, yeah. You're the queen of rocking the messy hair and the lipstick. It was like calling a priest father, you know, it was a title.
- [55:36]
Beckett
Right, right. Oh, yeah, yeah. We don't mean to say that casually.
- [55:39]
Susan
No, and I think a lot of people do because I know I had that messed up in my head. I was like, ah, she's the queen of it, you know. But now she was the queen.
- [55:48]
Beckett
Now it's funny here, there seems to be a disturbance in the force about now. There is a Marie Laveau walking around who seems to have been untouched by time. Had Marie Laveau been granted immortality as her reputation is starting to gain, that level of incredulous amounts of belief which. Okay, fair enough. There is a fork in the road here as the St. John's days get crazier and begin to be associated with what, naked dancing snakes whirling over your head? A place called the Maison Blanche, where white men could meet up with young ladies of negotiable affection and then subject themselves to blackmail about it, by the way.
- [56:29]
Susan
Yeah, no kidding. Now, earlier in the. Towards the end of the Spanish control of the area and the French, that whole area, the quadroon balls were a thing. They were a way for colored women to get protection, you know, very much like Marie's own mother did you know where she met a man that provided for her? And that's where they were introduced, at things called quadroon balls. The whole nature of the quadroon ball. We could go on for a whole episode about how, you know, these could be flesh pedaling and, you know, how they were morally not a really cool idea versus the other side that says, hey, this is a way for this girl to be provided for for her life, you know, by this man taking care of her in an arrangement that isn't legal in any. Any other way. So there had been quadroon balls. The quadroon ball image kind of changed to be these wild orgies. There had been a Maison Blanche, which is the cottage that Marie had down by Lake Pontchartrain. And she did have parties there, but they weren't as flesh petally, I guess, is a good way to put it, as they were suddenly becoming at this time.
- [57:45]
Beckett
And suddenly, quote. Marie Laveau has a familiar, a big black snake named Zombie that evidently talks to her and participates fully in voodoo rights. So I wrote the original Nagini. So it isn't the original Nagini because there are Naga that are snake deities in Hinduism, by the way. So I was sad that I was trying to get in a Harry Potter reference that actually was a Hindu reference.
- [58:12]
Susan
So I'm sad about that.
- [58:14]
Beckett
I messed up on that. So, yes, Zombie was not the original snake familiar. So this numery, what is happening here, she's bolder and meaner and less cozy and more prone to evil deeds and nefarious work. And in fact is someone else, I think, mysteriously, no one is really sure exactly who this parallel Marie really was, though people lean toward it being her youngest daughter, Marie Philomene.
- [58:40]
Susan
A lot of people do. And that's the predominant theory that you'll read in anything that you read about Marie Laveau and all you'll read. Marie Laveau at about age 70 was done. She had her last service and she turned everything over to her daughter Marie Jr. Who then looked an awful lot like Marie Sr. When she was younger, picked up the torch. But she lacked the empathy that Marie original Marie og Marie had. That's the story that you're going to read the most, and there's actually some question about whether that's true or not.
- [59:13]
Beckett
So this person, referred to as Marie 2 or Marie the 2nd, took up the reputation and the mantle of the original and expanded it, I assume, with Marie1's permission. I don't really know. I don't think she took it in a good direction fraction that's all I'm saying. So meanwhile, Marie the First had taken to expanding her charitable work, and she was notable for ministering personally to condemned men in prison. I'm reminded of Susan Sarandon as the nun in that movie with Sean Penn, Dead Man Walking. Did you ever see that?
- [59:48]
Susan
Yeah. She's a real person.
- [59:49]
Beckett
Yeah.
- [59:50]
Susan
Oh, okay.
