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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You've heard the rumors before, perhaps

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Speaker 1: and whispers written between the lines of the textbooks. Conspiracies,

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Speaker 1: paranormal events, all those things that disappear from the official explanations.

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Speaker 1: Tune in and learn more of this stuff they don't

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Speaker 1: want you to know in this video podcast from how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And Sarah and

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Speaker 1: I were talking today about wanting to get out of

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Speaker 1: Atlanta and picturing ourselves in far flung locales, but we

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Speaker 1: were thinking of someplace a little closer in New Orleans, drivable,

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Speaker 1: perhaps perhaps drivable. Yes, I have had one fantastic trip

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Speaker 1: there to jazz Fast, one terrible one to Marty and

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Speaker 1: failed one where my house ended up falling through with

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Speaker 1: the last second and I didn't end up going at

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Speaker 1: least your house didn't actually fall through, true where you

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Speaker 1: were going with a terrible joke. Anyways, I've had too,

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Speaker 1: probably equally fantastic trips to New Orleans. Both were for

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Speaker 1: Marti Gras. But um, today we're going to talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit about New Orleans voodoo past and present, because

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Speaker 1: it is October and Helloween, and we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about Marie Laveau, who was both feared and revered, and

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Speaker 1: you will still see references to Marie Lavaux all over

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Speaker 1: New Orleans, Marie Levo Voodoo Shop, even, I think. And

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Speaker 1: the legend of Marie Lavaux was that she could do

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Speaker 1: pretty much anything with her voodoo magic. She could make

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Speaker 1: people crawl on their bellies, she could make your husband disappear,

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Speaker 1: or she hypnotized the police. She danced with snakes, she

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Speaker 1: could make you sleep with people you didn't want to

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Speaker 1: sleep with. So she was a lot of bad magic.

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Speaker 1: I guess my favorite detail about Marie lava is that

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Speaker 1: she supposedly had a twenty foot long snake named Zombie

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Speaker 1: that she would go dance with. And yeah, she also

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Speaker 1: dressed like a gypsy and had big gold earrings, probably

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Speaker 1: like a Halloween costume one of us would put together

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Speaker 1: and rings, and yeah, these dances with the snake are

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Speaker 1: very much part of her legend. They pop up in

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Speaker 1: almost every account you read of her. But that's the thing,

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Speaker 1: it is a legend and not entirely based on fact,

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Speaker 1: and the reason for that is because there aren't a

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Speaker 1: lot of primary sources from this particular time in New

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Speaker 1: Orleans history, and a lot of it is just hearsay

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Speaker 1: accounts and you know, people telling stories of things that

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Speaker 1: they've heard. Yeah, there are also a lot of Marie

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Speaker 1: la those and some of them are related to her,

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Speaker 1: and then some of them aren't. And then a lot

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Speaker 1: of her public records are just missing. Like many free

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Speaker 1: people of color at the time, their their records are

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Speaker 1: literally razored out of documents because some people, I think,

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Speaker 1: go back to look at their records and realize their

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Speaker 1: ancestors or on who they thought they were leaning up

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Speaker 1: their family history and getting rid of them, or they

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Speaker 1: think it's cool to find something about Marie Lava and

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Speaker 1: they're just cutting it out of the book. Please don't

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Speaker 1: do that, So the love of research. Well, and also

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Speaker 1: Marie Lavau didn't write anything of her own right. She

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Speaker 1: was illiterate, so she wasn't keeping any records of us

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Speaker 1: for us to look at. So we've got a historical

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Speaker 1: Marie Lava or two and also this legend of mure Lava.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to try to weave them both together.

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Speaker 1: And some of this will be entirely true, and some

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Speaker 1: of it, well, not so much. We'll try to tell

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Speaker 1: you when So, Marie Lava lived on St. Anne's Street, which,

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Speaker 1: of course there's an interesting story even about how she

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Speaker 1: got her house. Um, it was said that a wealthy

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Speaker 1: white client had a son who was in trouble with

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Speaker 1: the law, and Marie Lavo works some voodoo magic and

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Speaker 1: got the son off the hook, and ingratitude, the father

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Speaker 1: gave her this house. This is really unlikely. She actually

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Speaker 1: didn't even own the house on St. Anne, but she