- [59:52]
Beckett
So she's the spiritual advisor to this man on death row. And that Marie Laveau is taking a lot on yourself emotionally, I think. She didn't have to do this. I mean, this was her special mission. And even here, rumors got out of control, I have to tell you. So even here, did she cause a thunderstorm to interrupt the execution of Innocent men? No. Did she poison an inmate with gumbo to save him from the terror of his end? No. Did she work voodoo against the judges to free men from prison? No. Here's what the papers said about her actual involvement, which a lifetime of studying people's characters and learning their secrets can get you. So here's what the paper said about her. Whenever a prisoner excited her pity, Marie would labor incessantly to obtain his pardon, or at least a commutation of sentence. And she generally succeeded. No shrewder judge of character could have been found. And when Marie interceded, there was generally good grounds for mercy. And then someone else said, Marie Laveau's heart prompted her to visit the parish prison whenever its walls held any unfortunates condemned to death. She labored earnestly for the salvation of the souls of poor sinners such as these. She built altars beside which she could pray with them. And she went to them often in the last days of their miserable lives.
- [61:12]
Susan
Wow. That doesn't sound like a woman who's going off to take advantage of people and be nefarious herself. Not at all.
- [61:21]
Beckett
And you know what? Those things seem to be more in character with the person that I'm seeing in all this history. From my skeptical perspective, I am more impressed by practical deeds like this and examples of someone's true character than any doctrine they say out of their mouth. You know, she seems to me like the real deal. And the accounts also reveal that she used her influence to reconcile these prisoners with. Are you ready to take a breath here? With Jesus at their end, which follows my premise that their Catholic and voodoo beliefs existed simultaneously.
- [61:54]
Susan
Oh, yeah, I. I agree with everything you just said. Everything. I totally believe that what people do is so much more important, such a truer sign of their character than what they say. I mean, anybody can recite chapter and verse. Can you live it?
- [62:10]
Beckett
So, you know, especially this last push of hers really kind of cemented my viewpoint of her as a benevolent person. So Marie Laveau lived in the cottage, the little cottage, with fellow men and her children and Eloise's children and some relatives of Kristoff's. It's seriously the same old overcrowded household that she's always had. I'm not entirely sure if the Choctaw women were gone by then. I don't suppose it matters. But maybe the yard's empty, maybe it's not. Her hair became white and her once legendary posture became stooped, but she's still this reverenced figure. She's got respect from the black and colored community while simultaneously being young and holding what amounted to orgies out at the lake. You know what? Legends are funny things. So even Marie Laveau's death is corrupted by the legend of Marie Laveau. The story goes that Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen, was swept into the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by a ferocious wind that lifted her cabin right off of its foundations, where she, A, drowned, B, drowned, then came back to life because of the spirits. C, said to her rescuers that she wanted to die in the lake, but was rescued against her will. D, promised the voodoo gods she'd retire if only they saved her. Or E walked across the water to safety. Hmm. Or maybe f, the documented and real story, she died surrounded by followers and her family of complications of old age on June 15, 1881, at the age of 80.
- [63:47]
Susan
I'm going with the last one, please.
- [63:50]
Beckett
Her cause of death was actually listed as diarrhea, which. That makes me feel sad. That's not very dignified. It's likely. It was the hottest summer in living memory, evidently, and, you know, we're 80 years from home, air conditioning, and she probably died of dehydration and heat stroke.
- [64:06]
Susan
Having lived several summers in New Orleans, I could. I could say that's probably what happened.
- [64:11]
Beckett
So who the heck drowned in the lake? I guess, is what I'm saying. Somebody maybe, I don't know, they think maybe another voodoo priestess named Angeli Levasseur, whose sad fate got kind of glued onto the legend of Marie Laveau, maybe. And this Angelie Levasseur was actually another candidate for the possible. Marie number two, in case it wasn't full of men. This was another possibility. Will, Marie's funeral was elaborate and well attended by all levels of society. It was a Catholic funeral. It was said you couldn't get within three blocks of it because of all the people trying to attend. Marie was famous. She was famous. Both the real Marie and the legendary one, both famous. An enormous amount of people followed her coffin to her tomb, which is above ground, as graves in New Orleans are, due to the low water table, probably at St. Louis Cemetery number one, under the name Widow Paris. It's interesting that on the tomb originally it says age 98, and it's kind of corrected to 78, which, in fact, she was 80. So there you have it.
- [65:17]
Susan
That's a little closer, I guess.
- [65:19]
Beckett
Well, it was probably easier just to change the nine to a seven than to worry about changing the eight.
- [65:23]
Susan
Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.
- [65:26]
Beckett
So there is another tomb that of the mysterious Marie II, maybe called the wishing tomb, which was in St. Louis Cemetery number two. And people do visit there, you know, just in case. Maybe all of these things are so tangled up. There are people who genuinely believe cemetery number two is the right grave. So, you know. But the consensus seems to be that, yes, St. Louis number one, over on basin street, the middle vault of the Widow Paris tomb is the real deal. And for years afterwards, until very, very recently, up to a quarter million visitors a year visited Marie Laveau's tomb. They left offerings there. Fruit, flowers, dishes of food, rum, three nickels, the traditional payment to voodoo spirits. Candies, candles. You'd mark a cross on the tomb with charcoal or pencil or brick dust, or you scratched it in, even to ask Marie Laveau for a favor, to ask her to talk to the spirits on your behalf or for whatever it was you wanted. And for years, every so often, the Catholic authorities, irritated by all this, would whitewash over all the marks.
- [66:36]
Susan
It's kind of disrespectful. I mean, a lot of times they were scratching those into her tomb with pieces of rock that they picked off of another tomb.
- [66:45]
Beckett
Yes.
- [66:46]
Susan
It's not an amusement park. This is not Disneyland. New Orleans is cool. It's different. It's a big tourist center. They. They do their best to welcome tourists, but it's not Disneyland. So that's somebody's mama that's buried in there, and you're cracking pieces off to draw three X's on Marie Laveau's tomb, Please.
- [67:05]
Beckett
Well, evidently, the process is. So you draw your ex and you turn around three times and you knock on the tomb and you yell out your wish, whatever it is you want, and then you just go away. So if your wish is granted, you have to come back. You have to circle your ex and leave an offering at that point, like, thanks a lot for that. That was cool. Now, unfortunately, and inevitably, damage to the tomb caused New Orleans authorities to begin cracking down on the markings. I mean, people are using lipstick now, ballpoint pens, pocket knives. This isn't a, you know, made out of Unobtainium. This is a brick and mortar tomb that is not going to withstand a whole bunch more vandalism. And then somebody ruined it for everybody. In 2014, someone painted the entire tomb pink, like a nice double bubble. Pale pink.
- [67:56]
Susan
That's a good way to describe it. It wasn't quite Pepto, but.
- [67:59]
Beckett
Well, and it wasn't even so much the pinkness that bothered anyone because people had painted over it with whitewash. You know, year after year after year after year, it wasn't the pinkness. It was that this fool used latex paint. And latex paint, of course, is a moisture barrier. And they couldn't leave it on there. No matter how cheerful it was or how much it covered the graffiti, they could not leave it on there because the brick and mortar would start to disintegrate behind it, just from humidity. New Orleans is like. Doesn't it just hover on 99% at all times?
- [68:31]
Susan
Pretty much. I had great hair in New Orleans.
- [68:34]
Beckett
Curly hair is good.
- [68:35]
Susan
Oh, my gosh. I had the best hair of my life in New Orleans. I gotta go back.
- [68:40]
Beckett
So preservationists got into a giant battle about how to fix it. But ultimately it was discovered that power washing took off the pink paint without taking off too much of the graffiti. So that's what they used. The tomb's white again. Or white covered in graffiti again. There's theoretically a huge fine for marking on this tomb now, but I really think the authorities are fighting a losing battle with Marie Lavo on that one. Her reputation is going to win even over tickets, you know. Yeah. But you have to now go through cemetery number one with a tour guide. So you have to be committed to either be really good at distraction or you don't appear on a camera, or you come in the night and leave the fence and do it. So it's a little harder than it used to be.
- [69:25]
Susan
Yeah, I don't like any of those. And actually, when we get to the media section, I have a couple highly recommended cemetery tours.