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Speaker 1: did live there most of her adult life. But that's

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Speaker 1: the story, and it's the story we like. Supposedly, she

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Speaker 1: did a lot of things with prisoners. She would get

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Speaker 1: people acquitted even when they were at the gallows somehow

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Speaker 1: and they would disappear. Part of the key to Marie

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Speaker 1: Lavo's status as this voodoo queen, with this powerful greegree

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Speaker 1: she had a network of informants by making friends with

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Speaker 1: all the servants in the very affluent houses of New

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Speaker 1: Orleans and curing them of their ailments and fixing their

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Speaker 1: life's worries, and so they gave her information whenever she

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Speaker 1: needed it. Yeah, so if she was working for a

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Speaker 1: wealthy white client, and she happened to know all of

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Speaker 1: his servants. She was going to be able to have

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Speaker 1: worked otent magical cure because she knows what I'll need exactly. So,

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Speaker 1: but we're gonna talk a little bit about where Marie

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Speaker 1: Lavo actually came from and how she became this voodoo

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Speaker 1: queen in the first place. She was born in the

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Speaker 1: via career in seventeen ninety four or maybe eighteen o one, um,

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Speaker 1: but either way, it's before New Orleans was part of

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Speaker 1: America from the Louisiana purchase, and she was rumored to

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Speaker 1: be the daughter of a wealthy planter and a slave

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Speaker 1: woman who was perhaps also part Native American. But later

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Speaker 1: historians have suggested that Lva's father was in fact a

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Speaker 1: free man of color, and stuff I found was saying

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Speaker 1: that she was born to a free woman of color

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Speaker 1: instead of a slave woman, and to a Frenchman a

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Speaker 1: plantation owner. So her beginnings are very muddled. That will

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Speaker 1: be theme in the life of Marie Lavo. And no

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Speaker 1: one agrees what color she is to People call her

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Speaker 1: basically every hue there is, but everyone Indian, Native, American, white, Yeah, thanks,

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Speaker 1: everyone agrees. She was very beautiful, which is probably another

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Speaker 1: really important aspect of her power. Her power. One of

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Speaker 1: our sources said that she attended convent school, so she

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Speaker 1: had a little Catholic background, and then she was married

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Speaker 1: at seventeen to her first husband, Jacques. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if it's Paris or Paris, so we're just going to

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Speaker 1: stick with Paris, who was a quadroon from Santa Mingue.

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Speaker 1: And they were really stallacious rumors about how she eventually

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Speaker 1: got rid of him, And I mean, the guy might

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Speaker 1: have just died, but people would suggest, oh, he beat

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Speaker 1: her and she made him disappear, or he wasn't faithful

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Speaker 1: and she made sure he went away. And I wonder

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Speaker 1: she didn't discourage the rumors because they made her seem

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Speaker 1: more powerful. Anyway, Yeah, definitely, if you can get rid

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Speaker 1: of your own husband, you might be able to do

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Speaker 1: that for clients. But anyways, after that, she's known as

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Speaker 1: the Widow Paris until I mean, the even when she

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Speaker 1: takes up a partnership with a white man who is

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Speaker 1: essentially her husband, they can't marry because he's white, even

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Speaker 1: though some people suggested that he adopted a bi racial identity.

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Speaker 1: To Marrie the Double Life, that probably didn't happen. Um,

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Speaker 1: but this is Christophe Lapion, and they lived together for

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Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. They're buried next to each other,

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Speaker 1: and they have anywhere from five to fifteen children, which

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Speaker 1: is a pretty big difference. We found different numbers pretty

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Speaker 1: much everywhere we looked. But it wasn't rare for white

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Speaker 1: men to live with Creole women in a sort of

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Speaker 1: common law marriage, even recognizing their children together and uh,

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Speaker 1: in legal ways like that. And some of what I

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Speaker 1: was looking at was saying that Marie Lavaux was both

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Speaker 1: a devout Catholic and someone who practiced foodo, which might

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Speaker 1: sound kind of crazy unless you know a little bit

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Speaker 1: more about the origin of voodoo. Yeah, voodoo it encompasses

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Speaker 1: more than just voodoo dolls or the little trinkets you're

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Speaker 1: gonna see if you visit New Orleans during Marty Girl

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Speaker 1: or something. But um, it's it's more about philosophy, medicine, justice,

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Speaker 1: and religion. It's kind of got everything wrapped into into one.