- [69:32]
Beckett
Nice. That brings us to the end of our coverage of Marie Laveau.
- [69:36]
Susan
You know what I love the most about her is that she was clearly a multi nuanced woman. There were so many levels to her. She wasn't. People tend to put her into two camps. She was a saint or she was a sinner. And she was this blend of both. I think, just like every one of us.
- [69:54]
Beckett
I started out kind of not wanting to cover Marie Laveau. I started out super suspicious and grumpy about it. I have to tell you about Marie La Beau herself. I was not looking forward to it. And now I have to tell you, I am her biggest champion. And I am more irritated at history for messing her story up. Okay.
- [70:15]
Susan
I have to say this is one of the best parts of doing this show for me is when what happened to you just happened. I love that when it happens. Yay.
- [70:25]
Beckett
Yeah. So I'm glad. I mean, she seemed more like a real person. I can get behind her practical magic. I really think. I really. I don't know. I'm very impressed. I'm glad to kind of dig through the hype man, but let's go into media. I don't approve of any of the fictional representations of Marie Laveau anywhere after having learned the real story. Nope. I'm not going to recommend any fictional representations of Marie Laveau except for maybe the person in Pirates of the Caribbean who is actually not a voodoo queen, but is in fact the goddess Calypso. That is as close as I'm getting.
- [70:57]
Susan
And I know I can hear all of you American Horror Story fans screaming at Beckett right now.
- [71:02]
Beckett
No, no, no. You know what? I have a note on that, too. I do. I said American Horror Story coven. Angela Bassett is the greatest of actresses, but this story is the Let Them Eat Cake of New Orleans. It does Marie Laveau a giant disservice to put her on the same level as Madame Lalori and does not reflect the real person at all. I am very irritated.
- [71:25]
Susan
So for those of you who are in charge of filming the movie Laveau that's being filmed right now, take that into heart. Although, I. I don't know. I'm not gonna set my sights too high. They have two actresses playing Marie in the older one. Gorgeous. And when you look at her, her name is Rachel.
- [71:45]
Beckett
True.
- [71:45]
Susan
She is 51 years old. She looks amazing. It's crazy to me. She was in Sharknado 1 and 2. I know it's work, people. We all do things that we might not be proud of at the end, but we gotta put food on the table.
- [72:02]
Beckett
Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
- [72:04]
Susan
Anyway, so that comes out this year.
- [72:06]
Beckett
I don't know. I don't know. I'm just so. I'm so. I understand why the legend is better. I do. It's more exciting. It's more exciting to have a talking snake named zombie than it is to be treating malaria victims with tree bark. That's a fact, Jack.
- [72:22]
Susan
Yeah, but like a lot of these women that we talk about that have these biopics made and they're just so off base from what the person's life was. Her life had enough drama in it to fill a movie, you know what I mean? Without any myth or legend. And even if you compare and contrast the myth and legend to the real woman, that's drama right there. That's a movie I would love to see.
- [72:44]
Beckett
Actually, I have two movies to recommend that are only, you know, vaguely related to Marie Laveau. Let me mention this One, it's called the Serpent and the Rainbow, and it basically covers a man who goes to Haiti to learn about voodoo and the Haitian Voodoo creation of zombies. So that kind of gives you a little background into. Into the ancestor of New Orleans Voodoo. So if you. If you'd like to go deeper down that way. Haitian voodoo is not the same as New Orleans voodoo, but they certainly have, you know, a relationship. So I liked that one. And then Also there's a 1938 Bette Davis movie named Jezebel about the 1853 yellow fever epidemic.
- [73:30]
Susan
Good connection.
- [73:32]
Beckett
Yeah, there you go. Because I can't really. I just really don't want to recommend any other fictional representations. I really don't. I mean, feel free to be entertained by that. But I wish, you know. And now you guys, do you know the real story?
- [73:43]
Susan
Yeah. And you know what? If you are going to New Orleans and you're listening to this podcast to learn a little bit about Marie Laveau, there's so many things to do in New Orleans besides, you know, trying to sneak into the cemetery and put graffiti on her grave. But if you do want to go to the cemetery, there are two tours that I queried my New Orleans people to find out the ones that were the best and highly recommended. And you are gonna die when you hear the name of this tour company, Beckett. Okay, ready? Two Chicks Tours.
- [74:17]
Beckett
Oh, nice.
- [74:18]
Susan
I know, right? Two Chicks Tours and Friends of the Cabaldo, which is also. It's part of the Louisiana State Museum. It used to house the former seat of Spanish colonial government, and now it's a museum. And both of them offer walking tours, guided walking tours, not just of the cemeteries, but of the French Quarter. Taking these tours is going to do so much more for you learning about the culture of the city than anything. Two names popped up. If you can get on Gray Sweeney Perkins or George Loki Williams tour, I am told you will not be disappointed.
- [74:59]
Beckett
And if anybody does go on one of those tours, please, please, on Instagram, put some photos up with history ticks, field trip. Or write a little travelog of your experience and we'll put it up because we're very interested.
- [75:10]
Susan
Are you ready for books? Sure. Okay. I'm just. I have narrowed my huge stack. By the way, I was shocked at how many books I could get for this to my favorites, my first favorite, and I know you read this one too. It's New Orleans Voodoo Priestess the Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau by Carolyn Morrow Long.
- [75:30]
Beckett
Well, I like this one the best of any of the books. I have, and I have to say, largely because it approaches the legends with a great deal of skepticism and comes back at you with, actually, in the records, it says this and it tells you where the record is. I really approve of that. Heck, the index is the back quarter of the book.
- [75:51]
Susan
Oh, I know. I was shocked that I was finished with the book. I had so much book left to read. And then I was like, oh, wow, look at all that. Huh? I guess I'm done.
- [75:59]
Beckett
Yeah, I mean, I, I, you know, maybe that colored my research. And I'm very glad that that was the first one that I picked up because it really did go okay. Yeah, that's super fun. Here's the real story. And I think that's kind of how. What brought me around to really liking Marie Lavo. So then you can go back and read something like Voodoo Queen, the Spirited Life of Marie Lav. An author named Ward. That's good too. Then I have a little background reading, because that's what I do. I have a book called the History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color by Sybil Kyne.
- [76:30]
Susan
Okay. So remember we talked about the baptismal certificate that kind of changed the date of Marie's birth and gave it a little bit more validity? The religious scholar that did that wrote a book called the Mysterious Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, A study of powerful female leadership in 19th century New Orleans. And I thought this book was phenomenal. And it also did a great job of saying, okay, here's the myth, can it hold water? And how this woman went about trying to say if it's true or not. So I thought this was great. And it added a whole different insight. She's a religious scholar, so she came at it from that perspective, which I thought was kind of different than the other books that I read. Yeah. The book that I had talked about earlier that had the recipes is called the Life and Works of Marie Gris Gris Cleansings, Charms and Hexes by Raul Canizzares. It's very small. It's. It's got a font that Beckett Graham would not approve of one bit.
- [77:32]
Beckett
That's funny.
- [77:33]
Susan
I know.
- [77:34]
Beckett
I have a. I have a book that I have to recommend more highly than any book I've ever recommended before.
- [77:40]
Susan
Oh, my.
- [77:41]
Beckett
Yeah. Again, only sideways related to this. And you know what? Be very careful because there's over 20 books in this series, and if you read one and you like it, you're gonna have to buy them all, and it's gonna change your life. So if you're ready for that. Okay. If not, hit the 15 ahead button. Oh, wait.
- [77:59]
Susan
I'm just gonna say I don't need to hit the 15 ahead button, because even without you telling me what it is. Okay, please, Beckett, please enlighten us.
- [78:07]
Beckett
It's a book called Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett, and it is in the Discworld series, and it incorporates voodoo, witchcraft, Cinderella, vampires, and Mark Twain's book, Innocence Abroad. It is undescribably funny. It is the gateway drug into Discworld.