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Speaker 1: And Haitian voodoo was a sacred slave religion and according

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Speaker 1: to one of the scholars, I was reading, a collective

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Speaker 1: form of rebellion and it was suppressed in both Louisiana

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Speaker 1: and in Haiti before the revolution. But in eighteen o

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Speaker 1: nine a whole bunch of Haitian refugees came to New

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Speaker 1: Orleans and they brought their own version of voodoo with them,

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Speaker 1: which mixed with the African religions the slaves they're already had,

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Speaker 1: and also with Catholicism, so that became a new form

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Speaker 1: of voodoo that was practiced in New Orleans in the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth and twentie centuries. You can think of it as

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Speaker 1: like Afro Catholicism and New Orleans voodoo is based on Aimism,

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Speaker 1: which is an belief in nature that was from Africa

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Speaker 1: and that was modified in in Haiti to throw in

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Speaker 1: this stuff about the zombies and the spirit world and

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Speaker 1: demons and ghosts um, which I actually I think would

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Speaker 1: work well with saints and devils and various aspects of yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the Roman Catholicism uh side to it all made

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Speaker 1: it a little more palatable for officials, um if it yeah,

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Speaker 1: if if they were saints and not spirits or ghosts

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Speaker 1: or something. And there was a place called Congo Square

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Speaker 1: in New Orleans where people would come to do some

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Speaker 1: of their voodoo. Hundreds sometimes thousands of free and blacks

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Speaker 1: and slavery came to dance and sing and got their

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Speaker 1: drums out and did little voodoo rituals and the thing

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Speaker 1: freaked out all the city fathers. But Marie Lavaux was

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Speaker 1: a very central part of that. And part of why

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Speaker 1: mari Lavaux is so interesting and still today people are

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Speaker 1: kind of obsessed with her is that she walked the

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Speaker 1: border between these two worlds, between this Catholic world and

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Speaker 1: which you know is still very strong in parts of

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Speaker 1: New Orleans, and then this voodoo world that people didn't

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Speaker 1: know anything about. And she was so powerful. She was

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Speaker 1: this really powerful black figure well, and she walked the

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Speaker 1: line between the white world and the people of color.

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Speaker 1: I mean, she weirdly has this reputation of being a

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Speaker 1: kind of racial reformer, right, but she owned slaves with

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Speaker 1: her husband and set them free and sold them many

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Speaker 1: many people of color, freed people of color would buy

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Speaker 1: slaves with the intention of freeing them. But that was

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Speaker 1: not uh, that was not her intentions. So she she

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Speaker 1: kind of skirts a lot of different boundaries about religion

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Speaker 1: and race and um. The power of this woman who

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Speaker 1: was illiterate and probably shouldn't be as famous as she

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Speaker 1: is now. If it weren't for this mythic image she's

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Speaker 1: created of herself, she's not easily categorized, I think, which

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Speaker 1: is part of it. But also she had such a

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Speaker 1: wealth of information, which you've mentioned earlier, of being in

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Speaker 1: contact with all these incredibly wealthy people and also their slaves.

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Speaker 1: She knew everything about everyone, and that's a completely different

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Speaker 1: kind of power that you don't need voodoo for. But

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Speaker 1: it turns out there actually may have been two Marie Lavas,

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Speaker 1: So when we're talking about Marie Laveaux, we're actually talking

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Speaker 1: about these two women and possibly more, Marie the first

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Speaker 1: and Marie the second, and Marie the second is likely

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Speaker 1: Marie the first daughter Marie Eucharst from one of the

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Speaker 1: sources I was reading, one of those five to fift

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Speaker 1: kids of hers, And it makes sense that the line

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Speaker 1: between them is so confusing, because if the Marie's are

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Speaker 1: making their reputation off of blurring these boundaries, how great

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Speaker 1: it is it if you have two women or maybe

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Speaker 1: one and they have the same name. Nobody knows. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And obviously for for Marie to her mother is this

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Speaker 1: local celebrity and very successful practitioner voodoo it's in her

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Speaker 1: best interests to kind of keep that family business going

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Speaker 1: and um stir up that confusion. Marie too was a hairdresser,