- [78:27]
Susan
This is the book. This is where you start with this book.
- [78:29]
Beckett
I. It's one of my two favorites.
- [78:31]
Susan
Okay. But is this where a noob would come in and say, which of these books should I read first? That's the book they should read first or I should.
- [78:38]
Beckett
Yeah, I would say it's kind of a standalone thing. It explains itself pretty well.
- [78:42]
Susan
Okay.
- [78:43]
Beckett
There's even Legba is in here. Erzuli, which is another voodoo queen, is in here. Baron Samdi, who is just Mr. Saturday in in this book, is in here. There's all kinds of references that after you've known a little bit of voodoo, you'll know, and it is just great, and I just love it.
- [79:02]
Susan
I will get this book today. I will put it in my ears, on my head, and I'm gonna say something, and I want you to keep it in. Okay?
- [79:10]
Beckett
Okay.
- [79:10]
Susan
I know right now, our friend, the third silent history chick, JD Is, like, clapping his hands and wishing he could hug you.
- [79:19]
Beckett
He loves that series.
- [79:21]
Susan
Oh, my gosh. Yes. Oh, yes. He has bowed to the altar of Terry Pratchett more times than none, and is complete shock that I've never read any of these books. And strangely, and this is the only reason that's pushed it over. Terry Pratchett and my father died on the same day.
- [79:36]
Beckett
Oh, my goodness.
- [79:38]
Susan
I know. And you know what? Today is my father's birthday. I know. I. I know. You know what I'm gonna say. You are my grigri to get through this day.
- [79:48]
Beckett
Aw. I don't know what to say. Oh, my goodness.
- [79:51]
Susan
Well, you have to talk, because I'm gonna cry.
- [79:54]
Beckett
Okay. Well, there is an investigative piece of journalism by Zora Neale Hurston about hoodoo. I will link you to that. I'll link you to an article about it, and you can decide if you would like to go down that rabbit hole. She inserted herself as a secret agent, sort of like Nellie Bly did in the mental institution, into a hoodoo religious organization. Her exploits are covered in her article, and then also I have an article to link you to about the Pink Tomb and the aftermath of the Pink Tomb. It's a news article.
- [80:30]
Susan
Okay. And you know what? Anything New Orleans, you can't go wrong. Anything you read from french creoles.com I will warn you ahead of time, it's a very older template for the website and there's music. So when you're heading over that way, turn your speakers off. I mean, it's zydigo music. And if you want to listen to music, it's kind of put you in the mood. But still, no music.
- [80:53]
Beckett
So, in closing, what history knows as Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau seems to be mostly legend.
- [81:04]
Susan
There she is.
- [81:05]
Beckett
My phone agrees. Oh my gosh, no, it was Christian Messer, actually. How funny. I love you, Christian, but I would like to leave you with a quote from the favorite book, the book we both bought, a New Orleans Voodoo the Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau by Carolyn Moreau. Long what we can piece together from the published sources and oral histories is only a silhouette of Marie Laveau, her mere outline lacking all the detail and color of a real portrait. Tantalizingly incomplete, she's perhaps even more magnetic than she would be if fully known. Her enigma tempts us to shape her to our will, and her image has evolved over time in response to the shifting prejudices, fantasies, and desires of those who look for her as a mirror. Marie tells us more about the era from which she is observed than she does about herself. She remains untouched and unknown, secure in her enduring aura of mystery. Thanks for listening.
- [82:03]
Susan
Bye.
- [82:04]
Beckett
If you liked what you heard today, tell a few friends or leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts, the new name for itunes. It is about time for all of us to start taking our wonderful, magical summer vacation trips, and we cannot wait to follow along with you. If you would like to share your historical vacation photos with the group, simply tag them with hashtag historychicksfieldtrip over on Instagram. And don't forget to check out our Pinterest boards. The Marie Laveau Pinterest board should be up by the time the show's up. The end song is when the Saints Go Marching in, which is certainly a New Orleans classic.