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Speaker 1: again to a lot of very wealthy New Orleanans. So

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Speaker 1: I mean, think about it when you go to the

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Speaker 1: salon and your hairdresser starts talking and asking you questions,

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Speaker 1: and then you know, you might end up telling all

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Speaker 1: your secrets and it might come in handy later when

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Speaker 1: you need some help. Supposedly, also, we're going back to

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Speaker 1: the legend one of the Marie's or both of them

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Speaker 1: ares help slaves escape and also built this crazy cult

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Speaker 1: off like poncha train and New Orleans sacrificed roosters. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it was supposed to be very scandalous because apparently the

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Speaker 1: police came and not only was it the slaves they

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Speaker 1: expected to find there and some of the free people

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Speaker 1: of color, but also the affluent whites of the city

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Speaker 1: as well from the very good families. And it was

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Speaker 1: quite the scandal. And people still go to New Orleans

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Speaker 1: looking for this kind of voodoo, dark magic. New Orleans

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Speaker 1: just has that reputation not only as you know, the

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Speaker 1: city of sin, but also this place where things can

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Speaker 1: happen or they can't happen in other places well, and

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Speaker 1: they go trying to a lot of people go trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out the story of the Mariela those there

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Speaker 1: have been all these books written about her recently, and

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Speaker 1: um just either going to really embrace this made up

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Speaker 1: crazy stuff that's associated with her or try to figure

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Speaker 1: out who the real person was. And that's part to

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Speaker 1: the appeal because you can't, You absolutely cannot. There will

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Speaker 1: never be an answer. So you can come up with

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Speaker 1: your own opinion, and we've certainly come up with ours.

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Speaker 1: But the legend persists. And one of our favorites was

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Speaker 1: the smith that if you go to the tomb of

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Speaker 1: Marie Lavaux and market with three xs, she will grant

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Speaker 1: you a wish. And the cemetery people do not think

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Speaker 1: highly on this. And I saw a picture of her tomb.

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Speaker 1: It looks pretty dingy with all the markings on it.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of like Oscar Wilde's tomb paraly Shas with

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Speaker 1: all the kind of greasy looking lipstick kissing marks on it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: not not cool. And I think some people even break

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Speaker 1: off like bits of other tombs so they can make

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Speaker 1: little marks, which is disrespectful to the dead, but her

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Speaker 1: tomb is one of the most visited graves in the

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Speaker 1: United States um and it's estimated to have doubled since

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Speaker 1: the early ninety nineties. The visitors to to the resting

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Speaker 1: place of Marie Lavou And even that's confusing because we're

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Speaker 1: not quite sure who's very there. Is it Marie One,

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Speaker 1: is it Marie Too? Or is it both of them?

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Speaker 1: Which some sources say because part of the inscription seems

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Speaker 1: like it's talking about Marie Too, the date of death

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Speaker 1: and her age, which cannot possibly apply to Marie One,

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Speaker 1: But the other part of it refers to Marie One.

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Speaker 1: It's talking about, you know, family of the widow Paris,

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Speaker 1: which could only be her. So is one of them

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Speaker 1: buried a top the other or was there just some

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Speaker 1: sort of confusion? No one knows well. And after both

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Speaker 1: the Marie's are gone from New Orleans, whenever that happened,

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Speaker 1: because Marie Too actually disappeared completely and during the reconstruction

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Speaker 1: disappeared completely. After they're both gone, the voodoo community in

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Speaker 1: New Orleans starts to change and fragment and sort of

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Speaker 1: the more touristy stuff that we think of now. And

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Speaker 1: that's really a lot more associated with who do which

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Speaker 1: is evil magic and like bad juju and it's used

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Speaker 1: for harm. So that's are like the pens and the

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Speaker 1: doll and stuff like that. Um, and that's what supplants

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Speaker 1: this this very tradition oriented voodoo that the Maries are

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Speaker 1: known for. So if you'd like to learn more about

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Speaker 1: how zombies work and the origins of voodoo and how

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Speaker 1: voodoo works, come to our website at www dot how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or if you have your own

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Speaker 1: Maria Lava one or two legends, you can email us

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Speaker 1: at History podcast at how stuff works dot com. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,

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Speaker 1: Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the stuff you missed

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Speaker 1: in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com home page